Mid-week Links
Merit-based financial aid increases alcohol consumption. Can Walmart improve health? No pain. Does this qualify as high-value healthcare? Value of HCV drugs to those who never get HCV.
Month: December 2015
Reforming Medicare Provider Payment
With the ACA and now MARCA, Congress is moving full steam ahead with payment reform. An article by Paul Ginsburg and Gail Wilensky (2015) consider some of the implications of these reform efforts. This belief – that a set of metrics can be developed or delivery systems specified that could lead to the delivery of…
Every Boston resident owes $3,000 for…
underfunded liabilities for city worker health care costs. Brookings reports: Like most American cities, Boston has promised to pay most of the health care premiums for its employees after they retire — which can be as early as age 45 or 50. Boston also subsidizes the Medicare premiums of its retired employees after age 65.…
Friday Links
Is ‘best price’ a good deal? Friendship and health. Physicians and DTC advertising. ACA and competition. Best books of 2015.
A Child’s Guide to War
Kids interview one another. Half the children have veteran parents, half do not. Honest and interesting throughout.
International perceptions of ability to manage complex patients
In an international study using data from the Commonwealth Fund, Robin Osborn and co-authors survey primary care doctors in the United States and nine other industrialized countries on how well they are able to treat patients with complex needs. They found that the percentage of doctors that feel that their practice is well-prepared to manage…
The demise of PPOs in Health Insurance Exchange
A Robert Wood Johnson commentary by Katherine Hempstead provides insight into the evaluation of PPO offerings in health insurance exchange. Since last year there has been a significant reduction in the number of PPOs offered in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces. A prior analysis showed that of the 131 carriers offering silver PPO products…
Antidepressant coverage in the Health Insurance Exchange plans
The most common drug class taken among patients aged 18-44 is an antidepressant. Furhter, these relatively young and healthy patients are likely to be the ones who enroll in healht plans within the health insurance exchanges. The question is, how easily can patients access information about antidepressant coverage? According to a recent RWJ report, the…
How do patients choose their physician?
What matters to patients when choosing a physician? Expertise? Bedside manner? Previous relationship with the physician? To answer this question, a paper by Groenewoud et al. (2015) conducts a discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey of Dutch patients with knee arthrosis, chronic depression, or Alzheimer’s disease. They found that patient preferences for their physician depended on the disease. The…
HWR is up
Peggy Salvatore says it’s beginning to look a lot like chaos in HWR Healthcare on Parade Edition freshly posted at Health System Ed blog. She makes some analogies with the annual Macy’s Day Parade – check it out!