House to vote Thursday on GOP Obamacare repeal bill

WASHINGTON — After wooing GOP moderates with extra money for patients with pre-existing conditions, House Republicans said they would vote Thursday on a revised bill to repeal and replace Obamacare — setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown on one of President Trump’s top priorities. House GOP leaders announced the vote Wednesday night after weeks of […]

Aetna, UnitedHealth show increasing appetite for value-based care contracts

The biggest health insurers are moving quickly towards value-based care arrangements, their recent earnings reports show. While Aetna has long-held a goal to reach 75 to 80 percent of its medical spend in value-based relationships by 2020, Aetna’s medical spend is now 45 percent tied to value, CEO Mark Bertolini said during last week’s fourth […]

From ‘Repeal’ to ‘Repair’: Campaign Talk on Health Law Meets Reality

Asked at a confirmation hearing two weeks ago if he was working with President Trump on a secret plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Representative Tom Price, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, smiled broadly and answered: “It’s true that he said that, yes.” The committee room, filled with health […]

Judge, Citing Harm to Customers, Blocks $48 Billion Anthem-Cigna Merger

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked a proposed $48 billion merger of Anthem and Cigna, derailing another effort by top health insurers to reshape the industry by combining. The ruling, by Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, came two weeks after another federal judge blocked a proposed […]

NY exchange scores F’s on some consumer features

The New York State of Health exchange lacks many of the features that other public Obamacare marketplaces, including Healthcare.gov, have added to make it easier for users to compare plans, according to a report released Tuesday by the Clear Choices Campaign, an advocacy group that seeks greater transparency in health care quality and pricing. Rather […]

Repeal and Compete

Modern conservatism, at least in its pre-Donald Trump incarnation, evolved to believe in a marriage of Edmund Burke and Milton Friedman, in which the wisdom of tradition and the wisdom of free markets were complementary ideas. Both, in their different ways, delivered a kind of bottom-up democratic wisdom — the first through the cumulative experiments […]