Read today’s Kaiser Health News
In other news:
31 million Americans borrowed money for health care last year: Poll : More than 31 million Americans borrowed money last year to pay for health care, a new survey found.
Those Americans borrowed about $74 billion, despite most of them have some form of health insurance, the West Health-Gallup survey found.
How Will Trump’s Tariffs Impact Healthcare? The Key Things To Know A simple, but nice, overview of the topic.
About health insurance/insurers
Below are a couple articles about Medicaid that should enlighten what is going on at the federal level to cut costs.
5 Key Facts About Medicaid and Hospitals
More Than 70 Million Americans Are on Medicaid. This Is Where They Live.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Dozens of health systems file 'opt-out' antitrust lawsuits against Blue Cross Blue Shield: Dozens of health systems and other provider groups have filed new antitrust lawsuits against the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and its 33 independent entities, alleging anticompetitive practices that led to suppressed payments to providers.
The lawsuits, filed in March 4 in federal courts in in Pennsylvania, California and Illinois, come after hospitals and other providers opted out of a $2.8 billion class-action settlement reached in October 2024 with BCBS. Physician groups, surgery centers and home health providers have also joined as plaintiffs in the new complaint.
The plaintiffs claim that BCBS companies conspired to divide geographic markets, restrict competition, and fix reimbursement rates, thereby limiting providers' ability to negotiate fair contracts. The complaints allege that BCBS's longstanding territorial agreements prevented the insurers from competing with each other, in turn artificially lowering payments to hospitals and physicians.
About pharma
Novo Nordisk offers Wegovy for less than half the price through new direct-to-consumer pharmacy:
KEY POINTS
Novo Nordisk will offer its weight loss drug Wegovy for less than half of its usual price per month through a new direct-to-consumer online pharmacy.
The cash-pay offering is available to millions of patients without insurance coverage for the blockbuster injection.
The pharmacy, called NovoCare, will allow patients to pay $499 in cash per month for the weekly drug.
Pfizer, BioNTech notch US win—and loss in Germany—amid high-stakes patent fight with Moderna: On Wednesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruled that all challenged claims on two of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine patents are "unpatentable." The news came in the form of two docket updates on the PTAB's website, and the decisions are sealed.
For Moderna, the PTAB decisions likely mark a surprise defeat given that the company had sued Pfizer and BioNTech in federal court in Massachusetts for alleged infringement of three patents in 2022, including the two recently invalidated by the PTAB.
About healthcare IT
5 takeaways from HIMSS '25 FYI
Health AI “Nutrition Label” Advances : CHAI is thrilled to announce a growing movement within the community to move forward deploying CHAI Applied Model Cards (or the recently launched open-source version) moving from public comment and proof of concept to signal an important step for the healthcare ecosystem.
Applied Model Cards, or AI “nutrition labels,” will be used by health systems and solution providers to create a more standard way to present foundational information about AI solutions. Today, health system AI steering committees are frequently left to analyze highly technical materials, or marketing presentations among a wide range of inputs driving a needless complexity in the earliest stages of procurement.