UnitedHealth Group Inc. is cutting commissions for brokers on some Medicare Advantage plans, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News, a move that appears designed to discourage agents from selling those plans.
The decision comes as UnitedHealth grapples with high costs in Medicare Advantage that derailed its financial outlook and sent its share price tumbling. By steering brokers away from selling some of these plans, the insurance giant could ultimately lower its costs.
Humana expects to regain a four-star Medicare Advantage plans rating by 2028.
Castle Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSTL), a diagnostic company with a robust gross profit margin of 82% and strong balance sheet showing more cash than debt, has entered into a collaboration and license agreement with SciBase Holding AB to develop a diagnostic test that predicts flares in patients with atopic dermatitis, according to a press release statement issued Monday.
The collaboration will utilize SciBase’s Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy technology, which includes both desktop and point-of-care instruments. The companies aim to create a test that can predict flares before symptoms appear, allowing patients to initiate rescue treatment plans earlier. Castle Biosciences, currently valued at $541 million.
Senate Republicans are proposing cuts to the Medicaid program for low-income and disabled people that are more aggressive than policies the House passed to help pay for President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax package, according to people familiar with the legislation.
Notably, the Senate abandoned efforts to cut costs in the Medicare program that provides health insurance to people over age 65 and the disabled. The decision is good news for Humana Inc. and UnitedHealth Group Inc., which are major players in the Medicare Advantage insurance market.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana had pushed to clamp down on private Medicare Advantage insurers by making it harder to game the federal subsidy system by exaggerating the health challenges their enrollees face. But Cassidy’s proposal faced some opposition among Republicans.
The Senate plan — slated to be released on Monday — solidifies congressional Republicans’ decision to cut funding for Medicaid health insurance for the poor to pay for tax cuts, which Democrats are eager to attack them for ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Republicans are eager to portray the cost savings as reductions to “fraud, waste, and abuse” in the programs, though the changes would also lead to millions of people losing health insurance.
Senate Finance Committee Republicans did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Senate went further than the House’s proposal to limit the options states have to fund their share of Medicaid.
The House bill would set a moratorium on new or increased taxes on medical providers, while the draft Senate bill would cut the amount that states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act can tax health care providers to help fund their programs, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a plan that is not yet public.
The Senate proposal would gradually limit states to taxing providers at 3.5% of facilities’ net revenues from treating patients from the current level of 6%. In the Senate proposal, non-expansion states, such as Texas and Florida, would be frozen at current tax rates, they said.
Some states tax health care providers, such as hospitals, to help raise money for state Medicaid budgets. Critics say limiting provider tax rates would simultaneously curb states’ ability to pay their higher tab as a result of the reductions to federal matching funds.
In the House proposal, states would also be limited from seeking new payments for providers that exceed Medicare payment rates. The House allowed higher rates for states that haven’t yet expanded Medicaid under the ACA.
The Senate proposal goes further, and reduces all state-directed payments gradually for expansion states to Medicare rates, and to 110% of Medicare rates for non-expansion states.
Senate Republicans plan to drop policies that would modestly change how pharmacy middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers do business in Medicare. They also plan to omit a proposal to boost pay for doctors in the Medicare program that had been included in the House proposal, the people said.
The PBM policy change is likely positive for Cigna Group and CVS Health Corp., which own two of the largest PBMs in the country.
Because the House and Senate versions of the legislation differ, the legislation would need to pass the House again before it goes to the president’s desk. How much to cut health care programs has been one of the major points of contention in assembling the tax package.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/senate-republicans-omit-medicare-advantage-202653954.html
Ballistic missiles zipping into major cities. Sabotage teams on the prowl behind enemy lines. Drones buzzing menacingly above foxholes.
Oil refineries ablaze. Ammo depots bursting into mini-mushroom clouds. Air defense systems exploding spectacularly.
The world has never seen war footage like this.
Clearly the conflicts between Israel and Iran, and Russia and Ukraine, are heating up.
But strangely, so are stock markets. Here in the U.S., we’re sitting near all-time highs. The S&P 500 is less than 2% below record territory.
The largest Israeli ETF (EIS) is up 6% as of midday. It sits just a smidge below its all-time high.
Oil is up a few bucks since the Iran vs. Israel situation has escalated, and gold and silver are looking good.
But if you had been in a coma for the last 4 years, awoke today, and the first thing you did was check your 401k, you might think the world was awash in roses and sunshine.
Across the U.S. and Europe, more citizens believe a third world war is likely within the next 5-10 years than not.
Here in the States, 45% believe it’s likely. Only 36% believe WW3 is unlikely. 19% are on the fence.
Source: YouGov
Fear is running high. Too high, in fact. World War 3 implies nuclear exchanges, and that remains extremely unlikely.
But the fact that people are this scared – and stocks are still this high – is noteworthy.
On X (Twitter) lately, there’s been a certain sentiment which is best summed up by the post below.
Source: X
This type of sentiment is widespread.
If nothing else, it proves that buy the dip is deeply ingrained in our investment culture. So much so that people are ravenously buying a 2% dip on apocalypse fears.
If an ongoing debt crisis, multiple kinetic wars, and a huge trade war can’t stop this bull market… it could go on for a while longer.
Tech stocks are rallying today, with the Nasdaq Composite up around 1.4% as of 1:20 pm EST.
However, emerging markets such as Brazil remain far more attractive. Today the largest Brazil ETF (EWZ) is up 2.4% on the day. This remains one of the cheapest stock markets in the world, and I will continue to add to my position on dips.
Gold and silver bullion remain strong and are consolidating just below their 52-week highs. Brand new highs are on the menu. It’s just a matter of time. Silver, naturally, remains a favorite here.
Precious metal miners have been on an absolute tear over the past few weeks, and with all the chaos in the world, PMs and miners remain excellent places to hide out.
Sure, broad U.S. markets may go higher over the next few months. But precious metals and select emerging markets should too, and they have a lot less downside risk.
My advice: don’t get pulled into overpriced stocks just because they’re ripping higher. There are plenty of assets out there with bullish charts AND real fundamental value in today’s world.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq, at these prices, and with these risks, are not among them.
Good investing,
Adam Sharp
Two of the most powerful figures in organized labor have dramatically cut ties with the Democratic National Committee - a stunning rebuke to new DNC Chair Ken Martin as internal tensions roil the party.
Randi Weingarten, longtime head of the 1.8-million-member American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, which represents 1.4 million public service workers, have both declined reappointments to the national party under Martin’s leadership.
“While I am proud to be a Democrat, I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging,” Weingarten wrote in a June 5 resignation letter obtained Sunday by the NY Times. “I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities.”
Weingarten, who has served on the DNC since 2002 and on its powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee since 2009, was removed from that committee by Martin after he won the chairmanship in a hotly contested race earlier this year. She had supported his rival, Wisconsin Democratic Chair Ben Wikler.
Saunders, who also backed Wikler, declined his reappointment to the DNC on May 27. “The decision to decline the nomination to the Democratic National Committee was not made lightly,” he said in a statement. “It comes after deep reflection and deliberate conversation about the path forward for our union and the working people we represent.”
“These are new times,” Saunders added. “They demand new strategies, new thinking and a renewed way of fighting for the values we hold dear. We must evolve to meet the urgency of this moment. This is not a time to close ranks or turn inward.”
The coordinated departures of two major union leaders mark a serious erosion of trust in the party’s direction, as Democrats remain locked out of power and search for a compelling message to counter President Trump.
Martin has faced mounting scrutiny from within the party’s ranks. David Hogg, a DNC vice chair who openly endorsed primary challenges against incumbent Democrats, announced he would step down after the party voted to redo the vice chair election due to a technicality.
Notably, Weingarten publicly supported Hogg’s controversial move to challenge the party establishment, saying it was necessary to “ruffle some feathers.”
Even some of Martin’s allies are expressing discomfort with the escalating infighting. “I certainly wished we wouldn’t have dirty laundry in public, but you know the personalities, things happen,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who endorsed both Martin and Hogg. “I don’t think Ken’s focus has shifted one bit on this of expanding the party.”
Martin has not responded to requests for comment. A DNC spokeswoman also declined to weigh in.
The dramatic exits from two union giants — longtime pillars of Democratic fundraising and organizing muscle — leave the DNC facing deeper questions about its leadership, its vision, and who, exactly, it’s leaving behind.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/randi-weingarten-quits-dnc-after-david-hogg-ouster
"Realize where we are."
- Oilfield Rando on "X"
Saturday morning, we toodled over to the next town, Salem, New York, (pop. 2,612, per capita income $19,499) fifty miles northeast of Albany, to catch one of the hundreds of “No Kings” demos across the nation sponsored by Shanghai-based software billionaire Neville Roy Singham, Walmart heiress Christy Walton, Paypal partner (and Linked-in founder) Reid Hoffman, and father-and son team, George and Alex Soros.
Speaking of Alex Soros, Saturday also happened to be his wedding day, to Huma Abedin, former Hillary Clinton sidekick and BFF (and ex-wife of disgraced congressman and convicted sex offender Anthony Weiner.) The nuptials happened at the Soros’s Hamptons estate. Cable news covered the fabulous cavalcade of black Escalade limousines conveying the super-elite of Progressive-Wokery to the glorious event. The New York Times, with its habitual lack of self-awareness, styled the event thusly:
“Liberal royalty?” Say, what. . . ? There is such a thing? In the party of No Kings? What’s the deal, then? Just princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls, viscounts, baronets, lairds, marquis, knights and dames, and so on. Yet, no king? Well, if you asked the fortunate wedding guests, they might aver to Hillary Clinton as a sort-of Queen of the party, or maybe just Queen Bee. As for former president Bill, he appears to be undergoing slow-motion mummification, so he currently occupies an ambiguous zone between this world and the next, with no mojo left for kingly duties. Anyway, it rained that day down on the South Fork.
Meanwhile, back upstate, cloudy and cool but no rain, some two-hundred wrathful plebeian souls gathered at the one-stoplight-intersection in little Salem, these days mainly a farm community, the old railroad engine repair shop defunct, and many good non-farm jobs with it, the usual story in this corner of the country. The hopped-up crowd was well-supplied with signs and placards, many avouching Down with Oligarchs! — which, oddly, seemed a sort of backhanded reference to billionaires of the very type underwriting the day’s festivities, not to mention the super-rich “liberal royalty” gang gathered for the Soros-Abedin royal wedding.
But that was only one of the many incongruities haunting the mass protest against the abhorred president, Mr. Trump. For instance, one poor fellow on the southeast corner of South Main and East Broadway inveighed mournfully against the suppression of free speech, apparently unaware of the epic efforts 2021 to 2025 by “Joe Biden’s” underlings to censor the Internet and de-platform the regime’s critics (including yours truly, whose website was mysteriously destroyed in October 2024).
Original thinking among the Woke
The moiling mob was overwhelmingly geriatric, perhaps reflecting the backwater demographics of a region with few job opportunities for young folk. A spirit of revival bubbled among them as they reenacted old rituals of the hippie halcyon, the grand old days of the Vietnam War protests, when thousands gathered to levitate the Pentagon. Only now, their sentiments and beliefs exhibit a striking and peculiar inversion of the ancient 1960s credos that drove the beloved Movement.
I know because I was there, on campus, between 1966 and 1971. Back then, the Left opposed the wicked “establishment” and all its nefarious operations, from the war in Vietnam to the FBI’s underhanded suppression of political dissent. These days, strange to relate, the Left stands in staunch defense of the Deep State, big government (and its prodigious corruption), and the politicization of the FBI and CIA.
Their placards lament the withering of “our democracy,” yet they were just fine with “Joe Biden” selecting a 2024 presidential candidate for them — with no customary vote by party delegates, or anything approaching an open democratic process. They shout for the “rule-of-law,” except when it concerns special persons such as the former president’s crackhead, bag-man son. They’re all for the colossal grift around the war in Ukraine. And don’t forget they supported vaccine mandates, the closing and ruination of small businesses (while Walmart and Taco Bell were allowed to thrive), and all the other hypocritical, fraudulent, lethal actions of Covid-19 policy.
The object of the “No Kings” shuck and jive, you might suspect, was to prepare so many friction-points around the country that violence was apt to erupt in order to create a George Floyd-type martyr figure, so as to re-energize the Left for another sustained summer of riots. There was plenty of mayhem around the country but, alas, no martyr emerged, no apotheosis of “progressive” victim-hood. . . only the peculiar murder of two Minnesota legislators by an apparently deranged Democratic party fringe character, the sometime evangelist and Tim Walz appointee, Vance Boelter.
$65-million is a plausible number for the money spent by billionaires and political NGOs on the nation-wide “No Kings” project. A lot of that was paid directly to protesters for just showing up. (They ran ads on Craig’s List to enlist players.) None of them showed up in the Hamptons, though, where “liberal royalty” assembled for their special event. You’ve got to think that they missed something rather bigly there.
