Joe Paduda is hosting Health Wonk Review over at "Managed Care Matters."Not surprisingly he's got lots of blog entries regarding Senator Clinton's new health plan and lots of other samples of some of the best blog posts from the past couple of weeks.Also making the big time this week was our good friend, Brian Klepper, who had the following letter published in the New York Times regarding Senator
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Medicare Advantage Cuts Still on the Table to Offset the Medicare Physician Fee Fix
The House/Senate deal to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) does not include a fix to the January 2008 10% Medicare physician fee cut. It also doesn't include the $51 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage (MA) program the House had in their bill to pay for that fix and other Medicare improvements.As I have said many times before, that only means that the Medicare
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Hillary Clinton's Health Plan
Here is an excerpt from the Clinton campaign's press release outlining her $110 billion a year health care reform plan:FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASESeptember 17, 2007The American Health Choices Plan:Ensuring Affordable, Quality Health Care for All AmericansHillary Clinton unveiled the third part of her plan today to ensure that all Americans have affordable, quality health insurance. Building on her
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SCHIP Agreement "Near"
There are a number of published reports indicating that the House and Senate have reached an agreement to extend SCHIP along the lines of the earlier bi-partisan Senate agreement.That would mean a $35 billion SCHIP expansion paid for entirely be a new 61 cent tobacco tax.Bush says he would veto such a deal. While the Senate seems veto proof on this one, the House is another matter.If Bush is
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Hillary Clinton's Health Plan--the Republicans Better Take it Seriously
Sometimes I think that all the Republican candidates for president think they need do is go into a crowded room and yell, "Hillary Care," and all of the voters will run for the exits in terror.This is not 1993 and this is not the inexperienced Hillary Clinton who tried to drop her drafted-in-secret 1,400 page health care proposal on us all in one "take it or leave it" roll out.She has changed
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SCHIP Negotiations Not Going Well--Medicare Physician Fee Cuts and Medicare Advantage Payments Hang in the Balance
Negotiations between the House and Senate over how to extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) before its September 30 deadline are not making much progress.The Senate passed a bipartisan extension of the plan that included $35 billion in new spending and paid for it with a hefty 61 cent per pack tobacco tax.The House passed a solely Democratic bill that would spend $60
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Hillary Clinton to Outline Her Health Plan on Monday--She Will Target Insurers as the Bad Guys
Senator Clinton will unveil her health plan in Des Moines on Monday. The heavy betting is that it will look a lot like the general Democratic health reform template that draws on the recently enacted Massachusetts health reform law.We do know this, she will do what she did in 1993 and 1994 and demonize the insurance industry. On Wednesday she said, "I intend to dramatically rein in the influence
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The UAW's Negotiations With the "Big Three" Automakers Over Retiree Health Benefits and Why They are Important to California Health Reform
The health care reform debate in California has come down to whether there should be an individual mandate to purchase health insurance and whether a big chunk of the cost of the program should be put on the employer community in the form of a 7.5% payroll tax for businesses that don't provide their workers with coverage.Organized labor is firmly behind the Democratic legislature's efforts to
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Health Insurance Premiums Rose Only 6.1% in 2007--But This May Be The Last Year the Trend Rate Will Fall
According to the annual Kaiser Family Foundation survey of employer health benefit plans, the average employer premium rose 6.1% in 2007--the lowest increase in four years of successively falling trend rates.The increase was 13.9% in 2003 (the recent peak), 11.2% in 2004, 9.2% in 2005, and 7.7% in 2006.The average cost of family health insurance also rose to an incredible $12,106 while the
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Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Joins the Blog World
A very smart lady who knows a lot about the intersection of health care and technology has joined the health care blog world.Jane has a post up today that puts the new figures on personal health care spending in context with what Americans spend on technology.Her new blog is, "Health Populi."
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