Payer

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina in Durham removed Asheville, N.C.-based Mission Health System providers from its online directory ahead of a looming Oct. 5 contract deadline, the health system reported.

CMS projects two U.S. counties will have no payers offering coverage on ACA marketplaces in 2018.

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

Minuteman Health, a Boston-based nonprofit health insurer, lacks funds to complete a proposed transition to a for-profit entity and sell insurance on 2018 ACA marketplaces, The Boston Globe reports.

Two of the health insurance industry's biggest names — Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini and Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish — condemned the white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Va., and President Donald Trump's following rhetoric Wednesday. 

New York City-based health plan startup Oscar posted a $57.6 million loss in the first half of fiscal year 2017, narrowing its $83 million loss recorded in the same period a year prior, Bloomberg reports.

Brad Wilson, president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, wrote in a Citizen-Times column Asheville, N.C.-based Mission Health System has "100 percent control over what happens next" in an ongoing reimbursement rate clash.

David Wichmann, president of Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group, will become CEO of the company Sept. 1 after Stephen Hemsley leaves the position.

The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated how terminating the ACA's cost-sharing reduction payments — which help insurers subsidize the cost of coverage for low-income Americans — would affect the federal deficit and the individual health…

Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare uses two types of value-based contracts, but Lee Newcomer, MD, senior vice president of oncology and genetics at the insurer, told AJMC one outperforms the other.