Ballad Health is suing national insurance group United Healthcare, alleging that United systematically underpaid or failed to pay the hospital system for care provided to patients in United's Medicare Advantage program. The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Tennessee, claims United underpaid Ballad by more than $65 million over the past five years. It alleges four counts of breach of contract and one count of fraud and seeks both compensatory and punitive damages in amounts 'to be proven at trial.' Ballad Health said it will not renew its Medicare Advantage contract with UnitedHealth when it expires on June 30, 2027. More than two-thirds of the region’s Medicare patients use the Medicare Advantage program, and the majority of those get their insurance through United.
A group of front-line House Republicans on Tuesday called on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to 'immediately' address the expiring enhanced ObamaCare tax credits once the government shutdown ends. Led by Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), 13 lawmakers told Johnson that millions of their constituents would face a massive spike in health premiums without an extension of the subsidies before their expiration at the end of the year.
The Congressional Budget Office has revised its forecast showing the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act will cost taxpayers as much as $8.8 billion — up from earlier estimates of $4.9 billion — over 10 years thanks to provisions that will exempt or delay certain drugs from Medicare pricing negotiations. The update, which was attributed to the added expense of exempting three drugs for which Medicare has spent great sums of money, was quickly seized upon by patient advocates and three leading congressional Democrats as evidence of a 'sweetheart' deal that the White House and Republican lawmakers made with the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of seniors.
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are quietly ramping up talks within their senior ranks and with White House officials over how to structure and advance a potential extension of key Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies before the end of the year, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the conversations. One option under serious consideration is, once the government shutdown ends, attaching a revamped subsidy framework to a small bipartisan package of full-year funding bills or a long-term stopgap running through early next year, the people said. GOP leaders have been encouraged as some of their party's most conservative members warm up to potentially passing an extension — albeit with major provisos.
Across the country, hospitals are vanishing, and a new wave of Medicaid cuts could accelerate the collapse. President Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill slashes nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid funding over the next decade. The administration says this cuts wasteful spending and will create a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals. But many health experts say that's not nearly enough. Already, nearly 100 rural hospitals have closed or eliminated inpatient services in the last decade, threatening healthcare access to some of the more than 16 million people living in rural communities who rely on Medicaid.
The Trump administration is making Luigi Mangione "a pawn to further its political agenda" and uttering or posting statements about him that are prejudicing the accused killer's prospects at a fair trial, his attorneys argued Friday in a new court filing that asked a federal judge to either dismiss the indictment or take the death penalty off the table. Federal prosecutors said President Donald Trump's social media posts calling Mangione "a pure assassin," and subsequent reposts by Justice Department officials, did not prejudice Mangione "because the statements were made by persons not associated with this matter." The defense said the government can't make that claim because of Trump's unprecedented intervention in Justice Department matters.