Optum Rx — which includes the PBM of healthcare conglomerate UnitedHealth Group — is dropping annual reauthorization requirements for 80 drugs, which will eliminate more than 10% of overall pharmacy prior authorizations.
Idahoans are increasingly aware that Idaho ranks last in the nation in physicians per capita, and that our acute and growing shortage of physicians and limited access to medical care leads to sicker and less healthy populations. Today, 43 of 44 Idaho counties are designated health professions shortage areas.
Purdue Pharma asked a bankruptcy judge late Tuesday to consider the latest version of its plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, a deal that would have members of the Sackler family who own the company pay up to $7 billion. The filing is a milestone in a tumultuous legal saga that has gone on for more than five years.
The White House is elevating an ally of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to implement the Trump administration's plan to address chronic illness. Entrepreneur and author Calley Means will be a White House adviser and "special government employee," according to two people familiar with the appointment. It's the same classification that has allowed tech billionaire Elon Musk to retain his private-sector roles even as he tried to transform the federal bureaucracy.
A partnership between AARP, the top interest group in the United States dedicated to the plight of seniors, is facing growing scrutiny over its partnership with UnitedHealthcare as the healthcare giant faces a growing number of controversies. "AARP now makes over a billion dollars a year in corporate royalties, more than triple what they make in membership dues," American Commitment President Phil Kerpen told Fox News Digital. "The vast majority of those royalties come from the country's largest insurance company, UnitedHealthGroup, via a skim of 5% of the monthly premiums in the AARP-branded UnitedHealth insurance products. AARP's lobbying work always advances the interests of UnitedHealth rather than seniors. Seniors, for instance, overwhelmingly opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, but UnitedHealth loved its price controls and supersized Obamacare subsidies, so AARP went all out for it." AARP began a partnership with UnitedHealth in 1997 where AARP offers its nearly 38 million members UnitedHealth Medicare-related products, with AARP branding in what Forbes reported amounted to a "marketing coup."
With Prospect in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Taylor Hospital in Delaware County in danger of closing down, some are asking why the Delco Foundation — created with cash from the hospital sale — isn't doing more to help. Meanwhile, the charitable foundation has been donating to unrelated causes like arts and theater, as well as efforts to increase "ethnically and culturally diverse foods."