Health Care, Billion | featured news

Total U.S. spending on prescription medicines declined last year, a first in more than half a century. The dip was 1 percent, to $325.8 billion — a 3.5 percent drop after accounting for population growth and economic expansion, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

The growing toll of diabetes cost the nation a record high $245 billion in 2012, a 41% increase from $174 billion in 2007, according to new research released today. The study Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2012, commissioned by the American Diabetes Association, estimated the health care and work-related costs of diagnosed diabetes. The full study will be published in the April issue of Diabetes Care.

Florida governor Rick Scott created a stir this week when he said he’d expand Medicaid as requested by the Obama administration. But health policy experts say it's hard for any governor to say no to billions of dollars in federal subsidies.

The government says it recovered almost $8 for each dollar it spent investigating health care fraud over the past three years, including a record $4.2 billion last year.

Aetna will buy Coventry Health Care for $5.7 billion as the insurance industry realigns itself to better navigate the massive government health care overhaul....

Health insurer WellPoint Inc will buy rival Amerigroup Corp for $4.46 billion in a major bet on the expansion of the U.S. government's Medicaid health plans for the poor.