The Health Care Affordability ModelHealth plan networks made up of insurers and providers would be required to first begin to stabilize and then control their costs. Failure to do so would mean the loss of their federal tax qualification. Premiums for a non-qualified health plan would no longer be tax deductible for individuals or plan sponsors who used these unqualified plans.The Affordability
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Stakeholders Provide 28 Pages of Detail on How to Save $2 Trillion Dollars--And They Did it With a Straight Face!
America's Health Plans (AHP), the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Hospital Association (AHA), The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have detailed their plans to "do our part" toward achieving the administration's goal of saving $2 trillion in
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Kaiser Health News Debuts Today and Features an Important Insight Into a Likely Health Care Bill
Kaiser Health News (KHN) debuted today and is a critically important addition to America's debate over health care reform.As the media has downsized in recent years, we have lost many reporters who were health care specialists. KHN will provide news outlets across the country with an important specialized source of solid reporting from an organization that has come to be known as uniquely expert
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Money-Driven Medicine—N.Y. Premiere of Film, June 11
Many of you know Maggie Mahar who comments regularly on this blog and has one of her own.She is also the author of "Money Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much."Now here is something to be impressed by, Maggie's book has been made into a movie! Here is a recent post from her blog, Health Beat, with an open invitation from Maggie to all you health care wonks out there to
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When We Really Do Health Care Reform They'll Know It In McAllen Texas
In recent posts I have expressed my concern that the Congress has all but given up on real health care reform and seems more interested in entitlement expansion.I worry that the Democrats have found the path to paying for a health care bill (note that I did not say health care reform).I will suggest that path includes a little cost containment window dressing so they can spin that they have a way
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UnitedHealth Knows How to Save $500 billion In the Medicare Program--So Why Do They Need the Extra Private Medicare Payments?
This from Erica Werner's AP story today:A major health insurer [United Health Group] says the government can save more than $500 billion in Medicare spending by sending patients to less expensive, more efficient doctors, reducing hospital visits by the elderly and cutting down on unnecessary care.So UnitedHealth knows how to save $500 billion in Medicare spending.Aside from the fact that all of
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An Open Letter to the New National Coordinator for Health IT: Part 4 -- Bringing Patients into the Conversation About "Meaningful Use" of Health IT
by DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPERThe Obama health team at HHS and ONC are gradually establishing the rules that will determine how approximately $34 billion in ARRA/HITECH funds are spent on health IT over the next several years. But there is a "missing link" in these deliberations that, so far, has not been addressed by Congress or the Administration: how the patient's voice can be "
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The First "Harry and Louise" Ads!
To me a "Harry and Louise" ad is negative health care reform advertising meant to defend a special interest's self-interest in what we all pay for health care. Whether it actually has "Harry" or "Louise" in it is for me beside the point. To qualify it just has to be trying to scare people to protect a special interest.Yesterday, CQ's Drew Armstrong had a story with the headline, "Labor Unions'
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We Are On Our Way To Confusing Entitlement Expansion With Health Care Reform
I generally find Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein levelheaded. But his column today has me shaking my head.Effectively, he is saying forget what it costs--health care reform needs to be done.His biggest problem is that he doesn't know the difference between entitlement expansion and health care reform.But the way things are looking neither does the U.S. Congress.From
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Progress on Finding the $2 Trillion--Insurer Association Says Physician and Hospital Payment Changes "Won't All Be Voluntary"
Just how will the health care stakeholders who promised President Obama $2 trillion in savings last week achieve the reduction?This from a May 18th Bloomberg story:Standardized billing and forms would cut administrative expenses, said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a Washington-based trade group, in an interview today. Some likely measures, such as changing
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