Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Why do Medicare patients choose to stay in their current Part D prescription drug plan or switch to another? Are they rational actors maximizing their their financial benefit or do other factors play a role. A paper by Kate Ho and co-authors (NBER WP version) presented at the 2016 ASSA meetings find the switch rates…
For the past few years, some economists have claims that increases in income inequality are due to increased cost of employee benefits such as health insurance. For instance, let’s say that health insurance cost $10,000 per worker. Workers with a wage of $20,000 have total compensation of $30,000 including benefits, and workers with wages of…
A McKesson study cites 7 trends in value-based reimbursement: Rapid adoption of VBR. About 90% of payers and 81% of providers are already using some mix of value-based reimbursement (VBR) combined with fee-for-service (FFS). Collaborative regions are more aligned with VBR. Collaborative regions, where one or two payers and providers stand out, are more aligned…
Health insurance premiums appear will rise modestly or even decline for many Obamacare plans in state Health Insurance Exchanges. A RWJ brief reports: Premium increases will be quite low between 2014 and 2015. In the rating areas we examine in the 17 states plus the District of Columbia, six states will have average premium reductions across the carriers’…
Beginning in 2018, many individuals will face the “Cadillac” tax. What is the Cadillac tax? The Cadillac tax is a tax on high-cost health insurance plans. According to a Truven report, it is calculated as “40 percent of the excess of total per employee per year (PEPY) healthcare costs above statutory threshold limits of $10,200…
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased the likelihood individuals have insurance by: (i) offering states money to expand Medicaid eligibility, and (ii) offering individuals subsidies to purchase insurance through newly created health insurance exchanges. Did it work? A Robert Wood Johnson report examines at the effect of the ACA on uninsurance rates in 14 large…
Currently, patients entering the health insurance exchanges can choose from platinum, gold, silver and bronze plans. What is the difference between them? As the names indicate, platinum has the highest premium and bronze the lowest. However, bronze plans may be more expensive. Why is this? In essence, all the plans cover the same items. The…
Was health reform successful in Minnesota? If the metric of interest is reducing the number of uninsured, the answer is certainly yes. A State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) report finds: The number of uninsured in Minnesota fell from 445,000 (8.2 percent of the population) to about 264,500 (4.9 percent of the population). How…
That is the headline from an Avalere report. The top 5 Exchange plans in the state of Washington increased premiums between 6 and 12%. The Exchange plans with market share ranks of 6 or 7, on the other hand, had increases between 0-2% and the 8th place plans even cut rates by almost 7%. Is…
Marketplace Money reports that a PwC study finds that Obamacare plans are actually lower cost than comparable plans outside the Health Insurance Exchanges. “That’s one of the misperceptions out there. That somehow they are barebones or you are not really getting adequate medical insurance,” she says. Connolly says even when you factor in all the…