News Briefs

✦ Nearly 940,000 people have signed up for health insurance plans through HealthCare.gov during the pandemic-related special enrollment period as of May 6, according to HHS. Also, nearly 2 million people who are already enrolled in individual market plans “have returned to the Marketplace and reduced their monthly premiums by over 40 percent, from $100 to $57, on average after premium tax credits.” HHS’s press release also noted that thanks to the premium tax credit expansion enacted in the American Rescue Plan, “the average monthly premium fell over 25 percent, from $117 for those enrolling from February 15 through March 31 to $86 for those enrolling in April.” Read more at https://bit.ly/3vLIMd1.

✦ For the first time, a majority of physicians do not work in private practice, according to a survey from the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA, the largest professional association for physicians in the U.S., has tracked the number of physicians working in physician-owned medical practices since 2012. The 2020 version of the survey found that 49.1% of physicians work in physician-owned practices, down from 54% in 2018. “There are several contributing factors to the ongoing shifts in practice size and ownership that include mergers and acquisitions, practice closures, physician job changes, and the different practice settings chosen by younger physicians compared to those of retiring physicians. To what extent the COVID-19 pandemic was a contributing factor in the larger than usual changes between 2018 and 2020 is not clear,” said AMA President Susan R. Bailey, M.D. Read more at https://bit.ly/3h416dj.

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