HWR welcomes Charles Gaba, publisher of the highly-regarded ACAsignups blog to the editor’s chair.
His edition is a very quick read – giving you what you need to know – and nothing else!
Mar
24
Insight, analysis & opinion from Joe Paduda
Category: Health Wonk Review
Feb
25
18% of our economy is healthcare. To know where it’s headed and how it will change, read Louise Norris’ edition of Health Wonk Review.
Louise has a plethora of posts from really smart people about the Path Forward for ACA and health reform, plus thought-provoking takes on pharma pricing, conflicts of interest, grandfathered health plans and the working person’s travails in 1915.
Nov
19
Brad Wright has penned a wonderful edition of Health Wonk Review, replete with the latest insights into health policy, workers’ comp, ACA implementation, and nefarious efforts by device manufacturers.
Pleasing to the eye and brain, Brad’s effort is just terrific!
Nov
5
Is upon us, and the ever-entertaining David Williams enlightens us with his erudite elocutions on Health Wonk Review.
Love ACA or hate it, there’s much to consider from David’s collection of entries!
tip – David’s use of “malfeasance” is priceless
Oct
22
Jason Shafrin, our favorite health care economist, has this fortnight’s edition of HealthWonkReview ready for your reading pleasure.
Lots of scary stories sure to get you ready for the spooky season!
Oct
12
Two entries were inadvertently left out of last week’s Health Wonk Review – my apologies!
From Bill Danylik comes this report on a survey indicating perhaps half of large employers are going to be affected by the “Cadillac Tax by 2018. Fine by me; the tax was part of the great compromise reached to fund ACA way back when. It is intended to reduce the favorable tax treatment of benefits, one that subsidizes rich benefit plans.
Posting at the HealthInsurance.org blog, Wendell Potter provides insight into why some states have experienced big increases in individual health insurance premiums. Mr Potter thinks this is due to the similarity between the US health insurance business and the casino industry.
Hmmm, will Native Americans will come to rule health insurance soon?
OK, if you’re off today, enjoy. If not, back to work!
Oct
9
Harvest time is here, and we have a cornucopia of cogitation from contributors for your consideration. (sorry, it’s late…)
The lede
This may be mis-named, as Roy Poses MD’s take on the latest in the ongoing revolving door debacle presents a decidedly unappetizing look at regulatory processes. The candidate nominated to head the FDA has strong ties to the industry he will be regulating. While a superficial review of Robert Califf’s CV doesn’t indicate much of concern, a deeper dive uncovers a board position at a drug company and various and sundry other financial ties.
Dr Poses’ unstinting efforts to teach the rest of us about the far-too-chummy relationships between regulators and regulatees makes him one of our industry’s best.
Implementing Reform
In what may be the umpteen gazillionth effort by the GOPers in the US House of Representatives to do something, anything to kill PPACA, we now have a lawsuit filed by that august body accusing CMS of overstepping its authority re cost-sharing subsidies for exchange enrollees. Attorney Max Horowitz, an expert in the law brings us this tight description of the issue; if you just want to know the basics, click thru.
A huge effort has been underway to automate and integrate health care delivery. Peggy Salvatore shares the latest from the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT. The ONCHIT announced that it has rolled back Meaningful Use requirements and put in place a 10-year plan for complete nationwide health IT interoperability. These two documents come on the heels of the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan two weeks ago. This is a big deal folks…
Meanwhile, the Colorado version of ACA seems to be moving along albeit with bumps along the way, some of them – shockingly – created by the same folks who continue to try to kill PPACA. Colorado Health Insurance Insider shares what’s happening as health plans set premiums for future years and wonder what happened to the Risk Corridor payments they were promised. Thanks Louise!
The fine folk at HealthAffairs are careful students of all that is payment reform; they direct our attention to limitations in the current shared-savings models employed by Medicare, limitations that means those models don’t work that well for low cost ACOs. Two execs have come up with a creative alternative, one with global risk-adjustment that may address some of the issues with the current model. This is exactly what health reform is supposed to do – get smart people to figure out better ways to do things.
Yay!
Reports of the death of physician private practice may be exaggerated – or at least very, very premature. Jaan Sidorov at Population Health Management provides a very interesting post detailing why and how small physician groups are competing quite well in these days of mega-huge health systems.
My contribution is a piece offering a quick review of a bunch of issues in the healthcare world including the Cadillac tax, premium increases, employee cost sharing, and payer consolidation. All in one easy-to-digest bite!
This next post may cause major indigestion in corporate board suites.
While company executives seem to always escape without any penalty when their companies do bad things, one exec may well get hammered. The top exec at Massey Mining, the company tied to the Upper Big Branch mine disaster is facing trial for his role in the tragedy that killed 29 miners. The question to be addressed involves the level of responsibility a CEO has when things go horribly wrong. WorkCompInsider’s Julie Ferguson includes links to some pretty telling video detailing what CEO Don Blankenship is is accused of.
For post-prandial lethargy sufferers
You know those health plan emails encouraging you to exercise? They may get more serious soon…Hank Stern and friends at InsureBlog are telling us that FitBit may be one way healthplans will find out exactly how many steps you’ve taken. Not to worry; it will be HIPAA compliant.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t give Hank a shout-out; his blog recently was named the #2 Men’s Health Blog. I gotta believe something from Maxim hit the top spot – no other way to keep IB off the top of the podium…and you know how shallow men are!
That’s enough for now. enjoy your Friday, have a ball this weekend, and get out to those Farmer’s Markets!
Jul
30
Actuaries are projecting health care costs will increase 5.8% annually over the next 9 years. Others think that increases will be significantly smaller.
While the 5.8% is a bit higher than we’ve seen of late, it is a heckuva lot lower than the average for the last three decades.
Currently health care is responsible for 17.4% of US GDP; if the inflation rate prediction holds true and other economic sectors also grow as projected, health care will account for one out of every five dollars in ten years (19.6% to be precise).
We do know that the prediction will prove to be somewhat wrong, and economic growth for the next quarter is hard enough to predict, making a ten-year projection the proverbial dartboard in a dark room. So, what’s with the discrepancy between predictions?
The actuaries responsible for the 5.8% figure believe the soft economy over the last few years has been the primary driver of low health care cost inflation. Their thinking is that now the the economy is back to steady and significant growth, demand and prices will both heat up.
The counter-argument attributes the recent happy days of low medical cost inflation to structural changes in the health care delivery system. Their view is these changes, while overwhelmed somewhat by the big increase in the insured population due to PPACA, will help keep cost growth low as they become increasingly commonplace.
At this point, we just don’t know; there is anecdotal evidence that medical homes work and don’t; that ACOs are a success and a failure; that behavioral changes are working and are non-existent. That is far from surprising; we are still pretty early into this process, a process which is massively changing almost one-fifth of our nation’s economy.
What does this mean for you?
The key message is costs will continue to increase, with health insurance cost increases somewhat mitigated by higher deductibles and copays.
What’s also very clear is the health plans that are able to deliver lower costs and sufficient outcomes will do very well.
Apr
23
The ongoing rollout of the Affordable Care Act is the primary subject of this edition of Health Wonk Review – but there’s much more from the best of the health policy blogosphere – all summarized here for your reading pleasure!
PPACA rollout
Brad Flansbaum has written a thoughtful and compelling perspective on the impact of reimbursement changes on physician compensation, posing tough questions and seeming to come down on the side of longer/harder/tougher/knottier vs slam-dunk.
The coverage gap (wherein folks have to pay a penalty if they go without insurance coverage) is covered by Louise Norris at Colorado Health Insurance Insider – in fact she’s more on the ball than any of the other sources folks normally turn to. One key – if “your gap in coverage includes three or more months, you’ll be assessed a penalty for the entire period without health insurance; ” so being covered sometime during the fourth month doesn’t meet the test.
BTW, the IRS will assess a penalty for those going without coverage – and Louise has the skinny on those details too.
Bob Laszewski highlights the low consumer ratings of Covered California and the massive dollars poured into the site by the Feds. Bob notes coverage expansion has been far below estimates, while costs have been far above. Ouch.
Friend and colleague Hank Stern continues his merciless coverage of PPACA rollout with InsureBlog’s entry this biweek – a quick summary of notable news about the “ObamaTax”. Double Ouch…
Another coverage gap is addressed by Anthony Wright of Health Access California. Anthony reports on efforts by CA legislators to expand coverage to include undocumented workers in the Golden State. Pending changes in immigration may well increase the number of people eligible for coverage under PPACA.
Some want to kill PPACA; others, more politically savvy, want to replace it. Writing in Health Affairs’ blog, Tim Jost discusses the various ideas/thoughts/concepts circulating among GOP Senators and Congresspeople, concluding that it isn’t really possible – given the GOP’s antipathy for the core goals of PPACA – to “replace” it. And, most of the ideas floated to date won’t do much to increase coverage or reduce cost.
From MCM I submit a brief post detailing the cost trends for private health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. Notably, the “Ms” have lower trend rates than private insurers.
SGR is dead!
Pigs will fly. Lions and lambs will lie together. The Cubs will win the World Series (well, that may be a stretch). Those are events as equally unlikely as Congress agreeing on a bipartisan fix to Medicare physician reimbursement. Writing in medicareresources.org, the estimable Louise Norris contributes another worthy piece dissecting the implications of the replacement of the much-reviled SGR with small, but predictable increases in physician pay. Of note, there are also incentives to improve quality, extension of some niche health plans, and continued emphasis on increasing transparency. All good things, which just shows things can get done on Capitol Hill...
Our favorite health care economist, Jason Shafrin, contributes a quick take on the passage of a Medicare reimbursement “doc fix” – a fix that, while it adds $141 billion in additional cost over the next ten years, also simplifies other programs intended to reward top-performing docs.
Stuff you need to know
Julie Ferguson has a sobering piece on workplace suicides, noting law enforcement, farming, and auto repair are the industries most affected. Julie teases out the common factors, provides additional insight into specific industry risks, and focuses on the need for mental health support for family farmers. A great piece.
Returning from the annual HIMSS conference, contributor John Lynn shares his thoughts on what’s going to happen to Health IT in the near future; with implications for new entrants, entrenched old-line vendors, and the mid-tier outfits alike.
This biweek’s “hey, I didn’t know that! that’s pretty cool” moment comes from Jaan Sidorov MD, who reports that:
persons of low socioeconomic status are more likely to have smart phones vs. the “banked” population. They may not have a checking account, but, compared to other segments of the population, they are more able to use these devices to access and manage their “e”care. [emphasis added]
HWR veteran Roy Poses MD has a tough piece on hospital CIO’s perspectives that they, the CIO, “own” patient engagement. Roy’s take is this is part of the problem with health care; generic managers who don’t actually deliver care think they “own” it. Well worth a read.
Finally, One Happy Nurse reveals why a 7 hour wait in the ER isn’t so bad…and she should know – she’s been working in an inner-city Level II trauma center ER for more than two years.
Whew…after almost ten years of HWR, it’s great to see the best keep getting better!
Jan
29
at the Health Care Economist. Join Jason Shafrin for a whirlwind tour of the best of the health policy blogs – and, it’s even more compelling than that game down in Arid-zona!