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Insurers SCAN Group and CareOregon would form HealthRight, covering Medicare and Medicaid enrollees. Two nonprofit health plans focused on government-backed coverage are planning to combine in a deal that aims to create a sizable new player in the rapidly growing business of managed Medicare and Medicaid. SCAN Group, based in Long Beach, Calif., and CareOregon, […]

CALIFORNIA Plaintiff whose insurer delayed surgery is awarded $14 million over opioid dependency   Health Net was ordered to pay $14.4 million in damages after an L.A. County jury found it had delayed or denied care without proper cause. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times) BY CHRISTIAN MARTINEZSTAFF WRITER  DEC. 15, 2022 5:30 AM PT

As Americans are overwhelmed with medical bills, patient financing is now a multibillion-dollar business, with private equity and big banks lined up to cash in when patients and their families can’t pay for care.

United States. The ALS community rejoiced; the drug’s authorization was described as a “long-sought victory for patients.” But the next day, the price of the medicine was revealed: $158,000 a year. This was far higher than what the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent nonprofit that analyzes health care costs, had estimated would be a reasonable price, which

BY CARMEN CARTAGENA AUG. 24, 2022 3:45 PM PT Vote Yes on Proposition 29 on the Nov. 8 ballot would make California dialysis clinics have certain reporting requirements, ownership disclosures and at least one physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant on-site while patients are being treated. Here, two essays argue for and against the ballot

September 28, 20225:01 AM ET PROSPER, Texas — Almost everything about the opening of the 2019 Prosper High School Eagles’ football season was big. The game in this Dallas-Fort Worth suburb began with fireworks and a four-airplane flyover. A trained eagle soared over the field. And some 12,000 fans filled the team’s new stadium, a

BY BERNARD J. WOLFSON KAISER HEALTH NEWS Almost 2 million of California’s poorest and most medically fragile residents may have to switch health insurers as a result of a new strategy by the state to improve care in its Medicaid program. A first-ever statewide contracting competition to participate in the program, known as Medi-Cal, required commercial

Like the insurance industry, the value-based profit industry hovers over doctors and patients and seeks to influence doctor-patient decision-making, and in the process diverts resources away from medical care.

By ZEKE MILLER and CARLA K. JOHNSON Associated Press SEPT. 12, 2022 4:33 PM PT BOSTON — President Biden on Monday urged Americans to come together for a new “national purpose” — his administration’s effort to end cancer “as we know it.” At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Biden channeled JFK’s famed moonshot speech 60 years ago,

Despite being a top spender on health care, the United States is an outlier among its peers on life expectancy. It sits well in the bottom half of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of several dozen mostly high-income nations. FULL ARTICLE