May 29– UPMC is slated to get more than $1 billion in aid from the federal government as Pennsylvania's largest hospital system confronts volume plunging by 70% during the pandemic-spurred shutdown. UPMC ended the first three months of this year with a $41 million total operating loss– compared to a $44 million operating gain by the same time last year.
Read moreAmerica’s Health Insurance Plans is the latest organization to cancel events due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic.
Surprise medical billing is a source of anger and frustration to consumers. Now, two House committees are releasing their proposals to protect consumers from the practice.
Creating an effective benefits communication and enrollment strategy isn’t something you toss together a few weeks before the annual enrollment begins. It takes knowledge of employee behavior as well as your clients’ company demographics and culture, plus time to map out key steps. That’s why it’s a good idea to start now to ensure your fall enrollments deliver optimal results.
The first-quarter 2020 earnings of publicly traded U.S. health insurance companies show that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been less severe than anticipated, according to a new AM Best commentary.
Texas hospitals are suing patients for unpaid medical bills, a practice that has continued even as the coronavirus pandemic sends unemployment skyrocketing and spurred the state Supreme Court to pause debt collections and eviction proceedings earlier this year. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster because of COVID-19 in mid-March, including more…
“The insurance industry will jump all over it,” Ortiz y Pino, D- Albuquerque, said of the report. Deborah Armstrong, D- Albuquerque, chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee. The preliminary report from Rockville, Md.- based KNG Health Consulting LLC, London- based IHS Markit and Albuquerque analyst Lee Reynis said the proposal would reduce the state's…
Only about half of Americans say they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if the scientists working furiously to create one succeed, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’ s surprisingly low considering the effort going into the global race for a vaccine against the coronavirus.
President Trump took action Tuesday to limit out-of-pocket expenses for some seniors who take insulin for diabetes, his latest in a series of moves this month to protect older Americans as polls show his support in the key voting group slipping during the coronavirus crisis. The new health care program will allow certain private Medicare plans to cap seniors'…
That's because Congress mandated there would be no copays and no out-of-pocket costs for patients. When testing kits were still scarce, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, fired up its clinical labs. In late March, Congress passed two laws, the.
Altheia Franklin, who lives near Houston, lost her medical plan after being laid off from a job at an upscale retirement community, as a counselor to seniors making the move. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that nearly 27 million workers and family members had lost job-based health coverage as of the start of this month, a number now likely…
May 21– More than 123,000 state residents have signed up for insurance coverage through Covered California as part of a special enrollment period launched March 20 amid a surge in cases of COVID-19. “Whether Californians have lost job-based health insurance coverage, or they were uninsured when this pandemic began, our doors are wide open to help them get…
Minnesota- based insurers UnitedHealth Group and HealthPartners have each introduced programs to guide businesses through safe reopening as the nation tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Each program relies on guidelines provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with UnitedHealth Group's being a more generalized free…
Joe Biden made his first virtual Wisconsin appearance Wednesday, calling for more accessible health care and increased testing and contact tracing to combat coronavirus. Biden so far has been endorsed in Wisconsin by Kind, D- La Crosse, as well as U.S. Sen. Wednesday's discussion, streamed on YouTube, touched on issues impacting rural communities across…
DES MOINES, Iowa- Strong concern about a second wave of coronavirus infections is reinforcing widespread opposition among Americans to reopening public places, a new poll finds, even as many state leaders step up efforts to return to life before the pandemic. It has been eroded over the past month by a widening partisan divide, with Democrats more cautious and…
U.S. single premium buy-out sales totaled $4.5 billion in the first quarter, according to the Secure Retirement Institute U.S. Group Annuity Risk Transfer Sales Survey. This represents the second-highest first-quarter sales results and only the second time first-quarter sales have exceeded $4 billion.
–Cigna and MultiCare Health System have reached a multi-year agreement that ensures access to quality care for Cigna customers at predictable, affordable rates. We look forward to expanding and strengthening the relationship, “said Bill Robertson, president and CEO, MultiCare Health System. About Cigna Cigna Corporation is a global health service company…
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act is an enormous growth opportunity for benefits brokers, said the head of Prudential’s group insurance business. Morning Consult research said nearly half of Americans have heard very little or nothing about the new leave benefit and only 13% said they had heard a lot about it.
May 14– JEFFERSON CITY– A plan to use federal funding to offset the cost of COVID-19 tests for Missouri residents advanced in the Senate on Thursday. During the debate on the measure, some Republicans objected to the potential costs of such a program. Dan Hegeman, R- Cosby, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, amended the plan to add the $150 limit.
According to the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. “Health plans are widely perceived as lacking a customer-centric mindset and not putting the best interests of their members first,” said James Beem, managing director, global healthcare intelligence at J.D. Power.“ The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified these shortcomings, but they are not new. This lack of a customer-centric…
Anna Lee of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Lee discussed the results in an American Society of Clinical Oncology news conference as part of its annual meeting later this month. Twenty-seven states and Washington, D.C., did that, and 20 million Americans gained coverage that way.
Early in the Coronavirus crisis, health insurance providers expressed our commitment to help the health care system meet the challenges…
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (May 12, 2020) – For U.S. workers, musculoskeletal issues are a bigger driver of long-term absence from work today…
A recent healthinsurance.com survey finds nearly 1 in 4 know someone who has lost their health insurance during this pandemic, but 68% say they don’t know what their health insurance options are if they lost their health insurance.
A lot of inconvenient truths have emerged from the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, and one of the most obvious is our nation's health care inequities. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, propose a single-payer, Medicare For All program, but the pandemic has exposed the gross unfairness of our current health care structure, the employer-based, private health…
Bernie Sanders is no longer running for president, but one of his ideas, “Medicare for All,” is more critical than ever. The United States, with the world's largest economy, needs to civilize itself by extending this right to all, instead of prioritizing the financial health of Big Pharma and Wall Street. Bernie Sanders popularized Medicare for All, a policy he has been…
In a press call with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called on the Trump administration to withdraw its lawsuit and urged states to expand Medicaid as Americans combat the coronavirus pandemic.
President Trump selected Judge Walker, 37, to fill a vacancy on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal about six months after the judge left academia to join a federal district court in Kentucky. The committee Democrats quizzed Judge Walker on his views on health care and the coronavirus crisis, as well as on his experience or lack thereof. Dianne Feinstein of…
The newly unemployed will be looking for health insurance — and not finding it in some states.
–Cigna and Banner Health have reached a long-term agreement that ensures Cigna customers will have access to quality care at Banner hospitals at predictable, affordable rates. “This new agreement represents a great step forward in health care for all of the people we serve– the Arizona employers and their employees and families who pay for care,” said Kim Shepard,…
The Affordable Care Act has cost taxpayers a bundle, and now the Supreme Court says they are on the hook for billions of dollars in additional payments to insurers even though Congress never appropriated the money. Congress created the scheme to lure insurers to offer policies in the insurance exchanges, promising to make up for losses resulting from…
The New York Department of Financial Services is requiring state-regulated health insurers to waive out-of-pocket costs, including cost-sharing, deductibles, copayments and coinsurance, for in-network mental health services for New York’s frontline essential workers during COVID-19.
May 3– BOSTON– The state's health insurance exchange is seeing a surge of new members amid the coronavirus pandemic. “We've seen a lot of new enrollments and also a lot of activity among existing enrollees, updating their income information,” said Audrey Morse Gasteier, chief of policy and strategy at the Health Connector. The Health Connector has extended a…
“I think it's going to be horrendous, and I worry about that in terms of New York state in my parochial area of insurance,” said state Sen. Neil Breslin, the Insurance Committee chairman. One projection estimates that the pandemic will cost health insurance companies between $34 billion and $251 billion this year.
May 2– An estimated 230,000 low-income adults could gain health care coverage if Missouri voters approve a Medicaid program expansion that the state's Republican-led Legislature has repeatedly blocked.? Advocates of the expansion turned in petitions Friday to the Missouri Secretary of State's Office in Jefferson City seeking to put a proposed…
Mass layoffs are pushing many Americans into an unfamiliar role: shopping for health insurance that isn’ t offered by an employer. A swirl of confusing terms and options await inexperienced shoppers as they sort health insurance plans. And there’ s probably no one from human resources available to quickly answer questions.
A new customer survey by Pivot Health reveals 26% of short-term medical plan purchasers were long-time uninsured, while 29% had recently lost their insurance due to unemployment.
Anthem and Humana became on Wednesday the latest health insurers to reaffirm their 2020 earnings forecasts, even as the COVID-19 pandemic has made outlooks in other sectors essentially worthless. The pandemic has shut down large portions of the economy and forced many companies to abandon their forecasts.
Now that we’ve all at least had some opportunity to get our feet back under us, a new set of questions arise: In this “new normal,” how do we, as advisors, continue to bring value to our clients?
The White House, governors, members of congress and state lawmakers are all getting pressured by business leaders who want to be shielded from potential lawsuits brought by sick workers. The issue has vaulted to the forefront of the debate in Congress over the next, and fifth, coronavirus relief bill that’ s still in its infancy. The safety of returning workers has…
Sixty-eight percent of consumers are concerned about their ability to pay for general medical expenses this year, according to a recent survey commissioned by AccessOne. Three-quarters of respondents are concerned that they will lose their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
A new MetLife study showed that more than half of U.S. employees are worried about their financial health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Apr. 28– Grammar mavens can debate whether this constitutes irony or it's just a coincidence, but in the midst of a pandemic that already claimed 55,000 lives in the United States, the Supreme Court is yet again ruling on challenges to Obamacare. In a decision issued Monday, the court slapped down an attempt by congressional Republicans to shortchange insurance…
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that insurance companies can collect $12 billion from the federal government to cover their losses in the early years of the health care law championed by President Barack Obama. The payments were designed to protect insurers from big losses.
For Hermosa Beach, Calif., resident David Roe, who is battling Stage 4 colon cancer and requires immediate surgery, the answer from his insurer, UnitedHealthcare, was a resounding no. UnitedHealthcare wanted the operation performed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where the insurer could save a buck using in-network medical resources.
–Florida Blue today announced Truli for Health, an affiliate of Florida Blue and an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, as a new health maintenance organization designed to provide Florida’s small and medium-sized employers with affordable, quality health insurance solutions for their employees. Small and medium-sized…
By Sandra McCoy and Pia MacDonald/ The Washington Post. Covid-19 has killed more than 40,000 people in the United States so far; fewer than the 100,000 deaths originally projected. Hospital systems outside New York, New Jersey and Louisiana have mostly avoided being overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.
The United States has the highest number of known coronavirus cases in the world, with over 834,000 infected and at least 45,000 deaths so far, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Unlike many other industrialized nations, the United States lacks universal health care, leaving most Americans to depend on insurance from their employer.
*COVID-19 case count rises to 10. *Two more COVID-19 cases confirmed. Stay-at-home order extended until May 1.
After Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential run, Joe Biden waited barely 24 hours before racing to bolster his progressive bona fides. Biden said on Thursday he plans to make 60- year-olds eligible for Medicare, while erasing undergraduate student debt for middle-class borrowers. In 1970, life expectancy in the United States was 70.8.
–Milliman, Inc., a premier global consulting and actuarial firm, today announced the latest results of its new Milliman Pension Buyout Index. As the Pension Risk Transfer market continues to grow, it has become increasingly important to monitor the annuity market for plan sponsors that are considering transferring retiree pension obligations to an insurer.
Personal finance resource MoneyRates.com just published survey results showing that retirement dreams are among the coronavirus pandemic’s victims. Of people in the 45-to-64 age group, who have assessed recent investment performance, 59% report retirement plan losses as of the end of March 2020.
Although the individual health insurance market has stabilized recently, it will feel the impact of COVID-19 in regard to the cost of testing, changes in non-COVID-related health care services and the impact of the recession, according to researchers.
Combined spending in the first quarter totaled nearly $34.1 billion, based on disclosed prices, down 47% compared with the previous quarter's $63.4 billion. It was 77% lower than the $150.3 billion reported in the same quarter in 2019, according to HealthCareMandA.com. The Long-Term Care sector once again ranked the busiest, although deal volume slipped 17%…
The 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan, by Robert Higgs, provides an extensive historical review and analysis behind this paradigm for the so-called “ratchet effect” behind ever-increasing government power that lives long beyond the periodic crises that help fuel it. Recently, former AEI president Christopher DeMuth suggested, in last Saturday's Wall Street…
Ron DeSantis on Friday heralded the opening of two walk-thru testing centers in Broward County and indicated that ones could open in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. The centers, in Fort Lauderdale's historically black Sistrunk neighborhood and one in Pompano Beach where 21 percent of people live in poverty, are a way to reach people who don't have cars so…
New research shows certain insurance brokers refused to sell what they said were riskier, non-Affordable Care Act-compliant products to consumers, including…
According to the LIMRA survey, a large majority of carriers are making exceptions to their usual method of determining benefit eligibility in order to extend coverage for employees affected by COVID-19.
But she wants to see him veer a bit to the left first on issues like health care, immigration and Puerto Rico. “I would love to see the vice president clarify and deepen his policy stances on certain issues, “Ocasio-Cortez told Politico.” Along with Sanders, Elizabeth Warren endorsed Biden on Wednesday and President Barack Obama got behind him a day earlier.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (April 15, 2020) — U.S. adults are having trouble concentrating on work and it’s costing employers productivity and…
With unemployment numbers reaching record highs, people are not only losing their jobs, but their health insurance along with it. Marrying to get access to their new spouse’s health insurance is rapidly becoming an option for many people.
By Jared Bernstein/ Special to The Washington Post. To their credit, once they grasped the urgency of the economic crisis, Congress and the White House acted quickly on such measures. But while the bills thus far included useful health measures— including $4 billion for the Centers for Disease Control, insurance coverage with no cost-sharing for coronavirus…
Nearly 540,000 North Carolinians have filed claims for unemployment-insurance benefits in less than a month, a somber and record ripple effect from the COVID-19 pandemic. If national trends hold true in North Carolina, about 20% of newly unemployed individuals fit into one of those categories, according to an April 2 report from the Economic Policy…
