Healthcare Finance Staff
People in much of Minnesota, northwestern Pennsylvania and Tucson, Ariz., are getting the best bargains from the health care law's new insurance marketplaces: premiums half the price or less than what insurers in the country's most expensive places are charging.
The Obama Administration's latest delays and policy tweaks have credit rating analysts getting more worried about insurers, even as large companies like Aetna and Cigna insist that insurance exchanges are only minor parts of their business strategies.
Most uninsured Latinos are eligible for tax credits or Medicaid, but insurers may need to rethink their outreach approaches, and absent federal immigration reform, states may have to help fill gaps for those who are both uninsured and undocumented.
Between 20 years researching leukemia at Harvard and four years directing Merck's oncology program, Gary Gilliland, MD, has seen a lot of ups and even more downs. Now, as the head of precision medicine at Penn, he's fairly optimistic about emerging therapies like immunologics, but just as concerned about how to pay for them.
Young adults were a rising portion of those who signed up for coverage in January, accounting for 27 percent of enrollees compared to 24 percent in the previous three months, in the latest report on insurance exchange enrollment.
Optum Labs, the research center founded by UnitedHealth and Mayo Clinic, has added seven new health organizations, which will join in on data mining research to find innovative ways to improve quality and reduce costs.
Researchers have found that a value-based insurance design test increased medication adherence, but it failed to be cost neutral, suggesting that the business case for VBID may be more convincing over several years or with higher risk patients.
Amid Medicaid expansion and a coming state capitated payment system, a Chicago non-profit health plan created by providers two decades ago is expanding its network and eying growth for the next decade.
Mid-size businesses with 50 to 99 employees will have another year – until 2016 – to provide health insurance to their full-time workers, the second delay associated with the employer mandate by the Obama Administration.
Bernard Tyson, Kaiser Permanente's new CEO and chairman, came to his new roles at the start of what most say will be a challenging year as healthcare reform gears up.