Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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The new drug deals move Medicaid and cash-register prices, and analysts say private insurance and Medicare bills barely budge.
The Trump administration’s latest round of most-favored-nation drug pricing deals, announced August 31, 2026, brought the number of participating manufacturers to 26. The agreements lower what state Medicaid programs pay for brand-name drugs from those companies, and they lower list prices for patients buying directly through the federal TrumpRx website. But read the fine print…
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A flood policy already in force keeps paying through its expiration date.
Congress’s flood insurance deadline gets most of the attention, but a narrower, more reassuring rule sits underneath it. If a homeowner already has a National Flood Insurance Program policy in force, that policy does not disappear the moment the federal government’s authority to sell new coverage runs out. It keeps paying covered claims and staying…
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Medicaid’s new work test will cover about 18.5 million people, and the budget office expects roughly 5.2 million of them to lose coverage.
Starting January 1, 2027, millions of adults who get Medicaid through the program’s expansion group will have to prove they are working, training, volunteering or in school for at least 80 hours a month to keep their coverage. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the requirement will touch about 18.5 million people nationwide, and…
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About 20 marketplace insurers are asking for 2027 premium increases above 20 percent, and states set the final rates before November 1.
Roughly 20 health insurers that sell Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans asked state regulators for 2027 premium increases topping 20 percent, part of a wider round of filings that mostly proposed double-digit hikes for the second year in a row. The requests were among the earliest signals of what marketplace shoppers can expect to pay…
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Twenty-six drugmakers have now agreed to charge Medicaid the lower prices Europe pays, covering 89 percent of the branded drug market.
The Trump administration says 26 pharmaceutical manufacturers have now agreed to sell drugs to state Medicaid programs at the same reduced prices those companies already charge buyers in other wealthy countries. The latest round, announced August 31, 2026, added nine more drugmakers to the list and pushed the share of the U.S. branded prescription drug…
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Medicare barred 11 medical-supply companies over $3.4 billion in suspect billing, including charges filed for patients who had already died.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said this week it is cutting off future Medicare Advantage and Part D payments to 11 medical equipment suppliers tied to more than $3.4 billion in suspected fraudulent billing. The agency says all 11 companies billed for equipment supposedly provided to Medicare beneficiaries who had already died, among…
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Federal flood insurance loses the authority to write new policies at 11:59 p.m. on September 30, and realtors count about 40,000 home closings a month riding on it.
The federal government’s authority to sell and renew flood insurance policies is due to expire at 11:59 p.m. on September 30, 2026, unless Congress passes another extension before then. That deadline sits at the center of a housing market that leans heavily on the National Flood Insurance Program, the federally backed system that insures roughly…
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Prosecutors say a Utah woman housed homeless Medicaid patients in unsupervised homes and billed $4 million for therapy
A federal grand jury in Salt Lake City indicted a Salt Lake City woman on health care fraud charges last month, accusing her of billing Utah Medicaid more than $4 million for substance-abuse therapy that prosecutors say was often never provided at all. Jazzamin Tashay Clark, 43, allegedly recruited people experiencing homelessness into “sober living”…
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Federal enforcement of the hospital price posting rules began in April
Hospitals were required to start following a new, stricter set of federal price-posting rules on January 1 of this year. But the government didn’t start enforcing those specific new requirements right away. Enforcement of the updated rules didn’t begin until three months later, on April 1, and that gap was deliberate. A Rule Change Tracing…
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The recalled cleaners were sold only in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and a refund means registering the bottle
Clorox Manufacturing Company of Puerto Rico recalled about 6.3 million bottles of scented Mistolin and Lestoil cleaners on September 3, 2026, and the company’s own recall notice makes a point that’s easy to miss in a headline built around the Clorox name: these products were never distributed outside Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.…