Insurance giant WellPoint is buying a private healthcare exchange to compete with the government, Bloomberg reports.

Four major health insurers have agreed to provide their claims data on a regular basis to academic researchers, The New York Times reports, "an unusual agreement that they say will open a window onto the rising costs of health care."

Politifact rates Republican attacks against the federal health law's generous insurance package "mostly false" because health plans already usually cover a host of conditions that patients may never need. "It is misleading to imply that health insurance policies are purchased a la carte, that such purchasing would reduce costs to consumers, and that the 'essential benefits package' represents a departure from current group plans," the nonpartisan website concludes.

The Republican presidential candidates are staying clear of a $7.5 trillion unfunded entitlement, The Associated Press points out: President George W. Bush's Medicare prescription drug program.

HHS has given Michigan the green light to lower premiums for its high-risk pool by 10 percent, reports Modern Healthcare (subscription required).

A new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine offers clues to the FDA's plans for getting biosimilars on the market, writes Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

Australia's public hospitals have seen a sharp drop in malpractice suits after adopting "open disclosure" policies toward patients and systemized analysis of their mistakes, The Age reports.

President Obama outlined $320 billion in healthcare savings Monday that made a lot of people unhappy. But there were some sighs of relief in advocacy circles at what didn’t make the cut — namely, increasing the Medicare eligibility age. Overall, the merits of the proposal sparked plenty of controversy.

Healthwatch’s Sam Baker has more details about how healthcare stakeholders responded to the president’s plans.

State of panic: Obama’s plan balances steep Medicaid cuts with separate policies that states support. But that won’t necessarily be enough to allay states’ concerns about Medicaid cuts. Obama proposed accelerating a policy that allows states to seek a waiver from healthcare reform and design their own systems instead. While states want that flexibility, they say it won’t do anything to lessen the burden they’d face from Obama’s Medicaid proposals.

A senior administration official acknowledged during a conference call with reporters that the state flexibility provision is mostly a policy change, not an effort to cut federal spending. That could limit its appeal to the supercommittee.

There’s something for just about everyone to dislike in the $320 billion of healthcare savings President Obama proposed Monday.

Liberals on and off Capitol Hill are hammering Obama's proposal to trim Medicare and Medicaid benefits to cut the deficit.

Drug benefit managers will save consumers and taxpayers $2 trillion over the next decade, says a new report requested by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

The report comes just as the House Judiciary Committee prepares to scrutinize a pending merger between two of the biggest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions. The merger has drawn concerns in Congress over consolidation in the healthcare industry, but the new report may counterbalance that by playing up benefit managers' savings to the cash-strapped government.

The report by Visante concludes that average PBM savings between 2012 and 2021 should amount to 35 percent of drug spending without such management tools; commercial plan sponsors and their members can be expected to save $1.3 trillion, while Medicare and its beneficiaries should save $700 billion. PBM critics say those savings come at the cost of limited patient choices and out-of-business pharmacies. Read more...

States will be able to get federal help in setting up their health insurance exchanges without having the government take over, under new rules proposed Monday.

The healthcare reform law requires states to have insurance exchanges up and running by 2014 if they don't want the federal government to run the show. New alternatives timed for this week's visit by state officials anxious for more clarity would create state-federal partnerships that offer a middle path, where both parties work together to operate different functions of the exchange.

The partnership model would allow states to tailor their exchange to local needs and market conditions, according to HHS, while offering states a way to transition to fully operating their own exchanges.

"Because each State has different needs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has worked to ensure that States have flexibility to implement the law to meet those needs," read an administration e-mail to congressional health staffers detailing the partnership options. "The goal of the Partnership is to take advantage of the State's expertise and knowledge of their insurance markets to support a seamless consumer experience."

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to set limits on inorganic arsenic levels in juice concentrate in the U.S. and from imports from China.

The subject received increased attention last week after “The Dr. Oz Show,” a daytime television talk show, did an investigation that found some juices contain higher levels of arsenic than are allowed in the nation’s drinking water.

Obama's proposals would also strengthen a board the GOP says will 'ration' care.

More than half of seniors remain confused by the Medicare program or don't understand it at all almost a half-century after its creation, says a new survey, leading many beneficiaries to make subpar choices that don't best fit their needs.

The confusion is compounded by the new federal healthcare law, says the survey of 1,500 seniors released by the nonprofit National Council on Aging and UnitedHealthcare. As a result, the survey found, seniors are losing money by failing to sign up for programs that could help them defray their costs. 

"Without a solid grasp of the basics of Medicare, older adults are not well-positioned to understand their options and find the coverage that best meets their needs," council President and CEO Jim Firman said in a statement. "These findings show that Medicare beneficiaries either are not getting the information they need to understand the program or that the information that's currently available isn't resonating with them."