A $1.9 trillion rescue plan has passed through Congress and now awaits the President’s signature. I’m Jeff Lagasse with Healthcare Finance News, and we’ll touch on that and other major headlines in this week’s Top Stories.
The House has given final approval to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature. Healthcare Finance News reports (https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/house-approves-19-trillion-rescue-plan-which-now-goes-biden-his-signature) that the relief package strengthens the Affordable Care Act by making coverage more affordable for the next two years. It removes the income cap in 2021 and 2022 for health insurance premium subsidies, or tax credits through the federal and state exchanges. And Those who get health insurance through the ACA would pay an amount limited to 8.5% of their income. This expands who qualifies for the financial help, and the bill also forgives amounts due by taxpayers who received too much in subsidies in 2020. The package received House approval on Wednesday.
COVID-19 vaccine supplies continue to grow, but new distribution challenges are starting to emerge. As we see in HealthcareITNews (https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/big-uptick-bot-traffic-jeopardizes-vaccine-appointments), many websites that are used to schedule vaccine appointment slots are being bombarded with bad bots -- and that's making it that much harder for people to sign up for shots. Overall there’s been a 372% increase in bad bot traffic on healthcare websites since this past September. And in recent weeks that traffic has only ramped up: In February, it was up 48.8%, the largest increase over the past year.
Finally this week, patient engagement and education platform PatientPoint is merging with rival Outcome Health to create a new platform named PatientPoint Health Technologies, which is focused on facilitating patient-clinician communications. According to MobiHealthNews (https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/patientpoint-merges-outcome-health-form-combined-patient-engagement-entity), the new entities will be operating under the PatientPoint brand, and the platform will be helmed by PatientPoiint’s leadership team. This comes more than a year after news broke that Outcome Health and its executive team faced a bevy of legal battles over falsified advertising practices, with the former CEO, president and CFO each facing multiple counts of wire, bank and mail fraud.
I’m Jeff Lagasse with Healthcare Finance News, and this has been Top Stories