UnitedHealth Group began the first quarter of 2021 on a high note, reporting earnings per share (EPS) and a medical loss ratio (MLR) that both beat the Wall Street consensus estimate and saying it expects to achieve greater full-year earnings than it previously estimated, AIS Health reported. However, executives warned that the majority of the unfavorable COVID-19-related impact they're expecting will transpire in the second half of the year.

UnitedHealth expects roughly 70% of the predicted COVID-related $1.80 EPS hit to occur in the back half of the year, Chief Financial Officer John Rex said during an April 15 conference call to discuss the company’s financial results. He said that projection is based on UnitedHealth's prediction that as the year wears on and vaccination rates rise, people will increasingly be able to access higher-acuity, previously deferred care.

Uber, seeking to expand its prescription delivery business nationwide, has inked a deal with pharmacy home delivery start-up ScriptDrop that makes Uber the default delivery app for a network of grocery store and independent pharmacies that spans 37 states, AIS Health reported.

The partnership, which is just one of many corporate moves in the pharmacy delivery space, positions Uber to take advantage of the vastly increased consumer demand for home delivery services sparked by the pandemic.

In the 2020 Drug Trend Report recently released by Evernorth, the Cigna Corp. division added yet another chapter to the growing volume of data detailing the profound effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on health care, AIS health reported.

On the one hand, the massive amount of deferred routine and elective health care utilization had a dampening effect on the number of new medication users that Evernorth — which houses the PBM Express Scripts — recorded in 2020. New users of asthma/COPD medications dropped the most, by 7.1% year over year, likely reflecting the avoidance of clinical settings among a group that is at particular risk of contracting severe COVID-19.

Payers should look at the looming interoperability mandate as a chance to gain a lasting advantage over their competitors, according to two health care information technology (IT) experts.

In a March 26 webinar hosted by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), IBM Vice President Michael Curry of Watson Health and Jeff Rivkin, research director for payer IT strategies at IDC Insights, said payers should do more than meet the minimum interoperability standards, AIS Health reported.

A bundled payment program run by San Francisco-based digital health company Carrum Health resulted in an average per-episode savings of more than $16,000 per orthopedic or surgical procedure, a recent RAND Corp. analysis found.

Counting both procedures reimbursed under the bundled payment program and procedures reimbursed outside the program, per-episode costs for the three procedures studied — spinal fusion, major joint replacement and bariatric surgery — were 10.7% lower overall, on average, than costs for comparable procedures prior to implementation of the program. That added up to a total savings of $4,229 per episode, the study found.

As a new bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) indicates, Congress is once again looking seriously at tackling drug pricing reform. D.C. insiders say that Democrats could pursue big changes to PBM regulation and Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices, AIS Health reported.

Also, Congress could repeal the Trump administration’s so-called "rebate rule," which would have removed safe-harbor protections under the federal anti-kickback statute for rebates paid by drug manufacturers to PBMs and Medicare Part D plans.