Payer

There have been rumblings in Mississippi recently about putting up the concept of Medicaid expansion for open debate in a state where current Gov. Tate Reeves has repeatedly ruled such a policy out.

Cigna is negotiating contracts with health systems for 2024 and adding new benefits and international plan options. 

Payers have been subject to price transparency regulations since July 2022, but no comprehensive action or research has taken place since then to assess compliance, according to research published Sept. 19 in Health Affairs.

CMS is auditing Texas HHS to ensure the state is complying with federal requirements amid the Medicaid redeterminations process, the Austin American-Statesman reported Sept. 20.

From UnitedHealth's plans to move its corporate offices to Optum's campus, to a judge denying Prisma's Health's temporary restraining order request against UnitedHealthcare, here are nine headlines about UnitedHealth Group Becker's has reported since Sept. 8. 

Salt Lake City-based Select Health, the non-profit insurance subsidiary of Intermountain Health, is partnering with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. to bring lower cost medication offerings to its members. 

More than 85 percent of the nearly 650,000 Medicare TV ad airings over a nine-week stretch during the 2023 open enrollment period were for Medicare Advantage, according to a Sept. 20 report from KFF.

Around 1 in 5 adults with Medicare reported high healthcare costs in the last year, qualifying them as underinsured, according to a survey from the Commonwealth Fund. 

There's a lack of commercial coverage for digital healthcare services compared to publicly-funded health plans, which is limiting access to care for more than half of the U.S. population, according to new research published by the AMA on Sept. 19.

Elevance Health's pharmacy benefit manager, CarelonRx, is launching a new integrated cost savings program to automatically offer members the lowest price for generic prescription drugs while at their preferred pharmacy.