Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The Stimulus Package, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), key goal was to boost a flagging economy. A number of the provisions in the $787 billion package went towards health care provisions. The Kaiser Family Foundation notes that “the Act includes $149 billion in health spending of which $87 billion is…
Health Reform, also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), drastically altered the health care landscape. Congress included health exchanges, and individual mandate, and a number of other reforms into the bill. Today, I focus on how Health Reform will affect existing programs which care for the nations poor. In particular, CHIP…
How can we improve health care? The California Task Force on Affordable Care gives its top 10 recommendations in this report. The report’s slogan is “ten ways Californians can save over $300 billion.” These recommendations include: Implement bundled payments Hold hospitals accountable for progress in reducing utilization in targeted areas such as imaging Directly act…
Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER), as it name suggests, compares how well different medicines treat a given disease. Politicians claim that using CER findings can help improve quality and decrease cost. If one treatment produces better health outcomes on average than another and also costs less, we should always make people use that treatment, right? Not…
One aspect of health reform that has received little attention is passage of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports(CLASS) Act. This act creates a long-term care (LTC) insurance program. However, the insurance plan in its current form is fairly limited. Those who require assistance with activities such as bathing, dressing, getting out of bed…
Because it expands health insurance coverage, one of the key effects of the recently passed health reform bill is that it will decrease the amount of compensated care. According to an Urban Institute study: “…the cost of uncompensated care will fall from $62.1 billion in 2009 to $46.6 billion in 2019 under the Senate bill,…
From a paper by Weinstein and Skinner (NEJM 2010): “Moreover, there is considerable variation in health care expenditures and a weak or even negative association between spending and outcomes, such as mortality at the regional level and quality measures at the state level. This evidence has been interpreted to mean that cutting back on these…
Comparative Effectiveness has been a hot topic in health services research. According to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorizes the expenditure of $1.1 billion to conduct research comparing ‘clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of items, services, and procedures that are used to…
The health reform bills currently propose introduce health insurance subsidies for individuals who do not qualify for health insurance provided by the government. The goal of these subsidies is to make health insurance more affordable for the lower and middle class. The subsidies gradually decrease for higher income levels. In “Obama’s Prescription for Low-Wage Workers,”…
Here’s my take on President Obama’s health care plan. Tax credits for Health Insurance Premiums. This will do nothing to change how much health care costs, it will just change who pays the premiums. For middle class individuals, these subsidies will help make health insurance more affordable. Because the wealthy won’t receive any subsidy (the…