President Donald Trump has quietly commuted the sentence of a Florida health care executive convicted of leading a Medicare fraud scheme to pilfer $205 million from the program through false means — even as the GOP claims that their massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs are aimed at weeding out 'waste, fraud and abuse.'
Donald Trump publicly resisted Medicaid cuts — until his budget director, Russell Vought, convinced the president that reductions to heath coverage for low-income people, embedded in the Republican tax bill, were just weeding out fraud and abuse. Trump has readily adopted that rhetoric, repeatedly declaring that his signature bill contains 'no cuts' to the social safety program, even as the non-partisan CBO estimates at least 7.6 million people would become uninsured if the bill takes effect. Republicans are betting they can win the semantic — and thus the political — battle over the future of Medicaid.
UnitedHealth Group's new CEO told investors that the company is reevaluating how it tallies Medicare Advantage patients' diagnoses for reimbursement purposes, an issue currently under investigation by DOJ. Stephen Hemsley's remarks during the company's annual shareholder meeting this week signal a noteworthy shift: UnitedHealth is now publicly acknowledging potential issues with how it assesses the health of its Medicare Advantage members.
Drug price middlemen are going to court to fight a first-in-the-nation effort to police their ownership of retail pharmacies as more state legislatures and Congress crank up scrutiny of their influence on the cost of medicines.
A new coalition called Keep Americans Covered is seeking to dial up pressure on lawmakers to continue the funding, launching a new ad in a seven-figure campaign. It features a woman named Jessica, a restaurant manager in Arizona whose daughter has a chronic illness. She says the ACA tax credits "have been particularly helpful for our family" to help afford the coverage they need. “We need Congress to take action now. It’s vital for us,” she says in the ad. “We need these health care tax credits passed today.”
The Senate this week is taking up the massive budget package containing President Trump's second-term agenda, a measure that squeaked through the House with a one-vote margin, solely with Republican votes. Its path through the Senate seems destined to be similarly narrow, with the package almost certain to be revised, since parts of it are opposed by a handful of GOP senators critical to its passage.