Cigna Vows To Change Policies On Prior Authorization, Patient Advocacy

Modern Healthcare: Cigna To Reform Prior Authorization, Provider Services In 2025
The Cigna Group will spend up to $150 million to reform its prior authorization, patient advocacy and provider services this year, CEO David Cordani said Thursday. The commitment comes a month after the assassination of a high-profile industry executive sparked loud, public conversations about the worsening value of health insurance. (Tepper, 1/30)

The Washington Post: How Killing Of UnitedHealthcare CEO Sowed Fear For Executives’ Safety
Local police conducted security checks and stood guard at the homes of health-care executives dozens of times in the weeks after UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was killed on Dec. 4 — a sign of the heightened concerns that security professionals say persist after the targeted shooting. In suburban Texas, police arrived at the home of David Joyner, chief executive of CVS, for a “special watch” in the shooting’s immediate aftermath. Later that day, police in Connecticut patrolled the secluded home of Cigna CEO David Cordani. And over the next few days, police officers in Missouri were hired to sit overnight in an unmarked car outside the home of Centene CEO Sarah London. (1/29)

More health industry updates —

Modern Healthcare: CommonSpirit To Extend DEI Programs Despite Federal Pushback
CommonSpirit Health plans to expand its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts despite employers across the country and in all industries backing away from the programs and the Trump administration taking aim at them. The 137-hospital system seeks to bolster its partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine, a historically Black medical school, in part by creating 10 new residency training sites at CommonSpirit hospitals. It also is seeking a chief health equity officer to help lead those efforts, said Dr. Veronica Mallett, chief administrative officer of the More in Common Alliance, a partnership formed by the health system and Morehouse. (DeSilva, 1/30)

The Boston Globe: Steward Demanding Millions From Former Hospitals For Tech Service
Steward Health Care is threatening to cut off critical medical record and billing services it continues to provide to its six former Massachusetts hospitals unless it receives millions of dollars more each month, a move the hospitals say could create wide-scale disruptions and potentially even force some to close. The new owners of those hospitals have been scrambling for nearly a month as a result of the demands, and this week filed motions in Steward’s bankruptcy case demanding the chain adhere to the contract, which covers a range of software and technology services including digital patient records for radiology, laboratory, pathology, microbiology, and pharmacy. (Bartlett, 1/31)

Modern Healthcare: Cardinal Health CEO Jason Hollar Issues Warning On Tariffs
Cardinal Health warned Thursday that if President Donald Trump follows through with threatened tariffs next month, higher prices for some of the company's products will follow. Trump is set to impose a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on goods from China starting Saturday. (Dubinsky, 1/30)

KFF Health News: Most Insurance Covers IUDs. Hers Cost More Than $14,000. 
During her annual OB-GYN visit, Callie Anderson asked about getting off the birth control pill. “We decided the best option for me was an IUD,” she said, referring to an intrauterine device, a long-acting, reversible type of birth control. Anderson, 25, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, asked her doctor how much it might cost. At the time, she was working in a U.S. senator’s local office and was covered under her father’s insurance through a plan offered to retired state police. “She told me that IUDs are almost universally covered under insurance but she would send out the prior authorization anyway,” Anderson said. She said she heard nothing more and assumed that meant it was covered. (Appleby, 1/31)