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Humana Inc., the troubled managed-care company, said yesterday that it would take a pretax charge of $400 million to $500 million in the fourth quarter, the latest in a series [...]

As recently as a week ago, Dr. Elihu Sussman in New York would have an office assistant call a nurse at the UnitedHealth Group, one of the health maintenance organizations [...]

The United Health Group said yesterday that it was returning decision-making power over patient care to physicians, breaking with a longstanding element of managed care that has infuriated many doctors [...]

Aetna Inc., the nation's biggest health insurer, said yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had started a review of the way the company accounted for its August purchase of [...]

Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest health maintenance organizations, said yesterday that it was closing its money-losing Northeast division, at the end of the year. The move affects 575,000 [...]

Drug industry and insurance executives reacted with skepticism yesterday to reports that the White House was planning a new prescription-drug benefit for all elderly Americans. Under the proposal, Medicare recipients [...]

In the first sign that the cost of health care insurance could rise 9 to 11 percent again next year, the nation's second-biggest buyer of health benefits said yesterday that [...]

THE huge lobbying battle over the future of Medicare, the Federal health program for elderly and disabled Americans, is expected to turn even fiercer after a bipartisan commission issues its [...]

Aetna U.S. Healthcare, the big managed care company, said yesterday that it would voluntarily allow its health plan members in 30 states to have outside reviews of decisions that deny [...]

This is bound to be a better year for the health care industry than 1998, which, to borrow Queen Elizabeth's mournful phrase, was an annus horribilis for some of the [...]

Aetna Inc. has transformed itself in less than three years from an insurance giant known as a relatively easygoing nice guy into a hard-driving managed-care company that many doctors say [...]

Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly souping up their advertising for prescription drugs in a style more commonly associated with products sold from open shelves in drugstores and supermarkets. Consider the blowups [...]

THE managed care companies that unloaded 250,000 elderly Medicare customers last week will have healthier financial statements to show for it, starting in the first half of 1999. But many [...]

JOHN REGAN, a retired Bell Atlantic employee, wanted to join a health maintenance organization near his home in Centerville, Mass., on Cape Cod. But the H.M.O. said no -- he [...]

Some of the hottest, fastest-growing managed health care plans are turning out to be the ones that are hardly managed at all. Unlike health maintenance organizations, which typically try to [...]

Some of the nation's biggest health insurers have decided not to pay for Viagra, the new male impotence drug, under their prescription drug plans. They said that providing the recommended [...]

The United Healthcare Corporation, one of the nation's largest health insurers, agreed yesterday to buy Humana Inc. for $5.5 billion, further shrinking the number of competitors in the industry and [...]

For the first time since 1992, many employers are facing double-digit increases in the cost of their health insurance next year, the highest inflation rate since the majority of employees [...]

Managed health care does not seem to be winning any popularity contests, if you listen to audiences applauding as the actress Helen Hunt castigates H.M.O.'s in the new movie with [...]

PRESIDENT CLINTON'S plan to broaden eligibility for Medicare ''sounded great'' to Nick Porto, a 62-year-old chemical plant technician in Donaldson, La., who took early retirement and a pension in October [...]

Health maintenance organizations are supposed to provide care at a lower cost than traditional insurance. But as Federal programs often do, Medicare has surprised its sponsors by spending more, not [...]

Joining a lengthening cortege of managed health care companies that have recently apologized for computer glitches and management fumbles after mergers or acquisitions, Pacificare Health Systems said yesterday that it [...]

Oxford Health Plans, the big New York area health plan that has been invoked as an industry model for its ability to keep costs down while satisfying patients, said yesterday [...]

After swallowing enormous losses for years, the Prudential Insurance Company of America is trying to sell its health care business, which provides coverage for almost seven million people nationwide, industry [...]

Four women opened a primary health care practice near Bloomingdale's in midtown Manhattan yesterday. But this group was different: The women are nurses, doing what doctors with a general or [...]

The Prudential Insurance Company of America plans to squeeze $250 million to $500 million in annual savings from the company's big, money-losing health insurance unit, Prudential executives said yesterday. They [...]

The 40-year-old entrepreneur who built Oxford Health Plans into a $4 billion giant of managed health care in metropolitan New York resigned yesterday as chief executive. The executive, Steven F. [...]

In its second acquisition this week, Humana Inc., the big managed-care company, said yesterday that it had agreed to buy the Choice Care Corporation, the largest health maintenance organization in [...]

The American Association of Retired Persons said yesterday that it had revised a sharply criticized plan to endorse selected health maintenance organizations, dropping a proposal to collect royalty payments for [...]

Health maintenance organizations were supposed to raise the level of efficiency in medical care, reduce costs and make the system more convenient for patients and doctors alike -- all departures [...]

The Cigna Corporation, playing catch-up in the fast-consolidating health insurance field, agreed yesterday to buy Healthsource Inc., a troubled managed health care company, for $1.45 billion in cash. Cigna would [...]

Every Tuesday, a nurse greets J. L. Atteberry, a frail 73-year-old cancer patient recovering at his home in Orangevale, Calif. ''How are you feeling this morning?'' she asked last week. [...]

Outbidding the Prudential Insurance Company, the United Healthcare Corporation has won the huge health insurance business of the American Association of Retired Persons. United Healthcare will be adding more than [...]

Managed-care plans love to boast about their services and their satisfied customers. "No. 1 in customer satisfaction," Oxford Health Plans brags in a recent advertisement. Cigna Healthcare proclaims: "Rated No. [...]

New Jersey's fiercely competitive health insurance market will soon become even rougher. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey yesterday agreed to merge with Anthem Inc., a big, diversified [...]

The New York State Insurance Department yesterday approved a request by Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield to establish two wholly owned for-profit units that could eventually take over most [...]

IF ever a company looked after the interests of its home city, Eastman Kodak did. The company's principal founder a century ago, George Eastman, had no children and instead nurtured [...]

Melissa Holloway, a City Council member in Jersey City, may get a $700 windfall from a health plan that rewards people who use few or no medical services. The city [...]

American employers have been trying for years to tame rising medical costs by pushing workers into health maintenance organizations and other plans that limit their choices of doctors and hospitals. [...]

AS bad news battered three H.M.O. companies, Humana Inc., the Coventry Corporation and the Physician Corporation of America, in recent days, some analysts argued they were just discrete incidents. Yesterday, [...]

The United Healthcare Corporation grew into one of the nation's biggest health maintentance organizations by buying big H.M.O.'s in Midwestern and Southeastern cities. Yesterday, the company said it would spend [...]

More than 50 employers across the country have joined in a program to push older retirees into Medicare-financed health maintenance organizations, which would relieve the companies of expensive obligations to [...]

For years, shareholder-owned health maintenance organizations have profited handsomely by forcing hospitals and doctors to rein in galloping costs. Now, many H.M.O.'s may have to take their own bitter medicine. [...]

Two big California health maintenance organizations, Wellpoint Health Networks and Health Systems International have agreed to a $1.8 billion stock swap that would create the biggest stockholder-owned H.M.O. in the [...]

Doctors, on the defensive in recent years as employers and insurers sought to control medical costs, are starting to fight back against the growing sway of insurance and health care [...]