- Health Insurers Plan Big Obamacare Rate Hikes—And They Blame Trump Los Angeles Times by Noam Levey—Health insurers across the country are making plans to dramatically raise Obamacare premiums or exit marketplaces amid growing exasperation with the Trump administration's erratic management, inconsistent guidance and seeming lack of understanding of basic health care issues. At the same time, state insurance regulators—both Democrat and Republican—have increasingly concluded they cannot count on the Trump administration to help them ensure that consumers will have access to a health plan next year.
- Health Care IPOs Weighed Down by Obamacare Uncertainty MarketWatch by Caitlin Huston—The number of health care initial public offerings are at their lowest level since 2012, which experts attribute, in part, to the uncertain nature of health care under the Trump administration. Kathy Smith, principal at Renaissance Capital, which invests in IPOs, said part of the reason for the decline comes down to perceived risk in the space. "Interest in health care IPOs has declined since then due to uncertainties surrounding the possibility of regulating pharma prices and the repeal of the [Affordable Care Act] ," Smith said.
- A Whistle-Blower Tells of Health Insurers Bilking Medicare New York Times by Mary Williams Walsh—When Medicare was facing an impossible $13 trillion funding gap, Congress opted for a bold fix: It handed over part of the program to insurance companies, expecting them to provide better care at a lower cost. The new program was named Medicare Advantage. Nearly 15 years later, a third of all Americans who receive some form of Medicare have chosen the insurer-provided version, which, by most accounts, has been a success. But now a whistle-blower, a former well-placed official at UnitedHealth Group, asserts that the big insurance companies have been systematically bilking Medicare Advantage for years, reaping billions of taxpayer dollars from the program by gaming the payment system.