UnitedHealth’s Latest Transaction Raises Antitrust Concerns
UnitedHealth Group’s deal to acquire Change Healthcare Inc. will receive extra scrutiny from the Dept. of Justice, according to a recent filing. Regulators’ decision regarding the deal could have significant imp...
With Pandemic’s End in View, Insurers Rethink Workplaces
With COVID-19 vaccination becoming increasingly widespread, businesses of all types are starting to plan for what their workplaces — both remote and office-based — will look like in the “new normal” created ...
Kidney Failure Patients Drive Up Individual Market Spending
When the Affordable Care Act banned individual market insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher rates, it created a new option for patients with end-stage renal di...
Tech Experts: Interoperability Rule Is Opportunity for Insurers
Payers should look at the looming interoperability mandate as a chance to gain a lasting advantage over their competitors, according to two health care information technology (IT) experts.
In a March 26 webinar h...
How Would a Public Option or a Capped Rate Policy Impact Private Insurance Markets?
by Jinghong Chen
Introducing a public option or a capped rate policy — both of which would limit the amount that commercial insurers reimburse providers — into the nongroup or both the nongroup and group market...
News Briefs
✦ Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota President and CEO Craig Samitt, M.D., will retire on May 3, the insurer said in a March 31 press release. Kathleen Blatz, who has served on the Blues plan’s Board of Tru...
Even for Amazon, Differentiation Is Key to Telehealth Market
The new landscape for telehealth is revealing itself as the COVID-19 pandemic gradually winds down. Existing players are striving to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market, and Amazon.com, Inc. i...
ACA Exchange Insurers Could Be Gaming MLR Rebate System
Health insurers on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges are consistently overestimating the amount they spend on enrollee benefits as part of their medical loss ratio (MLR) reporting, resulting in “hundreds of ...
Bundled Payment Program for Employer Plans Reduces Costs
A bundled payment program run by San Francisco-based digital health company Carrum Health resulted in an average per-episode savings of more than $16,000 per orthopedic or surgical procedure performed by a provider ...
Medicare Advantage Startup Alignment Joins IPO Trend
Orange, Calif.-based Alignment Healthcare, Inc. just became the third startup insurer in recent months to go public. Banking on the strong value proposition of Medicare Advantage, Alignment said it already has a “...