Health Insurance, Health Insurance Industry | featured news

UnitedHealth Group, the health insurance company, will replace Kraft Foods in the Dow Jones industrial average, the most widely known barometer of the American stock market... The change takes effect Sept. 24. S&P Dow Jones Indices, which manages the average, said it was dropping Kraft because it is about to become a much smaller company after spinning off its North American grocery business.

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 insurance industry says it won't try to block Obama's efforts to fix a potentially embarrassing glitch in new law.

Progressive activists ratcheted up the pressure for health care reform Tuesday, picketing in front of a hotel where a group of insurance industry leaders were meeting.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is predicting that the House will pass historic health care overhaul legislation Saturday to extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and ban insurance companies from turning people away....

The drug and insurance industries have dramatically amped up their efforts to lobby Congress, spending millions over a three-month ...

Top Senate Democrats intend to try to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws, according to congressional officials. It's the latest evidence of a deepening struggle over President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul the health care industry.

If enacted, the switch would mean greater federal regulation for an industry that recently has stepped up its criticism of portions of a health care bill moving toward the Senate floor.

Measures pending in Congress push insurers to keep down costs and cover all regardless of health. Despite growing frustration with the way health insurers deny medical treatments, major healthcare bills pending in Congress would give patients little new power to challenge those sometimes life-and-death decisions.

U.S. President Barack Obama hit back at the health insurance industry on Thursday, accusing it of trying to deceive Americans about healthcare reform and vowing to overhaul the industry in Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the case is growing stronger for allowing the government to sell health insurance in competition with private companies, contending recent attacks from the industry should dispel any doubts.