MHE March 2021

Screening and some care have been canceled or deferred. Will more illness and deaths result?

Governments are the only buyers so far, and the amounts they are paying varies.

Devices take some of the pressure off a healthcare system coping with COVID-19.

Companies could be hit with a double peak of claims for COVID-19 patients and care that people put off because of the pandemic.

Federal assistance programs and telehealth have helped, but they haven’t made up for the shortfall from lack of services.

Healthcare has successfully pivoted and collaborated. But COVID-19 also has spotlighted flaws in how hospitals are financed and the weakness of the public health infrastructure.

Will emerging variants make the leading vaccines less protective?

Aetna got out of the ACA marketplace business in 2018. Now CVS Health, which completed its acquisition of the insurance company in late 2018, is hopping back in and will brand the policies as a “CVS Health-Aetna” product for the first time.

Taming U.S. healthcare spending is a huge, daunting task that has met with little success. But some Yale professors are proposing to take a bite-sized approach as a way to change that.

The Trump administration didn’t get very far with healthcare reform; the ACA was neither repealed nor replaced. But former CMS Administrator Seema Verma made a run at revamping Medicaid by using Section 1115 waivers to add working requirements. Now the Biden administration is taking steps to stop the requirements before they get started.

Collaboration between health plans and providers leads to better quality, an improved experience and lower costs.