Tag Archives: healthcare

Forbes reports: Voters in Republican-leaning Missouri supported a ballot measure to extend Medicaid benefits to more than 200,000 low-income adults in the latest vote testing the popularity of the Affordable Care Act during the Covid-19 pandemic. The vote by a narrow margin of Missourians to expand Medicaid under the ACA is a political blow to Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who …

Bloomberg Law reports: The Trump administration has finalized a policy that would remove women seeking abortions and LGBT people from the Affordable Care Act’s non-discrimination protections, the HHS announced Friday. The regulation would let health-care workers, hospitals, and insurance companies that receive federal funding refuse to provide or cover services such as abortions or transition-related care. This continues the Trump …

Politico reports: New York City and Long Island hospitals are preparing to resume elective surgeries, though the Cuomo administration has yet to approve the procedures as the coronavirus continues to tear through the region. Hundreds of New York City patients have been trapped for months in surgical limbo by a blanket hold on the procedures. While the term “elective surgeries” …

Axios reports: U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams is asking hospitals to consider stopping elective surgeries as the coronavirus spreads. Some hospitals already had started canceling or postponing elective surgeries, MarketWatch writes. UCSF Health hospitals are postponing up to 7,000 appointments a day. Doctors have noted high risk or elderly patients are currently canceling elective surgeries, such as knee replacements, that …

The Associated Press reports: Researchers on Wednesday reported the largest-ever one-year decline in the U.S. cancer death rate, a drop they credited to advances in lung-tumor treatments. The overall cancer death rate has been falling about 1.5% a year since 1991. It fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017, according to the new American Cancer Society report. That’s the largest drop …

Axios reports: A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is unconstitutional, but ordered a lower court to take a fresh look at how much of the rest of the law should fall along with it. This decision will likely keep the ACA’s protections for pre-existing conditions in legal limbo well past the 2020 …

Gallup Polling reports: More than 13% of American adults — or about 34 million people — report knowing of at least one friend or family member in the past five years who died after not receiving needed medical treatment because they were unable to pay for it, based on a new study by Gallup and West Health. Nonwhites, those in …

The New York Times reports: Bernie Sanders has long wanted to remake the health care system so no one will have to pay directly for medical care again. Now, he also wants to go back and cancel all the medical debts of people who have been billed under the current system. In a plan released Saturday, Mr. Sanders, the Vermont …

Bloomberg reports: A measure of underlying U.S. inflation accelerated by more than forecast to a one-year high in August, signaling inflation was already firming ahead of fresh tariffs on Chinese goods this month that may push prices higher for Americans. The core consumer price index, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.3% from the prior month and was up 2.4% …

The Washington Post reports: A federal judge in Washington ruled late Thursday that the Trump administration’s push to make health insurance plans available outside the Affordable Care Act that avoid the requirements of the health care law was illegal, calling the efforts “clearly an end-run around the ACA.” The 43-page ruling, submitted by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of …

Politico reports: The Trump administration’s surprising move to invalidate Obamacare on Monday came despite the opposition of two key cabinet secretaries: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Attorney General Bill Barr. Driving the dramatic action were the administration’s domestic policy chief, Joe Grogan, and the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, according to …

The Austin Statesman reports: Opening what promises to be one of the most contentious fights of the 2019 legislative session, a Senate committee on Monday approved a bill to give state-licensed professionals — including doctors, lawyers, pharmacists and barbers — broad protection for actions taken according to their religious beliefs. Opponents said the bill, and more than a dozen similar …

The Week reports: A federal judge in Texas ruled Friday night that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, must be “invalidated in whole” because its individual mandate provision is unconstitutional. District Judge Reed O’Connor argued the mandate is “essential to and inseverable from the remainder of the ACA,” and that it cannot “be fairly read as an …

CNBC reports: It’s been a year in the making, but CVS Health finally closed Wednesday on its acquisition of Aetna, creating a new health-care powerhouse. The merger combines CVS’ pharmacies with Aetna’s insurance business, blurring traditionally distinct lines in hopes of lowering costs. CVS also has one of largest pharmacy benefits managers through CVS Caremark and a major Medicare Part …

CNBC reports: The Department of Justice gave conditional approval Wednesday for CVS Health’s acquisition of insurer Aetna, cementing a deal that could transform how U.S. consumers access health care. The two companies cleared their path to approval when Aetna announced Sept. 27 that it reached an agreement to sell its Medicare Part D drug plan business to WellCare Health Plans …

Glorious Leader “wrote” an op-ed for USA Today: Throughout the year, we have seen Democrats across the country uniting around a new legislative proposal that would end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for their entire lives. Dishonestly called “Medicare for All,” the Democratic proposal would establish a government-run, single-payer health care system …

The Associated Press reports: Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist who won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on subatomic particles and coined the phrase “God particle,” died Wednesday at 96. Lederman directed the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago from 1978 to 1989. He’s described as a giant in his field who also had a passion for sharing …

Axios reports: New York Democratic House candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s State of the Union that Medicare for All would act not as “a short-term band-aid,” but as a “generational investment” that would ultimately save the American people money. Ocasio-Cortez and many of the progressive Democratic candidates running in 2018 have made single-payer healthcare, which would cost about $32.6 …

Axios reports: The 64 health care CEOs in the S&P 500 cumulatively made almost $1.7 billion in 2017, according to a new Axios analysis of their compensation. That total is 74% higher than the $949 million that is normally highlighted in company proxy documents. Within the compensation totals, Axios’ Bob Herman calculated the actual realized gains of CEOs’ stock options …

The Tampa Bay Times reports: Gov. Rick Scott would not directly say Wednesday whether he supports a Trump administration move that critics say could wipe away health care protections for pre-existing conditions — a cornerstone of Obamacare — while saying he believes such protections are needed. “I believe that if you have a pre-existing condition, you need to still be …