Cigna Corp. reported Thursday second-quarter profit and revenue that topped forecasts, amid strength in the health insurers pharmacy business, while growth in customer relationships slowed from the previous quarter. The stock fell 2.8% in premarket trading. Net income fell to $1.47 billion, or $4.25 a share, from $1.75 billion, or $4.73 a share, in the year-ago period.
Rising health insurance costs are leading many more small employers to shift away from Affordable Care Act coverage for their workers, according to a study released Wednesday on the impact of Covid-19 and recent policy changes on small business.
For the better part of a decade, a time bomb has been ticking at Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente — an accumulation of allegations that the giant health plan systematically defrauded Medicare by overstating the severity of its patients’ medical conditions. On July 30, the bomb detonated. That’s when the Department of Justice joined six lawsuits filed by Kaiser employees since 2013 asserting that they witnessed the alleged fraud.
Tensions are near a breaking point between the White House and Gov. Brian Kemp over Kemp’s plan to block Georgians’ access to the Affordable Care Act’s federal health insurance shopping website, healthcare.gov.
Individual rates for health insurance sold in Pennsylvania’s online marketplace will rise an average 2%, and small group coverage rates will increase an average of 4.8% in 2022, if approved by regulators in September.
According to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, cancer deaths, especially pancreatic cancer, were lower in states that participated in early Medicaid expansion as part of the Affordable Care Act, compared to states that did not. In the study lead by Duke Cancer Institute, researchers found that California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Washington and Washington, D.C., saw rates of cancer deaths decline by 7.7%.