About 60% of the 173 million people enrolled in private health coverage used at least one of the Affordable Care Act’s no-cost preventive services in 2018 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, about 100 million people receive preventive services with no patient cost sharing in a typical year.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest, low-income Californians who enrolled in Medi-Cal — California’s version of the government-funded Medicaid health insurance program — have been able to keep their coverage without having to prove every year that they still qualified for it. That’s because the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which President Trump signed ...

The Biden administration finalized a proposal to raise Medicare Advantage payments by 3.32% in 2024, slightly above the 1% raise that it proposed. The final payment rule released Friday comes after an intense lobbying campaign from insurers who claimed that the original advance notice released in February would amount to a cut to plans. The ...

The two political parties cannot seem to agree on many things these days, but members of the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday agreed on a common enemy: Pharmacy benefit managers. This was the second committee hearing in two months to discuss PBM business practices. In February, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation approved the Pharmacy ...

Beginning Monday, California will no longer require masks for COVID-19 prevention in health care settings — leaving isolation for those who test positive as the last vestige of the state’s formerly mandatory COVID rules. California lifted its COVID-19 state of emergency in February, nearly three years after it was put in place, and President Biden indicated last week he won’t ...

Hospitals routinely charge less to patients who pay in cash and seek to recoup the difference from commercially insured patients in markets where they can exert leverage, according to a new Johns Hopkins study published in Health Affairs. Why it matters: The analysis for 70 services — drawn from data reported by 2,379 hospitals as of September 2022 ...