Insight, analysis & opinion from Joe Paduda
Market consolidation continues unabated…
Industry giant United Healthcare is acquiring Fiserv’s TPA and related businesses for $775 million in cash. The deal, slated to close either this quarter or next, does NOT include Fiserv’s third party biller operations.
$150 billion.
That’s how much revenue that’s up for grabs if/when mandated universal coverage becomes law.
Health Affairs is holding a healthcare issues summit in DC on November 1st. Attending will be more than a few of the nation’s health policy experts and policy-setters.
Theme of the day is the future of health care, including S-CHIP’s future direction, a roundtable with Presidential candidates’ health policy advisers, and a CEO roundtable.
With CEOs from Aetna, Merck, Wellpoint, GE HealthCare, HCA, the SEIU, and AARP on stage, I’m hoping we’ll learn a lot more about how they will address health care reform, and the role private industry will take in the discussions about and implementation of that reform.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Bill Gates has zero credibility when it comes to advocating for a seamless, integrated streamlined system to collect, store, and disseminate health care data?
I’m writing this on a Mac, because I finally threw my Windows PC out the window after one too many system freezes, followed by some unintelligible error message, which presaged a long and frustrating effort to get it resolved.
The GM-UAW health care deal is momentous. And not just because it saves GM a lot of money and transfers the liability for the UAW’s health benefits from GM to the union.
The tectonic shift is the change from a ‘defined benefit’ to a ‘defined contribution’ program. The UAW has essentially agreed to a cap on future health care costs. Now they will have to figure out how to deliver on members’ expectations without going broke.
Diabetes, congestive heart failure, and heart disease are increasingly conditions of the poor. And the poorer one is, the more common the condition.(free reg req)
Most health plans have little experience dealing with poor folks with chronic health problems.
They’d better start learning.
An example is worth a thousand studies – the free market can work to limit health care costs.
may be yet to come. The second-tier managed care company has positioned itself well for the future, diversifying away from its traditional small group HMO plans in secondary and tertiary markets into a mix of governmental, ASO, individual, and workers comp managed care services.
The strategy makes sense.
The latest data shows that while there has been some growth in the two types of consumer-directed health plans, it is not ‘statistically significant’ (3.8% of covered workers are enrolled in these plans in 2007, up from 2.7% in 2006).
Put another way, it looks like the CDHP movement is running out of steam.
That’s too bad.
The average cost for a family’s health insurance coverage this year is $12,106. That amounts to just over a quarter of gross median household income ($46,326). (a ‘household’ is defined as two or more individuals).
Lets put that in context.