Payer

The following payers made headlines this week, beginning with the most recent.

Baltimore-based CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield renewed its pharmacy benefits management agreement with CVS Caremark, the PBM arm of CVS Health in Woonsocket, R.I.

Norfolk, Va.-based Optima Health will reduce its individual marketplace footprint next year in Virginia, a move possibly leaving 70,000 enrollees without coverage.

Indianapolis-based Anthem said Wednesday it will scale back where it sells its individual marketplace polices to 59 of Kentucky's 120 counties next year, according to a CNBC report.

Individual marketplace health plans with narrow hospital and physician networks offered premiums 16 percent less expensive than plans with broad networks, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs.

Baltimore-based Evergreen Health, one of 23 nonprofit health plans created under the ACA, will be liquidated by the end of September, The Baltimore Sun reports.

Indianapolis-based Anthem continued its 2018 exchange rollback in Missouri where it will pull its individual products from 17 counties, including the city of St. Louis, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report.

Thirty-nine percent of millennials believe it is important an employer offers life insurance, even though the majority plan to marry, have a family and purchase a home one day, a recent Anthem survey found.

All five major commercial payers saw their stock prices rise last week.

HHS announced Thursday that it will cut the ACA's advertising budget by 90 percent in 2018, reducing allocated funds to $10 million, according to Bloomberg.