Chris Anderson
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week filed a proposed settlement in the class-action lawsuit, Jimmo vs. Sebelius, which challenged the long-standing "improvement standard", which the lawsuit contends illegally denies Medicare benefits for a range of skilled nursing and home health services.
Showing it is forging ahead to build a healthcare network that will eventually not include UPMC, Highmark earlier this week committed $65 million to acquire Erie, Penn.-based St. Vincent's Health System.
Flexing its muscle with the healthcare buying power of 1.4 million employees, Wal-Mart last week announced it was contracting with six healthcare organizations nationwide to provide its health plan covered employees with no out-of-pocket costs for specific heart, spine and transplant surgeries.
America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have announced they will work together to implement the National Diabetes Prevention Program, a program aimed at preventing type 2 diabetes in people identified as having prediabetes.
UnitedHealth Group announced yesterday that it would pay $4.9 billion to buy a 90 percent stake in Brazilian healthcare company Anil Participacoes S.A., the country's largest private insurer and operator of health clinics serving more than 5 million people.
The Medicare Strike Force unsealed indictments against 91 people in seven different cities who are accused of fraudulent billing to Medicare to the tune of $429.2 million.
Nonprofit health provider and insurance organization HealthPartners and Park Nicollet Health Care announced in late August they would combine operations in a move that would create the second largest healthcare system in Minnesota and one that also operates a 1.5 million-member strong health plan.
While much attention has been paid to the role state health insurance exchanges will play in health reform, a second, quieter movement also created under the Affordable Care Act has been taking place and one that could play as significant a role in the states as the exchanges themselves - the formation of new, non-profit health insurers called Consumer Oriented and Operated Plans (CO-OPs).
Results of a new national survey conducted by Medicare Today and KRC Research shows that 9 in 10 seniors are satisfied with Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage, up from 78 percent satisfaction when the program was first launched.
Blue Shield of California and health technology integrator NantHealth announced Tuesday they will co-develop a clinic-based "continuous learning center" (CLC) that will leverage supercomputing systems, high-speed, secure-fiber networks and fact-based genomic data systems, which will allow Blue Shield's ACO partners to provide personalized, molecular-based medicine.