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.

Four of the five major health insurers in the U.S. are involved in major mergers and acquisitions discussed over the past few months. The lone exception has been Anthem, which may put the company in a stronger position, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is fighting claims from fired VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD, that the agency is moving toward privatizing veterans’ healthcare, issuing a press release calling such talk “completely false and a red herring designed to distract and avoid honest debate on the real issues."

A new report from IQVIA has collected information on the largest accountable care organizations (ACOs) in the country based on the number of participating facilities, along with portions of organizational and professional rosters as well as the largest organizations in four of the ACO models offered by CMS.

In Democrat-dominated California, an intraparty fight is brewing over how to remake the state’s healthcare system. In one corner, advocates are trying to achieve universal healthcare by expanding the Affordable Care Act’s gains in insurance coverage. In the other, there are diehard supporters of moving to a single-payer system.

In its final report on the 2018 open enrollment period on the Affordable Care Act (AC) exchanges, CMS said 11.8 million people selected or were re-enrolled in a plan. While the final tally combining enrollment from the federal and state exchanges represents a 3 percent decline from the prior year, supporters of the ACA painted it as a positive, considering cuts in outreach and advertising and the push to repeal the law by the Trump administration.

Every year, physician offices may deal with as much as $54 billion in revenue being challenged by insurers, with fee-for-service (FFS) Medicaid being “the most challenging type” of payer to bill, according to a study published in Health Affairs.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed legislation into law to allow health plans that don’t comply with Affordable Care Act regulations with a new kind of strategy: Defining some insurance plans as something other than health insurance.