CMS had requested comments on allowing direct provider contracting (DPC) with Medicare beneficiaries in the form of the alternative payment model. Among major healthcare groups, the response was decidedly mixed, ranging from cautious optimism to telling CMS to focus on other payment reforms.

Calling 2017’s failed efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act “one of the greatest disappointments to conservative and libertarian activists in history,” conservative groups pushed for another attempt at getting rid of the law with a series of principles they want to see enacted in place of the ACA.

The deal will still need to be approved by federal and state regulators, but after delays in contract talks and an unsolicited bid from Brown University, the agreement advances Partners HealthCare’s aim of expanding beyond Massachusetts and matching the increased scale of other Boston-based health systems.

The Congressional Budget Office has scaled back its projections of coverage losses from the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate being repealed, estimating 8.5 million people will be uninsured in 2027 due to the penalty being eliminated by Republicans’ tax legislation beginning next year.

According to the State Journal-Register, the court case rests on whether the 2012 statute makes a clear requirement that the hospitals’ charitable services at least equal the value of what they would otherwise pay in taxes. The plaintiff, Constance Oswald, has argued the law replaces the standard charitable requirement and therefore violates the Illinois Constitution and previous court rulings.

After months of sitting out of the flurry of mergers and acquisitions between insurers and providers, Anthem has made its first move by announcing it will acquire Aspire, the largest non-hospice, community-based palliative care provider in the U.S.

The $20 billion in tax-exempt bonds not-for-profit hospitals sell on average every year can lead to $300 million going to banks and law firms handling debt deals—with those costs potentially encouraging hospitals to raise prices even as they’re exempt from paying taxes to their communities.

It marks the not-for-profit WEA Trust’s first entry into the private employer insurance market, having offered group coverage for Wisconsin state employees since its founding in 1970.