All employers offering prescription drug benefits to employees are required to provide annual notifications to Medicare-eligible employees and dependents before October 15th, regarding the drug status of their plan(s).
Primary care physicians affiliated with large health systems drive up spending on patient care through increased referrals to specialists, emergency department visits and hospitalizations, per a study led by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Driving the news: The findings in JAMA Health Forum are the latest to challenge claims by the hospital industry that consolidation ...
Much of the growth experienced by Medicare Advantage over the last two decades can be attributed to beneficiaries switching from traditional Medicare to MA, a trend that’s accelerated in recent years, according to a study published today in Health Affairs. “We found that switching from fee-for-service Medicare into MA, particularly by younger and healthier beneficiaries, has driven the increased ...
Laughter has been called “the best medicine” for many decades — and now there’s scientific proof. A study from the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre in Brazil has shown that regular chuckling expands heart tissue and promotes the flow of oxygen in the body, thus reducing the risk of cardiac disease. “Laughter therapy” was also ...
Hospitals are on board with the Biden administration’s increased scrutiny of “inadequate” short-term health plans, and are hoping that the federal government will go further in its crackdown on payers’ “convoluted policies.” In early July, the White House said it was working to reverse a controversial Trump-era rule that expanded the duration of the controversial ...
This is a relatively significant drop from the 2023 affordability percentage, which is 9.12%. The ACA affordability ratio applies to Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), which are subject to the ACA’s employer mandate. ALEs must use the ratio to determine affordability of the health plans offered to eligible full-time employees, in accordance with ACA law.