Payer

UnitedHealth Group plans to invest an initial $50 million to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the health insurance giant said March 26. 

CVS Health-owned Aetna will waive copays and cost-sharing for COVID-19 inpatient hospitalizations, the insurer said March 25.

More health insurance scams and misleading marketing for short-term health plans is cropping up amid the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System and Cigna agreed to extend their contract again as the U.S. deals with a growing COVID-19 outbreak, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Health insurers should direct premium dollars to providers who are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic now, two academics wrote in an op-ed for the Harvard Business Review.

Fitch Ratings revised its stable outlook for the U.S. health insurance industry to negative due to adverse effects from the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Michael Neidorff, the CEO of Centene Corp., took home more than $26 million for the second year in a row, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Humana priced a public offering of $1.1 billion in senior notes, the insurer said March 23.  

Here are six notes on how COVID-19 is affecting health insurers and how they're responding:

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is urging health insurers who employ physicians and nurses to release them from their duties so they can help treat COVID-19 patients, according to Bloomberg.