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While Congress debates the fate of the Affordable Care Act, healthcare transformation continues, as seen in an update released this week at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The subsidies allow insurers to hold down overall premiums under the Affordable Care Act.

A new study found that patients with borderline pulmonary hypertension (mPAP values of 19 to 24 mm Hg) should be considered an at-risk subgroup with increased mortality compared with patients with lower mean pulmonary arterial pressures.

After a study reported that physicians who authored dermatology clinical guidelines didn't always fully disclose financial conflicts of interest, the American Academy of Dermatology urged the public to view the findings with caution.

New high-risk groups of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease according to GOLD 2017 were found to have more characteristics related to acute exacerbation and mortality risks.

Results of the first annual National Cancer Opinion Survey, established by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), show that the majority of Americans are unaware of several key risk factors for cancer, and that a minority are taking active steps to reduce their personal risk.

Implementing the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017 crafted by Senators Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, and Patty Murray, D-Washington, to stabilize the Affordable Care Act's individual insurance markets would reduce the federal deficit by $3.8 billion over 10 years, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Researchers developed additional guidance for using granulocyte colony-stimulating factors to optimize pegfilgrastim use in clinical practices for patients at risk of chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia.

In addition to the cost, the excessive overuse of laboratory testing causes patient discomfort and can lead to hospital-acquired anemia, which results in additional testing, prolonged hospitalizations, unnecessary transfusions, and increased mortality for patients with cardiopulmonary diseases.

With biosimilars being an everyday headline, Jason Bernstein, Epocrates Lead Strategist, outlined key reasons for pharma's growing interest in biosimilar development and key differences between generics and biosimilars.

Researchers find that the most common explanation for cognitive symptoms that resemble attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is substance abuse.

The percentage of care delivered in emergency departments has increased with nearly half of all medical care in the United States occurring there, according to a study.

Authors of survey results and a commentary say it's time to focus on recommendations that can bring clinically meaningful change and cost savings.

When patients are directly involved in research, the results better reflect a patient's perspective and clinicians can make more informed decisions. Researchers recently found that crowdsourcing platforms are effective in efficiently reaching groups of individuals to receive input on prevalent conditions, including back pain.

The study found that prophylactic locoregional surgery (LRS) for asymptomatic patients with small intestinal neuroendocrine tumors (SI-NETs) provided no survival advantage compared with delayed LRS.

A new study has found that uninsurance rates declined the most in patients with distant disease and with lung and bronchial cancer. Hispanic patients also saw a large decrease in uninsurance rates.

The authors find that sleep in teens fell after 2009, as smartphone use escalated. Lack of sleep has been linked to insulin resistance.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and their rheumatology healthcare providers commonly face discordance as many patients report a higher disease activity rate than their providers.

Surveys find that paperwork and administrative chores are a key source of physician burnout, but healthcare has been slow to catch up with other industries in going paperless.

Technology, specifically the electronic medical record, is becoming more prevalent in the healthcare industry; however, there are significant cybersecurity risks due to the major information shift.

PCSK9 inhibitor therapy plus a statin is not cost-effective option for the health system compared with statin alone, according to a study.

The FDA commissioner said regulators would keep special watch over 10 manufacturers who are the sole source of key products. If necessary, they will allow products to be imported from overseas.

This week, the top managed care news included the bipartisan deal to stabilize the Affordable Care Act's insurance markets; coverage from the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy 2017 Nexus; and a plan to reduce clinician burnout at the computer.

History of neutropenia with methotrexate, concurrent treatment with synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (sDMARDs), and tocilizumab were risk factors for developing neutropenia while on biologic DMARDs (bDMARDs), according to a study published in The Journal of Rheumatology.

The American Medical Association and more than 650 other organizations support eliminating the Independent Payment Advisory Board, set up as part of Obamacare. The writer supports this position, based on her professional experience, which includes the case of a young woman dying of tuberculosis (TB).