Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Research by the Dartmouth Atlas team has indicated that Medicare spending is concentrated regionally. States such as Florida spend much more per beneficiary than do doctors who treat similar patients in low cost states like Minnesota. A recent paper by Reschovsky and co-authors, however, has determined that variation in supply-induced demand is not a major driver…
One of the key components of health reform is expanding Medicaid eligibility to more individuals. My comments on the Health Reform provisions were expanded Medicaid coverage was that it was just taking the same poor system and expanding the coverage to more people. However, the cost of these additional people may be lower if they…
Health Reform will of course increase Medicaid spending as more people become eligible for this entitlement. Yet this is not the only reason Medicaid costs will rise due to Health Reform. From a working paper by Jagadeesh Gokhale. “Once ObamaCare becomes fully effective in 2014, the cost of newly eligible Medicaid enrollees will be almost fully covered…
The Affordable Care Act of 2010 includes a number of provisions to study and/or implement value-based purchasing (VBP) programs in the United States’ health care system. These provisions target Medicare payment policies in particular. Today I review a Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) article which provides an overview of the ACA provisions related to VBP. There…
On Monday, a federal judge in Florida declared that the individual mandate in the health reform law is unconstitutional. Some people are excited; other are not. What does this mean for you? Today I will explain. Why is the individual mandate so important? As part of health reform (PPACA), insurance companies can no longer adjust…
The provision of the ACA (a.k.a. Health Reform) have a number of provisions to mandate more generous health insurance benefits. Some of these provisions include the following: Health plans generally must allow adult children up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ policies Health Plans cannot charge co-payments for preventive services Health plans cannot…
“The good thing about the systems not being highly integrated and coordinated is that premiums are lower. Why are those hospitals and physicians [integrating]? It wasn’t for increased coordination of care, disease management, blah, blah, blah—that was not the primary reason. They wanted more money and market share.” A Fresno, California medical group physician Using…
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has put together a series of briefs which explain how Health Reform will affect various types of consumers. These briefs include: Young adults, Seniors, Children, Individual and small-group premiums. Hospitals, and Physicians. Although are a lot of these types of guides out there, the RWJ briefs are generally fairly comprehensive…
Health Reform (a.k.a. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA]) provides two small provisions that will affect malpractice costs. Randall Bobvjerg explains: “As enacted, PPACA contained only two, quite limited malpractice provisions. Section 10607 authorized malpractice demonstrations by states, and section 10608 extended federal malpractice protections to free clinics’ nonmedical personnel. The demonstration authority comes…
As part of Health Reform, the government created the a center to study clinical effectiveness of different health treatments. This center, known as the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), “does not have the power to mandate or even endorse coverage rules or reimbursement for any particular treatment.” What leverage does the Institute have? Not too…