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America’s largest employer is having a hard time filling jobs. The skills gap in the health care sector, now the largest U.S. industry, is greater than the gap in the overall economy, according to a report published Wednesday by Indeed economists Martha Gimbel and Tara Sinclair. The economists studied job postings and resumes on Indeed, an employment-related search engine, between January 2014 and December 2018 and found a mismatch between employers who were looking to hire and the skills offered in candidate resumes. This suggests healthcare faces a greater hiring challenge than other sectors. (Hagan, 3/20)

Maurice Wysocki, an information technology worker, was looking to branch out on his own as a contractor last year, allowing him a more flexible schedule and sharply reduced hours some months of the year. But then the Poughquag, New York, resident hopped on the federal health care exchange to see how much he would have to pay for insurance for himself, and his wife and two children. “It was a huge amount,” Wysocki, 49, says, roughly 10 times his current costs as an employee of a financial services company. “I chickened out.” (Davidson, 3/18)

Investor-owned hospital chain HCA was hit with a whistleblower lawsuit accusing it of cheating the federal government out of millions of dollars through inflated or fraudulent billing through its rehabilitation hospitals. In a False Claims Act complaint unsealed Tuesday, a former HCA occupational therapist alleged the health system submitted false claims from its rehabilitation network across 18 states to secure higher reimbursement rates from the Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Prospective Payment System than it could obtain from the Inpatient Prospective Payment System. (Kacik, 3/20)

Bausch Health Cos Inc. got a new bull and reawakened a bear within 14 hours, underscoring yet again how the company acts like a lightning rod on Wall Street. Analysts at SunTrust started coverage of the drugmaker with a buy rating Tuesday afternoon, telling investors that “management is doing the right things to strengthen the business” despite a heavy debt load. The next morning, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Jason Gerberry re-started the bank’s coverage with a sell-equivalent rating, citing “fundamental challenges” in the next leg of the company’s recovery. (Lipschultz, 3/20)

Kaiser Health News: Health Plans For State Employees Use Medicare’s Hammer On Hospital Bills

States. They’re just as perplexed as the rest of us over the ever-rising cost of health care premiums. Now some states are moving to control costs of state employee health plans. And it’s triggering alarm from the hospital industry. The strategy: Use Medicare reimbursement rates to recalibrate how they pay hospitals.  If the gamble pays off, more private-sector employers could start doing the same thing. “Government workers will get it first, then everyone else will see the savings and demand it,” said Glenn Melnick, a hospital finance expert and professor at the University of Southern California. “This is the camel’s nose. It will just grow and grow.” (Appleby, 3/21)

When hospitals and doctors cheat to line their pockets, health care costs shoot up for everyone who has insurance, federal prosecutors say. In many cases, taxpayers are left to foot the bill. A case in point: an employee had back surgery at Forest Park Medical Center and a two-day stay to recover, and already the hospital bill was up to $400,000, the witness told jurors. (Krause, 3/20)

The hot-button proposals involve nudging Connecticut’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, up from $10.10, over the course of several years, and imposing a 0.5 percent payroll tax to fund a pool of money for paid leave. Corporate officials have denounced the measures as unfriendly to businesses, particularly small companies that could struggle with workers’ absences and additional costs. (Carlesso and Pazniokas, 3/20)