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The 2026 ATAC Conference was high value event featuring groundbreaking presentations by industry leaders on issues that impact your treatment center B
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The 2025 ATAC Conference was the largest to date and featured groundbreaking presentations by industry leaders on issues that impact your treatment center Below are the presentations from the 2025 ATAC Conference Click any link to download the pr Learn More
This presentation highlights key changes in the substance use treatment industry and ATAC s role in advocating for positive change
The US Justice Department on Thursday weighed into an antitrust legal war that alleges algorithmic price fixing by healthcare services by MultiPlan and its health insurance clients.
In Ryan S. v. UnitedHealth Group Inc., 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 8729, the Ninth Circuit Court overturned a lower court decision and found that UnitedHealth Group (UHG) must face a class action suit alleging it violated the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.
Drug and substance abuse continues to be a major problem across the United States, with 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 12 admitting that they used illicit drugs in 2022.
A Closer Look at Fraud and Abuse in the Addiction Treatment Industry in Orange, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties
Bakersfield attorney admits to scheme that turned urine to gold after overbilling insurance firms for medical tests
Heavy advertising and other strategies from Silicon Valley’s playbook
boost providers’ growth but not the quality of care
. Remote treatment of mental-health problems surged in the pandemic, as in-person treatment became difficult while pandemic-driven isolation increased anxiety and depression.
Employers claim that the health care company, now known as Elevance Health,
breached its fiduciary duties under ERISA
because they were denied access to plan claims due to mismanagement of funds.
A federal judge allowed the company to acquire a
clearinghouse of health insurance claims
. UnitedHealth says it won’t use the data to give itself an edge, even as some company documents suggest otherwise.
On Nov. 2, 2021, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak’s reelection campaign
received 10 separate $10,000 contributions
from what appeared to be unrelated health insurance plans from across the country.
Blue Shield of California has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Health Care Services alleging the department of
failing to supply documents
detailing plans for how it will contract with for-profit insurers who seek participation in Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program.
A federal judge will allow
UnitedHealth Group’s acquisition of Change Healthcare
to proceed, dealing a blow to the Biden administration’s healthcare antitrust efforts.
The groups joined a class action lawsuit against
Cigna
, claiming that the private payer reimbursed providers in the MultiPlan network at lower rates than previously agreed upon.
Nick Carusillo died when he was
hit by multiple vehicles on a Georgia interstate
, just days after he was abruptly discharged from an addiction treatment center. Now his parents hope a substantial jury verdict in their favor will prompt change that helps others suffering from mental illness and substance abuse.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic occurred, the number of people in the U.S. age 18 and older with at least one substance use disorder (SUD) was estimated to be over
20 million
. Since the dawn of the pandemic, researchers have noted
increases
in substance use disorders and drug overdoses. With those statistics in mind, the need for rehab is more important than ever today. However, not all rehab approaches are the same. Here’s how inpatient and outpatient compare with each other.
The union has pushed for ordinances in California cities establishing a minimum hourly wage of the same amount for workers at private healthcare facilities. It said that
raising the minimum wage
would help address workforce challenges.
The California Department of Managed Health Care has launched a targeted enforcement investigation into whether Kaiser Permanente health plans are providing patients with timely access to appointments, as required by law, during a
strike by mental health clinicians
at the system’s facilities, a DMHC spokeswoman confirmed in an email to Healthcare Dive on Sunday.
The California Department of Managed Health Care has opened a targeted enforcement investigation to examine whether Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente is providing timely access to appointments during an ongoing strike by mental healthcare workers
The
study, released Wednesday
(PDF) by the Legal Action Center, comes as Congress is eyeing legislation to expand access to coverage for mental health and substance abuse disorders. Researchers found that any increase in costs to Medicare would be offset by lower costs for related healthcare conditions.
Kyu Rhee, MD, is a senior vice president at CVS Health and chief medical officer at Aetna. He sat down with
Becker’s
to discuss ongoing trends across the healthcare industry and how he is working to create a ”
values-based
” care system through opportunities offered by a global pandemic.
Cigna’s Evernorth and Kaiser Permanente have inked a
multi-year network agreement
that aims to drive greater convenience and affordability.
Shareholders at both CVS Health and Aetna voted Tuesday to approve the drugstore chain’s
acquisition of the health insurer
, a deal valued at $69 billion.
Anthem Blue Cross, the country’s second-biggest health insurance company, is
behind on billions of dollars in payments
owed to hospitals and doctors because of onerous new reimbursement rules, computer problems and mishandled claims, say hospital officials in multiple states.
WASHINGTON—
U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.),
a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
joined 12 of their Senate colleagues in reintroducing the
Behavioral Health Coverage Transparency Act
, legislation that would strengthen oversight and enforcement of federal parity laws.
The
No Surprises Act
(NSA) establishes new federal protections against surprise medical bills that take effect in 2022.
Surprise medical bills
arise when insured consumers inadvertently receive care from out-of-network hospitals, doctors, or other providers they did not choose.
Blues insurer CareFirst is launching a new virtual primary care practice called CloseKnit.
Six organizations in the state
have signed
a memorandum of understanding, agreeing to invest in boosting access to advanced primary care, a model that emphasizes whole-person care for high-quality outcomes.
California counties, health insurance plans, community clinics, and a major national health care labor union are lining up against a controversial deal to grant HMO giant Kaiser Permanente a
no-bid statewide Medicaid contract
as the bill heads for its first legislative hearing Tuesday.
Blue Shield of California and its claims administrator wrongly restricted patients’ access to outpatient and residential mental health treatment, a class-action
lawsuit
says.
A coalition of Los Angeles hospitals and other health facilities launched a campaign on Tuesday
to repeal a newly enacted ordinance boosting the minimum wage for thousands of healthcare workers to $25 per hour, saying the law will have a harmful effect on medical care across the city.
More than 2 million potential surprise medical bills across all patients in commercial plans were prevented in the first two months a key law went into effect, a new study said.
Insurance groups AHIP and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
released a survey and analysis
(PDF) of the impact of the No Surprises Act, which banned surprise medical bills starting this year. The analysis comes as providers and the Biden administration continue to battle in court over how to handle disputes over surprise bills.
Consumers, employers, and just about everyone else interested in healthcare prices will soon get an unprecedented look at what insurers pay for care, perhaps helping answer a question that has long dogged those who buy insurance: Are we getting the best deal we can?
SACRAMENTO
– Today, Senator Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) legislation to improve health plan accountability, Senate Bill 858, passed the Assembly Health Committee by a vote of 11-2. SB 858 will now head to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
A Florida woman was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for a scheme to solicit and receive illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for referring residents of her sober home to a substance abuse treatment center.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed the Northern District of California’s landmark decision against UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s behavioral health unit, United Behavioral Health (“UBH”), under which UBH had been ordered to reprocess tens of thousands of behavioral health claims.
Two separate suits were filed in the District of Utah on Tuesday.
The first health insurance suit
was filed against defendants Anthem Blue Cross Life and Health Insurance Company and the Snap Inc.
Realizing Parity, Reducing Stigma, and Raising Awareness: Increasing Access to Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Coverage
U.S. Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) introduced bipartisan legislation to increase investments in substance misuse prevention, treatment, and recovery programs. The Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Act reauthorizes and strengthens the Substance Abuse Block Grant program, including by requiring that funding goes to evidence-based services, including medication-assisted treatment.
SACRAMENTO – On the heels of California
awarding over half a billion dollars
for housing and services serving people experiencing mental health and substance use crises, Governor Gavin Newsom’s
CARE Court proposal
today cleared a major legislative hurdle.
Federal regulations that have allowed practitioners the flexibility to prescribe buprenorphine virtually — and to patients outside their state — are due to expire along with the Covid-19 public health emergency.
A new report finds that alcohol and cannabis are the most common reasons people pursue substance misuse treatment.
Two brothers who operated multiple South Florida addiction treatment facilities were sentenced to prison Friday for a $112 million addiction treatment fraud scheme that included paying kickbacks to patients through patient recruiters and receiving kickbacks from testing laboratories.
Despite an
overall drop
in opioid prescribing over the past decade, opioid-related overdose deaths have
continued to rise.
If allowed to stand, a three-judge panel decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will destroy the progress that has been made in helping ensure that patients receive the medically appropriate mental health and substance-use disorder care they need and deserve, physicians tell a federal appeals court.
The ASAM Criteria® Powered by InterQual® brings efficiency for payers and providers to assess the millions of patients suffering from substance use disorders.
The Federal Trade Commission has issued a second request for information on UnitedHealth Group’s $5 billion planned acquisition of home health provider LHC Group.
Health insurer Aetna is canceling its in-network contract with Cerebral in August, the mental health startup’s CEO told employees on Wednesday.
While the pandemic has put everyone’s
mental well-being
at risk, adolescents have taken it especially hard and have struggled with the social isolation and heightened caution of the “new normal.”
Health insurer Anthem’s rebrand to Elevance Health will include the new name of “Carelon” for its healthcare services and the return of “Wellpoint” for certain government-subsidized health insurance products.
To provide political and legal advocacy, education and consumer protection in the field of addiction treatment.
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