Health

Newsweek  - Medicare Advantage patients might be in for a rude awakening as CVS plans to get rid of 10 percent of its plans. CVS Health made the decision to cut the Aetna health insurance plans in an effort to prioritize profit margins, company leaders revealed this week... After releasing the company's first-quarter earnings, CVS was $900 million below its health care benefit predictions on medical costs, with $400 million lost due to heavy outpatient service utilization. Currently, CVS is the third largest Medicare Advantage insurer in the country, with the company saying it had 4.2 million enrollees as of April. If 10 percent of its current plans are exited, that would leave 420,000 beneficiaries needing to switch to a different plan or go without coverage.

Huffington Post -  Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are pushing forward with their plan to repeal a pandemic-era law that allowed the wearing of masks in public for health reasons, a move spurred in part by demonstrations against the war in Gaza that have included masked protesters camped out on college campuses.

NBC News - Although the number of Americans who have migraines has remained stable for the last 30 years, their impact on people’s daily activities — including missing social events or being less productive at school or work — has become much worse, according to a recent study.The report, published in early May in the journal Headache, analyzed 11 studies among U.S. adults from 1989 to 2018 on both episodic and chronic migraines. Researchers found the prevalence of migraines in the past three decades has remained stable, but found Migraine Disability Assessment Scale scores, which measure how migraines affect a person’ daily activities, jumped from 22.0% to 42.4% since 2004, the study found. The “disability” scores reflect how severe a migraine is. Migraines affect an estimated 39 million adults in the U.S, according to the American Migraine Foundation.