Prices across the healthcare sector rose 2.2 percent year-over-year in March 2018, the highest annual growth rate recorded by Altarum since January 2012, with the report warning rapid price growth is likely to continue.

The Rush hospital system based in Chicago has ended plans to acquire Little Company of Mary of Evergreen Park, Illinois, which would’ve merged 12 facilities with Rush University Medical Center and its 2,500-student health sciences college.

The report from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) examined claims for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) from 2009 to 2015 covered by individual market, employer-sponsored or Medicare Advantage plans. It found total spending per MS patient rose from around $23,900 to $39,628 by 2015. During the same time period, the share of spending spent towards injectable and oral disease modifying therapies (DMTs) rose from 39 percent to 53 percent.

In a final rule that CMS said would help customers “suffering from high Obamacare premiums,” the agency’s 2019 rule for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges would give states more power on how plans cover required benefits and widen exemptions to the law’s individual mandate in the final year customers can be penalized for not having ACA-compliant insurance.

Insurance companies are beginning to decide what they’ll charge and whether to participate on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges for 2019, with Matt Eyles, the next CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), saying it’s “not a pretty picture right now” for individual market insurers.

For all the attention given to forays from Amazon, Apple and Walmart into the healthcare space, traditional providers are more worried about the continued expansion of UnitedHealthGroup’s Optum into clinical care, according to an article in Bloomberg.

A new bill introduced in California’s state legislature would put the state in charge of setting rates for medical services covered by private insurers, setting up a battle between consumer groups and the lobbyists for the healthcare industry.

In fiscal year 2017, HHS and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered nearly $2.6 billion from settlements and judgments in healthcare fraud cases, with $1.4 billion being transferred to the Medicare Trust Funds.