CMS has proposed expanding supplemental benefits in Medicare Advantage plans to include any benefit that “improves or maintains health,” particularly for the chronically ill population, the agency announced Jan. 30. MA plans will be able to more freely offer benefits such as meals and home modifications to better serve members with certain conditions.

The 2.3 percent medical device tax, originally implemented as a piece of the Affordable Care Act, is currently suspended until 2020. Could 2019 be the year it gets repealed for good?

The FDA announced that it approved 106 novel medical devices in 2018, surpassing the previous record of 98 set just one year prior. Nine devices also received the agency’s Breakthrough Device Designation.

Sky-high medical bills have forced many individuals to turn to crowdsourcing to pay what they owe, according to the CEO of GoFundMe, who spoke on CBS MoneyWatch.

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not make a significant impact on breast cancer care at a safety net hospital in California, according to findings published in the American Journal of Surgery. The authors noted, however, that more patients did have health insurance in the two years following implementation.

In 2018, the FDA approved a total of 106 new medical devices including medical imaging technologies—surpassing their record in 2017 of 99 novel device approvals, according to a recent statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, and Jeff Shuren, MD, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, a New Hampshire-based health system that serves 1.9 million people across New England, and GraniteOne Health, a network of New Hampshire hospitals, have signed a letter of intent to merge.

Mandating pharmaceutical companies to disclose drug prices as part of Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising (DTCPA) may reduce consumer interest in high-priced drugs. But the inclusion of modifiers indicating consumers will have zero out-of-pocket costs weakened the finding, according to the results of a behavioral experiment published in JAMA Internal Medicine.