A study found no evidence that primary-care physicians spend less time with safety net patients and the uninsured than with privately insured patients, countering longstanding assumptions that doctors give less attention to Medicaid and uninsured patients.
The study in the September issue of the journal Health Affairs looked at the amount of time physicians spent with patients and found no significant differences between those with private insurance and patients with Medicaid or those uninsured.
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The Obama administration has basically told House Republican lawmakers to go fly a kite in response to their recent demand that organizations receiving federal funds to help Americans sign up for health coverage on the state insurance exchanges provide extensive information on their operations by Sept. 13.
Navigator groups and Obamacare supporters, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), had accused the Republicans of using the time-consuming information request to delay the navigators' efforts in the crucial run-up to the Oct. 1 launch of open enrollment on the exchanges.
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The benefits of expanding Medicaid coverage to homeless and chronically ill adults under healthcare reform may seem obvious. But enrolling this population and providing them with healthcare services will not be easily achieved, a survey published in Health Affairs shows.
The survey, which included more than 700 homeless adults enrolled in a housing and healthcare effort between 2004 and 2009, found adults reported “serious physical and mental health conditions, suggesting that chronically homeless adults have a wide variety of health needs that require a broad range of health services.”
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But wait, there's more!
For those who know they exist, the state health insurance exchanges set to open next month are primarily a vehicle by which the reform law will offer individuals, families and small businesses a choice of health plans and an opportunity to receive a federal premium subsidy.
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Clinton
The reform law got a boost Wednesday from former President Bill Clinton, who praised the law's benefits and urged supporters and detractors to work together on fixing its problems.
Clinton's speech is a needed boost for the White House less than a month before open enrollment begins, especially as the Obama administration is now focused on garnering support from Congress for a military strike against the Syrian government. <
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Serious and potentially fatal dental infections are the cause of a growing number of hospitalizations, according to a study in the September edition of the Journal of Endodontics.
The study covered a nine-year period, from 2000 to 2008, using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. The NIS is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient-care database in America.
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Part of a four-year tentative labor agreement reached this week between the California Nurses Association and Dignity Health includes a new program designed to curtail and deal with workplace violence.
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Minuteman Health, a not-for-profit, consumer-governed health plan sponsored by Vanguard Health Systems and Tufts Medical Center, said Monday that it received an HMO license and premium rate approval from Massachusetts regulators.
The plan will offer individual and small-group plans both on and off Massachusetts' state insurance exchange starting in October.
Minuteman is one of the Consumer Operated and Oriented plans in 24 states around the country made possible by startup loans authorized by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The goal is to encourage the launch of consumer-friendly plans that foster greater competition in the insurance market. While other co-op plans around the country previously received approval to sell plans on state insurance exchanges, what sets Minuteman apart is that it was originally sponsored by two major hospital systems. Many of the co-op plans were organized by groups and individuals not associated with major providers or investor-owned companies like Vanguard.
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The Obama administration and a national organization called the Young Invincibles on Monday launched a monthlong video contest to encourage enrollment of uninsured young adults in health plans offered on the state insurance exchanges.
Healthy young Americans are considered a key target group for enrollment, because their low medical costs will keep premiums down on the exchanges and offset higher costs of older, sicker enrollees. But surveys show that many young people either are unaware of the requirement that they obtain coverage or else don't see the need. Most uninsured young people who don't have coverage through their employer are expected to qualify for federal subsidies to buy insurance.
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A new analysis suggests that smart design of the websites used for the new state insurance exchanges to enroll consumers in health plans could save consumers and the government more than $9 billion a year.
It highlights the difficulty for consumers of choosing a health plan that best fits their healthcare and financial circumstances even in the new reform environment where they can more easily make apples-to-apples comparisons.
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Lee
Some of California’s top insurers, including Kaiser Permanente, are protesting the state’s plans to drop quality ratings from insurance listings when its exchange goes public on Oct. 1.
Covered California executive director Peter Lee told the Los Angeles Times that the data behind existing quality ratings were too out of date. He also fears the plans sold on the exchanges will be very different from the individual policies that formed the basis for the star-based grades (this is movie-land).
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