The Trump administration has issued final rules on how states should ensure that millions of Medicaid enrollees prove they’re working or completing other activities, such as job training, volunteering, or being enrolled in an educational program. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the rules on June 1. That deadline was set last year…
FDA approval of Icotyde covers the treatment of adults and adolescents with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. This once-daily pill, developed by partners Johnson & Johnson and Protagonist Therapeutics, offers an easier dosing option compared to injectables and is projected to become a blockbuster seller across several immunological indications. The post J&J Gets FDA Nod for Plaque…
Ratnakar Lavu, Elevance Health’s chief digital information officer, said the company is using AI to streamline approvals, claims processing and member support while keeping denials under human review. The post How Elevance Health Is — and Isn’t — Using AI appeared first on MedCity News.
According to a Health Affairs Scholar paper by Geoffrey Joyce out this month, the answer is ‘yes’. He writes: Most PBM contracts tie their compensation to a percentage of a drug’s list price, creating a financial incentive to favor high-cost, high-rebate drugs on plan formularies at the expense of lower-cost generics and biosimilars. Furthermore, the…
In January, during a congressional hearing on his way to becoming secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got basic details wrong about Medicaid — a program he now oversees. He said that Medicaid is fully funded by the federal government (it’s not) and that many enrollees are unsatisfied…
Jefferson’s Anna Flattau, M.D., M.S., says the NCQA program focuses not only on the content of the metrics but also on data reporting challenges
About one in eight adults say that they are currently taking a GLP-1 drug either to lose weight or treat a chronic condition, an increase from 18 months ago, though the high costs of the medications remain a concern. Few adults think it is likely their prescription costs will go down as a result of…
How top-to-bottom collaboration can alleviate hurdles and help increase equitable access to the most effective treatments for all cancer patients. The post Closing the Gap: Advancing Precision Oncology Through Education and Collaboration appeared first on MedCity News.
To better understand how states are preparing for Medicaid work requirements, states were asked to discuss anticipated challenges to implementing work requirements by the end of 2026, including related system changes and data matching.
That is according to the 2024 national health expenditure data published in Health Affairs last week (Hartman et al. 2026). Here is the abstract: Health care spending in the US reached $5.3 trillion and increased 7.2 percent in 2024, similar to growth of 7.4 percent in 2023, as increased demand for health care influenced this two-year trend. As…