Tufts Health Plan — the Bay State’s third-largest health insurer — has filed plans to offer health insurance in the Rhode Island marketplace.
THP said Thursday that it filed an application to offer insurance in Rhode Island with the state’s Department of Business Regulations, which is similar to the Massachusetts Division of Insurance.
Tufts CEO James Roosevelt [...]
Health care reform is on many minds as employers are paying higher premiums and employees are paying higher deductibles. Some would argue for market-based reforms with no government intervention such that weaker, inefficient and consumer-despised plans will fail and only cost-effective, consumer-friendly plans will prevail. Others will push for some sort of government-mandated reform, either [...]
Murphy, a veteran of the health care benefits industry, succeeds George Wheeler, who resigned about two months ago.
Based in Kansas City, Coventry Health Care of Kansas covers the national health insurer’s operations throughout Kansas and western Missouri.
Murphy joins Coventry from Mercy Health Plans of Missouri, where he served most recently as CEO.
“We are pleased to [...]
Here’s what’s not in dispute: The United States spends 16 percent of its national income on health care, more than any other country in the world. In return, we get lower life expectancy than most other Western countries, uneven care, and enormous anxiety about how to pay for it.
Who’s to blame? Not the hospitals and [...]
Operating locally under the Unicare name, Wellpoint said customer information in several states, including Illinois, was exposed in the last year because two computer servers maintained by a vendor “were not properly secured for a period of time.” The insurer declined to name the vendor.Wellpoint, the nation’s largest health insurer, with 35 million subscribers that [...]
TRENTON, N.J. - Insurance companies are taking a harder look at advanced medical scans like CT scans, citing spiraling costs and safety concerns. And some doctors agree there’s emerging evidence that these scans are being over-prescribed.
“Costs are soaring in this area, quality concerns are mounting and safety concerns are mounting,” said Karen Ignagni, chief executive [...]
Health insurers have begun “taking a harder look at advanced medical scans, like CT scans,” because of cost and safety concerns, and some physicians “agree there’s emerging evidence that these scans are being over-prescribed,” the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to the AP/Chronicle, health insurers have begun to require more preauthorizations for such medical scans [...]
“We have rather modest sales expectations for Simcor … just $70 million this year and $275 million in 2009,” said Phil Nalbone, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, in a report issued last week following Simcor’s approval by the FDA. Although [...]
Because the acupuncture patients were compared with a control group who received no therapy, rather than a sham, or fake, version of the treatment, the placebo effect could have played a role, Dr Claudia M Witt of Charite University Medical Centre in Berlin and her colleagues acknowledge.
Nevertheless, our study showed that acupuncture was beneficial for [...]
TRENTON, N.J. - The country’s biggest program to pay doctors extra for top-notch, comprehensive care, part of a growing national movement to hold down medical spending by preventing mistakes and complications, is expanding , geographically and in what it tackles.
Bridges to Excellence, a nonprofit group, gives doctors annual payments , $50 to $200 per participating [...]
