Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Baylor Medicine Wins Possibly First Covid Insurance Case, Against Lloyds
Reuters: Baylor Medicine Gets Rare Win In Covid Coverage Case Against Lloyd's
Baylor College of Medicine has broken the insurance industry’s string of wins in Covid-related business income-interruption cases with a $12 million jury verdict against several Lloyd’s of London syndicates in state court in Houston, Texas. Thousands of such cases have been filed against all-risk commercial property insurers across the country, but only a handful have gone to trial. Baylor's case is believed to be the first to result in a plaintiff’s verdict. (Grzincic, 9/6)
The CVS-Signify deal will face challenges —
Reuters: CVS Deal For Signify Seen Facing Tough Antitrust Review
CVS Health Corp's (CVS.N) plan to buy healthcare services company Signify Health for about $8 billion will face a tough U.S. antitrust review even though the two companies do not compete directly in any markets, three experts said Tuesday. High and rising healthcare prices, which have put even older drugs like insulin out of the reach of poorer people, have bedeviled U.S. presidential administrations determined to slow the rising costs. The Federal Trade Commission has long emphasized health deals in its antitrust reviews, and has continued that under new Chair Lina Khan. (Bartz, 9/6)
Modern Healthcare: After Signify Health, CVS Still Looking For More Deals
By leaning into healthcare services, the company aims to grow its adjusted earnings by $900 million over the next two years. To do that, CVS Health will need to purchase a primary care provider, Chief Financial Officer Shawn Guertin told analysts Tuesday on a call about the Signify Health deal. (Tepper and Berryman, 9/6)
In other health care industry news —
Modern Healthcare: Physician Compensation Trends Could Face Years Of Uncertainty
The clinical shutdowns experienced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 upended traditional productivity-based physician payment models. The same year, the federal government announced significant changes to the physician fee schedule, raising reimbursement for those providing office visits while decreasing reimbursement for others. Patient volume has begun to rebound in the meantime, driving up demand for doctors. (Christ, 9/6)
Axios: Travel Nurses Start To Leave The Field After Pandemic Hiring Boom
Nurses lured by the promise of big paychecks for travel gigs during the pandemic are starting to follow other nurses in leaving the profession, NBC News reports. (Reed, 9/6)
Modern Healthcare: Private Equity Investors Sharpen Focus On Specialty Healthcare
More than 740 deals occurred in healthcare services in the first half of the year, down 20% from the same period in 2021 but an increase of 16% from 2019, according to an Oliver Wyman report. Private equity deals continue to play a significant role in healthcare, even as inflation and higher costs change the landscape. (Hudson, 9/6)
KHN: Organ Transplants Are Up, But The Agency In Charge Is Under Fire
For the past decade, Precious McCowan’s life has revolved around organ transplants. She’s a doctoral candidate studying human behavior in Dallas who has survived two kidney transplants. And in the midst of her end-stage renal disease, her 2-year-old son died. She chose to donate his organs in hopes they would save a life. Now her kidney function is failing again, and she’s facing the possibility of needing a third transplant. But the process of finding that lifesaving organ is rife with problems. Roughly 5,000 patients a year are dying on the waitlist — even as perfectly good donated organs end up in the trash. The agency that oversees donations and transplants is under scrutiny for how many organs are going to waste. The agency, the United Network for Organ Sharing, received a bipartisan tongue-lashing at a recent congressional hearing. (Farmer, 9/7)
KHN: ‘Science Friday’ And KHN: Examining Medicine’s Definition Of Death Informs The Abortion Debate
There is a widespread consensus in medicine on the definition of death, and those standards have been codified into laws in nearly every U.S. state. There’s no such medical consensus on the answer to another big question: When does human life begin? With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that question has big implications for health care. (Ashford-Grooms, 9/7)
