News Briefs
✦ During the 2020 open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, approximately 11.4 million people selected or were automatically reenrolled in plans across all 50 states and the District o...
Facing Pandemic, Insurers May Benefit From Diversification
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to ramp up in the United States, projections about how it will affect various business sectors — including managed care — are evolving rapidly. But one concept that industry anal...
From Conference Room to Living Room: Insurers Go Remote
Like scores of other businesses across the country, a major part of health insurers’ response to the coronavirus outbreak has involved transitioning employees from working in an office to working remotely. However...
Estimates of COVID-19 Costs Emerge Amid Uncertainty
In recent days, actuaries and economists have begun to estimate how much it will cost to care for those stricken by COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Since the crisis is still at an early stage,...
CMS Approves Scores of Emergency Medicaid Waivers
CMS has now approved 29 Medicaid Section 1135 waivers in an effort to give states’ Medicaid programs additional flexibility to augment their COVID-19 response by relaxing certain federal requirements.
Observers...
U.S. Health Spending Could Climb to 19.7% of GDP by 2028
Total U.S. health care spending is projected to increase at an annual average rate of 5.4% over the next decade, reaching $6.2 trillion by 2028, according to CMS. Health expenditures’ share of Gross Domestic Produ...
News Briefs
✦ The U.S. Senate on March 25 passed a $2 trillion stimulus package aiming to lessen the economic blow of the COVID-19 pandemic on Americans and businesses — including the health care industry. America’s Healt...
Virus-Fueled Recession May Drive More to ACA Plans, Medicaid
The COVID-19 pandemic is shaping up to be a stress-test for the post-Affordable Care Act insurance market, which has not yet faced a recession. The crisis has already caused mass layoffs, especially in the restauran...
With Closed Network, UnitedHealth Goes ‘Back to the Future’
UnitedHealthcare is testing a new product in southern California using a closed network that relies on the company’s own OptumCare medical group. The product, which the insurer first rolled out in mid-2019, boasts...
Spread of COVID-19 Sparks Worry About Treatment Costs
Though many health insurers have removed cost barriers related to testing patients for the new coronavirus that’s sweeping the globe (HPW 3/16/20, p. 1), they largely haven’t pledged to waive out-of-pocket costs...