Payer

Physicians generally say health insurance companies interfere with their ability to provide high quality care, according to a poll by ReviveHealth. The factor that influences this most is the amount of coverage plans provide and the number of claims denials,…

In the patient-payer-provider triad, payers are not fully capitalizing on their relationships, according to Rena Xu, MD, a resident physician at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and contributor to The New Yorker.

The following insurers made headlines this week. They are listed below, beginning with the most recent.

Health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act could be making enrollees pay additional money for specialist care, according to a study published in JAMA.

After agreeing to a class-action lawsuit settlement, one of California's largest health insurers, Anthem Blue Cross, will refund $8.3 million to approximately 50,000 policyholders, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

A tenth nonprofit insurance cooperative formed under the Affordable Care Act is going to close, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

In early October, Blue Shield of California said it is booting Stanford (Calif.) Hospital and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Lucile Packard Children's Hospital out of its individual and family plan networks next year due to high costs. That decision isn't sitting…

The six-hospital system Legacy Health and Springfield, Ore.-based PacificSource Health Plans have signed a letter of intent to create a new partnership in which Legacy Health will purchase a 50 percent stake in the payer.

Anthem, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee in Wisconsin, will stop offering individual plans on the health exchange marketplace in three Wisconsin counties beginning in January, according to WAOW.com.

Stockholders in both Los Angeles-based Health Net and St. Louis-based Centene voted to approve the proposed merger between the two organizations.