Six health insurance companies have agreed to end the secrecy over their requests for rate increases, according to Benjamin M. Lawsky, superintendent of New York’s new Department of Financial Services.

Diabetes and prediabetes will account for 10% of total health care spending by the end of the decade, a new analysis suggests, noting that spending on the disease will reach $500 billion annually, compared to $194 billion this year.

Brokerage Edward Jones says the stocks of the three health insurers it covers – Aetna, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint – warrant a “sell” rating, not the prior “hold” rating because of federal health reform.

The chief executive of UnitedHealth Group says he does not think the federal health reform law will force large employers to end their health insurance plans.

The 261 companies who actively market Medicare Advantage plans to seniors in the U.S. enrolled 11.5 million Medicare beneficiaries in the 2010 enrollment season.

A division of United Health Group is realigning some of its Medicare Advantage telephone sales functions in Florida, meaning the loss of 191 telesales positions March 31. Employees were told earlier this month.

Increasingly cast as the villain in the nation’s rising cost for health care, five of the nation’s largest health care insurers met with the Obama Administration to argue that they are bit players in a much larger production.

Membership in the nation’s top health insurance plans fell by 1.3% in the third quarter of 2009, as the recession and high unemployment rates battered enrollments, according to a new report.

Indicating that it did not have a proper say in the merger of HealthNet and UnitedHealth Group, a group of Connecticut physicians has filed a suit to block the deal.

In what he is calling a “historic” lawsuit, Connecticut’s attorney general has filed suit against Health Net of Connecticut for a data breach jeopardizing the personal information of 446,000 of its members.