Subsidies. Love ’em or hate them, they dominated the news during the Affordable Care Act’s sign-up season, and their reduction is now hitting many enrollees in the pocketbook. While lawmakers continue to disagree on a way forward, and the politics of affordability keeps the issue front and center, it would be understandable to think these…
Tamar Abrams had a lousy couple of years in 2022 and ’23. Both her parents died; a relationship ended; she retired from communications consulting. She moved from Arlington, Virginia, to Warren, Rhode Island, where she knew all of two people. “I was kind of a mess,” recalled Abrams, 69. Trying to cope, “I was eating…
By DAVID SHAYWITZ “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen,” said Lenin, probably never. It’s also a remarkably apt characterization of the last year in generative AI (genAI) — the last week in particular — which has seen the AI landscape shift so dramatically that even skeptics are now updating…
The Host Mary Agnes Carey KFF Health News @maryagnescarey Read Mary Agnes’ stories. The midterm elections are months away, yet changes at the Department of Health and Human Services suggest the Trump administration is focusing on how to win on health care, which remains a top concern for voters. Facing growing concern about the administration’s…
Less than 36 hours before his wife was scheduled to undergo major surgery, New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber got an unwelcome letter from his family’s insurance plan: It was denying prior authorization for the procedure. With no time to lodge an appeal, Lieber and his wife decided to proceed and bet on…
More than 10,000 people have enrolled in Nevada’s new public option health plans, which debuted last fall with the expectation that they would bring lower prices to the health insurance market. Those preliminary numbers from the open enrollment period that ended in January are less than a third of what state officials had projected. Nevada…
After years of legislative debate, Congress has formally codified PBM reform into federal statute. Tucked within the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (H.R. 7148), signed on February 3, 2026 are structural mandates that will reshape Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) operations in Medicare Part D and the commercial sector by 2028. The legislation targets three primary pillars:…
Wyoming officials say they have a plan to make five years of upcoming grants from a new $50 billion federal rural health program last “forever.” The state could tackle rural health issues long into the future by investing its awards from the Rural Health Transformation Program, the director of Wyoming’s health department, Stefan Johansson, told…
It’s the rare policy question that unites Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the Democratic-led Maryland government against President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California: How should health insurers use AI? Regulating artificial intelligence, especially its use by health insurers, is becoming a politically divisive topic, and it’s scrambling traditional partisan lines….