Friday Links
Map: Newly eligible for health insurance under Obamacare. Workers Comp or Group Health: Who should pay more? Discipline leads to happiness? Is obesity a disease? Social change in one generation.
Month: June 2013
How Immediate vs. Delayed Reimbursement Affects Utilization
Insurance schemes offer two types of reimbursement to beneficiaries for health care services: immediate reimbursement and delayed reimbursement. In the former, the patient only pays the copayment or deductible, the insurer reimburses the providers directly for their services. In the latter case, the patient pays for the full cost of care and is only later…
Cavalcade of Rick #186 now on line
Van Mayhall of Insurance Regulatory Law hosts this week’s grand collection of risk-related posts, covering everything from the new Insurer Provider Fee to the FHA’s stance on mortgage insurance cancellations.
Useful Data Files for Simulation Modelling
In recent years, researchers have created a number of complex simulation models to estimate future trends and the impacts of policy changes. Some of the more prominant models include: RAND Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts (COMPARE) CBO’s Health Insurance Simulation Model (HISim) Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Reform Simulation Model (HIRSM), Future Elderly Model (FEM) These…
Increased prescription drug use reduces spending on medical services
Increased use of prescription drugs could either increase or decrease spending on medical services. On the one hand, increased use of pharmaceuticals could decrease hospitalizations and ER visits if pharmaceuticals are able to help patients control chronic conditions and prevent the onset of incidents requiring acute care. On the other hand, increased use of pharmaceuticals…
Regional Variation in Medicare Spending and Risk Adjustment
What is the key driver of regional variation in Medicare spending? According to a paper by Reschovsky Hadley, and Romano (2013), the answer is regional variation in patient health. Two key casemix adjustment methods—controlling for patient conditions obtained from diagnoses on claims and expenditures of those at the end of life—were evaluated. We failed to…
Friday Links
Extreme Prescribers. MyGovCost. Health Exchanges create two-tiers of insurance? The oocyte cartel. AMA measures burden from health insurers. Reforming Medicare Post-Acute Care?
HWR Comes to the Wing of Zock
Sarah Sonies and Jennifer Salopek have posted Health Wonk Review: Rhetorical Question Edition at Wing of Zock, covering such topics as such topics as costs, insurance, policy, money, and more.
Medicare Spending Growth Rates: 1994-2009
What is driving Medicare spending growth? According to a recent health affairs paper by Amitabh Chandra, Maurice A. Dalton, and Jonathan Holme (2013), the answer is post acute care. The authors use Medicare claims (5 percent MedPAR sample) to examine changes in Meidcare spending between 1994 and 2009. The authors find that post-acute spending has…
Model Fit for a Logistic Regression
How do you know if your model fits the data well? When applying an OLS regression, the standard metric is the R-squared (i.e., R2). If you have a dependent variable that is binary, however, most researchers prefer a logistic regression. If you choose a logistic rather than an OLS approach, however, how do you know…