Shares of Quorum Health plummeted 14% Wednesday after the owner of 36 mostly rural hospitals reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2016 losses that were bigger than what Wall Street had expected. Quorum lost $348 million in 2016 and had to write off millions of dollars in patient bills that couldn't be collected.
Quorum's struggles may not be surprising: Community Health Systems spun out Quorum last year as a way to get rid of some rural and mid-size hospitals that were dragging the company down. Community Health Systems isn't faring a lot better.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a members-only meeting tomorrow amid discussions on how to move forward after the Trumpcare collapse. A committee aide tells Axios they won't necessarily be talking about Obamacare repeal, but instead touch on "a wide variety" of issues including "SCHIP reauthorization, FDA user fee reauthorization, and combating the opioid crisis."
Pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers are pointing fingers at each other to explain why patients are spending more out of their own wallets for their prescription drugs. The latest battle revolves around the list prices of drugs.
President Trump held a listening session on the nation's opioid epidemic at the White House this morning, tapping New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — whom Trump branded an "immediate endorser" of his campaign — as the head of an initiative to tackle drug addiction. Also present were Cabinet members Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, and John Kelly, as well as a broader group of politicians and experts that included New York Yankees legend Mariano Rivera.
Trump pledged to "[bring] together people terribly affected by this terrible epidemic" and promised an attendee whose son died of an overdose that "he will not have died in vain."
Christie branded addiction "a disease that can be treated," comparing it with cancer and diabetes while noting that "people are afraid and ashamed to talk about drug addiction."
There's a lot of polling coming out right now on Trump's approval ratings, healthcare, and Russian interference. We've reviewed it. Highlights below:
Trump approval: Trump's approval rating has continued to tick downward, according to Gallup data, and hit its lowest rating of 35% on Wednesday. And for the first time in Politico/Morning Consult's polling since Trump's inauguration, more respondents disapprove of Trump's job performance than approve.
Healthcare: Just over a third of Politico/Morning Consult respondents want the GOP to repeal Obamacare, while more than half want the party to move on to other things.
Russian interference: The majority of CBS respondents believe Russia interfered in the election process with the intention of helping Trump win, but only a small fraction of Republicans agree with that assessment.
When Nancy Pelosi walked into her office dining room yesterday, CNBC's John Harwood called out, "Look, it's the big loser from the healthcare debate." Harwood was mocking President Trump's unconvincing claim that Democratic leaders Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were the real losers of last week's Republican healthcare fiasco.
Pelosi laughed at Harwood's joke. She said she'd read a newspaper headline that called Trump the "closer" but the 'c' was obscured by the fold. Over a lunch of chicken and avocado sandwiches, with about a dozen reporters, her mood ranged from happy to jubilant.
How seriously should you take House Republicans' talk yesterday that they're not giving up on Obamacare repeal, and they're going to keep working until they have enough votes to pass it? You should believe them when they say they'd like to do it. But it's OK not to change your lunch plans for the next few weeks.
Barclay Berdan barely started his tenure as CEO of Texas Health Resources when the $4.3 billion hospital system became the notorious site of the U.S. Ebola outbreak in 2014. The health care reform debate has made that incident seem like it happened decades ago.
Berdan sat down with me this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Healthcare Executives to talk about Trumpcare, Medicaid and some of the different business ventures Texas Health Resources is trying. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.
The FDA approved Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sanofi SA's new eczema drug Dupixent for sale today with the companies setting the list price at $37,000 annually, per the WSJ.
The companies made a point to negotiate with pharmacy-benefit managers and non-profit officials to set an acceptable price to ensure that patients can receive the drug with the fewest restrictions possible. Even still, CVS Health Corp. told the WSJ that the drug "will be expensive" for patients.
Still, the pricing is a genuine compromise that shows Regeneron and Sanofi put some thought into their decision given the political dynamics and negative headlines that have recently plagued high drug pricing.
Here's the map of the uninsured rates for counties throughout the United States for 2015, the second year when the Affordable Care Act was in full effect. The Census Bureau announced today that the uninsured rate dropped in 71.3 percent of the nation's counties between 2014 and 2015. Guessing we're going to hear about this in the next round of the repeal debate ...
Phoenix-based Banner Health knew it was taking on an unprofitable venture when it acquired the University of Arizona Medical Center in 2015 — including its health insurance plans. Some problems still exist or have gotten worse.
The $7.6 billion Banner improved its profitability in 2016 with a 2.1% operating margin, up from 1.8% in 2015, according to audited financials released Tuesday. But that's mostly because Banner's hospitals and clinics made up for the shortfall in the health insurance operations, which were part of the University of Arizona deal. The operating losses at Banner's health plans quadrupled from 2015 to 2016, totaling $154 million. It's yet another example of a health system struggling to own an insurance company.
There's an Obamacare angle: Banner's losses from its commercial health plans were 27 times higher in 2016. The system blamed the collapse of Arizona's Obamacare marketplace, where most insurers have exited and "resulted in significant numbers of high-cost enrollees migrating to Banner narrow-network products in 2016," executives wrote to bondholders.
House Republican leaders revealed their plan this morning for bringing Obamacare repeal back to life: Keep talking about it until they get more votes. "We all share these goals, and we're just going to have to figure out how to get it done," House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after a meeting with the GOP conference. He said that "some of those who were in the no camp expressed a willingness to keep talking." House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he came out of the meeting with "more confidence than ever that we will get it done."
Between the lines: Their comments confirmed that this is mostly an exercise in showing their supporters that they're not giving up — and maybe giving conservative or moderate holdouts some time to reconsider their position. Ryan said he would still want to use the budget reconciliation bill as the vehicle, but wouldn't commit to a timeline, "because we want to get it right."
The Senate shrugs: "If they get 216 votes, that's great, we'll take it up over here," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told Caitlin Owens.
At the GOP House Leadership press conference this morning, Paul Ryan told reporters that Republicans are "united around our agenda" and "not going to retrench into our corners" even after last week's failure to repeal Obamacare.
Obamacare repeal and replacement is "too important" for "an artificial timeline," but Republicans will "work together and listen together until [they] get this right," Ryan said.
Ryan also said that House Intel Chair Devin Nunes should not recuse himself from the ongoing Russia investigation and added that he doesn't know Nunes' source.
