Health Care Service Corporation announced Wednesday that it will buy Cigna’s Medicare business. The $3.7 billion sale will see Health Care Service, the country’s largest customer-owned health insurer, take control of Cigna’s Medicare Advantage, Supplemental Benefits and Part D customers, as well as the CareAllies business that works with healthcare providers. Cigna’s Medicare plans cover over 3.6 million people, with 2.5 million ...

Pharmacy retail chains staking their future on expanding the health care services they offer are running into a big problem: It’s getting harder to draw the next generation of pharmacists amid turmoil in the industry. Why it matters: The pharmacies’ ambitions to become go-to providers for vaccinations, patient monitoring and even prescribing are being threatened by workforce shortages and burnout, ...

UCSF Health has confirmed that its $100 million deal to acquire two struggling San Francisco community hospitals is just weeks away from closing. The city’s preeminent medical research institution has signed an agreement to purchase St. Mary’s Medical Center at 450 Stanyan St. — San Francisco’s oldest Catholic hospital — and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital at 900 ...

States are plowing billions of dollars into a high-stakes health care experiment that’s exploding around the country: using scarce public health insurance money to provide housing for the poorest and sickest Americans. California is going the biggest, pumping $12 billion into an ambitious Medicaid initiative largely to help homeless patients find housing, pay for it, ...

Sharp HealthCare, a seven-hospital system in San Diego, partnered with a specialty pharmacy solutions provider Jan. 30. Patients at the health system will soon receive personalized specialty care, including side effect and adherence management, regular follow-ups, access to financial assistance, and free medication delivery. Sharp’s deal with Shields Health Solutions will first focus on four disease states: ...

Hospitals intensely lobbying to stop a bipartisan measure that would trim their Medicare payments are emphasizing how the policy may hobble already struggling rural hospitals. Why it matters: The hospitals’ argument is apparently resonating in the Senate — raising further doubts about whether Congress can overcome pressure from a politically powerful lobby to enact modest Medicare savings. ...