The cost of surge preparation - setting up field hospitals, doubling the number of intensive care rooms, purchasing protective equipment - dealt a blow to hospital bottom lines, while the ban on all non-emergency procedures cut revenues in half. The measures drove hospitals in California close to bankruptcy, costing them as much as $14 billion and forcing them to lay off of thousands of health care workers.
The White House is renewing a push to end “surprise” medical bills — possibly as part of the next coronavirus rescue package — in a bid to deliver on protecting insured patients from sometimes staggering costs of emergency or out-of-network care.
Six Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers have sued CVS Health, alleging the pharmacy chain overcharged them based on "artificially inflated prices" for generic drugs and concealed the true cash prices of those drugs. The big picture: CVS has faced legal scrutiny over its cash discount programs since 2015, and this lawsuit adds big names to a mounting problem.
Two big health-care buyouts are shaping up to be among the worst-performing private-equity investments in recent years. The coronavirus pandemic is only the latest reason why. Physician-staffing firms Envision Healthcare Corp. and TeamHealth Holdings Inc., whose emergency-room workers are ubiquitous throughout the country, were purchased by KKR & Co. and Blackstone Group Inc. in 2018 and 2017 for roughly $6 billion and $3 billion, respectively.
106 healthcare deals in April lowest of any month in 2020. Merger activity could rise later this year, analysts say. Healthcare deals declined in April as the coronavirus pandemic has forced investors to delay or reconsider planned mergers and acquisitions.
More than $1 billion has made its way to Louisiana health care facilities in payments doled out since April to offset the cost of restricting elective procedures and caring for a high number of coronavirus patients. The largest chunk of the payouts, part of relief aid from the federal CARES Act, went to 16 hospitals in and around New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette.