Several GOP senators introduced a new bill to protect people with pre-existing conditions yesterday, including several senators who are up for re-election next year.
What's new: The bill is an enhanced version of one introduced by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) last year; unlike last year's, it requires insurance companies to cover treatment of an enrollee's pre-existing conditions.
Sen. Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan would drastically change not only how health care is paid for, but who ultimately pays for it.
Between the lines: While the wealthy and the poor usually pay the same premium for today's employer-based insurance, Sanders' plan would beef up insurance coverage for everyone and pay for it by increasing taxes disproportionately on the wealthy.
Centene's pending acquisition of WellCare Health Plans, a deal valued at $17.3 billion including debt, would create a health insurance behemoth with almost $100 billion of revenue — nearly all of which comes from taxpayer-subsidized health care programs.
The big picture: The industry has never been more consolidated. And this deal, being reviewed by states and the Department of Justice, raises specific antitrust concerns in Medicaid, the main line of business for both companies.
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family — both of which are facing legal questions about their involvement in the opioid epidemic — made donations to Tufts University's medical school that may have helped advance their business interests, Stat News reports.
Details: Tufts, for example, allowed a high-ranking Purdue executive who said in 2003 that OxyContin wasn't addictive to lecture in the pain program and receive the title of adjunct associate professor.
Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" push has upended Democratic politics almost as thoroughly as it would upend the health care system.
Why it matters: The coverage most of us are used to — private insurance through the workplace — would change or even disappear under Medicare for All. The only question Democrats are really debating is how far to go, and how quickly.
