The healthcare spending slump isn't just a U.S. phenomenon.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that healthcare spending increased less than 2% in 2011 among its 32 member nations, with the sharpest slowdowns being felt in those countries hit hardest by the economic crisis. Spending fell in 2010.
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A University of Texas academic has concluded after pouring over Kaiser Permanente's proposed rates for its exchange offerings in California that the high rate on its lowest-cost health insurance plan is not due to the plan's generosity.
Comparing Kaiser's proposed “bronze” offering to its existing plans for healthy young adults, the researcher wrote on The Incidental Economist blog that the new premium, at $205 a month, will be more than double the old premium. Yet the benefits and available provider network (they both used Kaiser) will be essentially the same.
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NPR's “Morning Edition” contained a long report from ProPublica noting that many of the physicians listed as top prescribers for specific drugs also took in large speaking fees from the drug manufacturers.
The investigative non-profit news operation compared Medicare claims data from 2010 to drug company reports on their physician payments—about 16 have had to make such disclosures to settle government fraud investigations.
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Blackwelder
This year's American Medical Association House of Delegates meeting featured a renewed sense of collegiality, no noticeable net change in the number of bearded delegates, a recognition of ties between current delegates and momentous health policy events from 50 years ago, and—speaking of ties—a return of one of the more prominent bow tie-wearing delegates.
The AMA's new president, Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven, said in an interview that she felt a “good spirit” at the meeting. This was echoed by Shaan Gandhi, a fourth-year Harvard Medical School student and an alternate delegate from Massachusetts. Gandhi said he enjoyed the mix of healthcare policy discussions—ranging from support for a ban on the marketing of energy drinks to youths to delaying the implementation of the ICD-10 set of diagnosis and procedural codes. Gandhi said he definitely would attend future meetings.
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Athenahealth, a Watertown, Mass.-based cloud-computing firm, is seeking a major tax break to expand its operations in the Bay State.
While the state's Economic Assistance Coordinating Council is expected to sign off on $9.5 million in special economic development tax credits at its regular meeting on Thursday, the incentive package is drawing fire from some critics. “This sounds like a case where a company is getting paid for what it was doing anyway,” Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs first, a Washington-based advocacy group, told the Boston Globe.
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The editor of the Journal of the Medical Association has peeled back a controversial rule adopted three years ago to protect the integrity of clinical trials.
Dr. Howard Bauchner, in an editorial posted online, wrote that requiring outside academic biostatisticians to review the findings of industry-funded clinical trials will no longer be a requirement for publication. "Advances over the past decade in standards of clinical trial reporting, enhanced understanding of the threats to validity of clinical research, increasing data transparency, and our experience support the change in policy," he wrote.
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Physicians overwhelmed by the “firehose” of new medical information pouring from medical journals need docents to guide them through the recommendations, writes Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in today's New York Times.
"Take, for example, the recommendations issued recently by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists on caring for patients with diabetes. The AACE's latest guidelines elevate many second- or third-line drugs to more prominent positions in the prescribing hierarchy, rivaling once uncontested go-to medications like metformin, an inexpensive generic. They also emphasize the riskiness of established treatments like insulin and glipizide, which now carry yellow warning labels in the AACE summary.
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Dr. Paul Offit, the chief of the infectious diseases division of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, skewered the mega-vitamin industry in an article in the Sunday New York Times.
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Chopra
In the race of life, Aneesh Chopra has always been a high-energy guy, but these days he's literally a man on the run.
The former White House chief technology officer is one of two candidates in the race for lieutenant governor in Virginia's Democratic primary on Tuesday.
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It goes without saying that people on Medicaid don't earn much money. While state programs' health benefits differ from state to state, all must have very low co-pays and deductibles to earn the federal match. The same will be true for those states that expand their Medicaid programs to cover people earning up to 138% of the poverty level.
The CMS is considering an Arkansas proposal to use its Medicaid expansion money to subsidize purchase of individual insurance coverage on the state's exchange. A CBO report concluded that buying private plans would cost the federal government a lot more than simply expanding Medicaid.
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It goes without saying that people on Medicaid don't earn much money. While state programs' health benefits differ from state to state, all must have very low co-pays and deductibles to earn the federal match. The same will be true for those states that expand their Medicaid programs to cover people earning up to 138% of the poverty level.
The CMS is considering an Arkansas proposal to use its Medicaid expansion money to subsidize purchase of individual insurance coverage on the state's exchange. A CBO report concluded that buying private plans would cost the federal government a lot more than simply expanding Medicaid.
Read more »
