About health insurance/insurers
Share of Americans with insurance falls despite record Obamacare enrollment “The share of Americans who had health insurance for all or part of the year in 2023 was 92 percent, a slight drop from the 92.1 percent seen in 2022, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Tuesday.
About 26.4 million Americans — 8 percent of the country — did not have insurance at any time last year, according to the report, which officials said was not statistically different than the year before.
But a breakdown of uninsured rates in the report shows a drop in coverage among Americans under 45, while more older Americans enrolled in health insurance that year.”
On the other hand: Almost 50 Million Americans Have Had an Obamacare Plan Since 2014 “Nearly 50 million Americans have been covered by health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces since they opened a decade ago, according to tax data analyzed by the Treasury Department and published on Tuesday.
Federal officials said that the findings represent roughly one in seven U.S. residents, a broad swath of the population that underscores the vast, and seemingly irreversible, reach of the 2010 law.”
About pharma
Optum Rx to pull Humira from some of its preferred formularies: report “UnitedHealth Group's Optum Rx will join its peers in the big three pharmacy benefit managers by pulling Humira from some of its preferred formularies, according to a report from Reuters.
Instead, it will recommend a cheaper biosimilar as the preferred option beginning Jan. 1, 2025, according to the article. Amgen's Amjevita biosimilar will be among the options.
CVS Health's Caremark announced similar steps in April, and Cigna's Express Scripts unit followed suit in August. Prescriptions for Sandoz's Hyrimoz biosimilar spiked after CVS removed Humira from its major commercial formularies, according to a report in Stat.”
About the public’s health
Decades of national suicide prevention policies haven't slowed the deaths “Despite… evolving strategies, from 2001 through 2021 suicide rates increased most years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Provisional data for 2022, the most recent numbers available, shows deaths by suicide grew an additional 3% over the previous year. CDC officials project the final number of suicides in 2022 will be higher.
In the past two decades, suicide rates in rural states such as Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming have been about double those in urban areas, according to the CDC.
Despite those persistently disappointing numbers, mental health experts contend the national strategies aren't the problem. Instead, they argue, the policies — for many reasons —simply aren't being funded, adopted and used. That slow uptake was compounded by the pandemic, which had a broad, negative impact on mental health.”