Patients get what they pay for
Patients, in spite of what it may feel like, pay only a tiny fraction of the total health care bill directly from their own pockets. It’s no wonder then that prices and good service are hard to find.
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Articles
Slower rise in health insurance costs is an illusion
The ‘modest’ 4 percent rise in health insurance premiums, when compared with wages, shows things are getting worse, not better, for health care consumers.
Swapping Obamacare for a single-payer system?
How would a single-payer national health insurance program change the finances for employers, workers, doctors and hospitals?
A dose of light reading
Starting with this post, I’m going to periodically give you a peek at my reading list. I’ll highlight reports and reportage that I have found either helpful or provocative. I hope you do, too.
Expect deja vu: Obamacare won’t fix health care
By and large, Obamacare will leave in place the same major problems in the health care systems that existed before the law was passed—in both Indiana and across the nation.
Already a wreck, the worst is yet to come with Obamacare
Obamacare is destined to fail for one key reason: it will make health insurance cost more and buy less.
Relax, rejoice: Obamacare will revive health care
This is the first of three blog posts, each of which will make a compelling case for one of three distinct positions on Obamacare in Indiana: why it will succeed, why it will fail and why it will be a “non-event.”
Reworking Obamacare’s numbers: Half of Hoosiers to gain, half to lose
Digging into the filings by health insurers, I concluded that half of Hoosiers buying individual coverage next year on exchanges will pay less than before Obamacare. The other half will pay more.
Amid Obamacare’s changes, WellPoint keeps old playbook
Even as it tries narrow networks, health insurer is trying to offer more choice of doctors now, but push for lower provider payments later.
Most individuals will pay less, not more, in Obamacare exchanges
Even with premiums doubling from 2012 to 2014, Obamacare’s subsidies will offset premium increases for most Hoosiers buying health insurance via the new federal exchanges.
Call the midwife: Doctors, hospitals, patients all guilty of driving up childbirth costs
I can see the business model of the physicians and hospitals at work as they recommend tests of questionable necessity. Yet when it’s my own wife and son, it’s easy to think of a terrible outcome to avert with just one more test.
WellPoint’s respite from criticism will be short-lived
With recent attention focused on hospital prices, WellPoint and its peers have been enjoying a nice break from their long-running status as Public Enemy No. 1 in the nation’s health care debate. They shouldn’t expect it to last.
Medicare report a fresh threat to local hospital finances
A new recommendation from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, if enacted, would likely end one of the ways Indianapolis-area hospitals have generated healthy revenue from their recent spree of physician acquisitions.
Hospitals, insurers should end hide-and-seek with prices
To get control of health care spending, prominent health policy wonks are calling for new rules requiring hospitals and insurers to raise the ‘veil of secrecy’ they have thrown over their prices for decades.
232,000 Hoosiers hang in balance in Pence-Obama wrangling over Medicaid
New analysis shows Obamacare would cut state’s uninsured rolls 49 percent, compared with just 18 percent if Gov. Mike Pence opts out of a Medicaid expansion.
Are employers ready to limit workers’ choice of doctor?
The real test of so-called narrow network health plans will come not with Obamacare's exchanges, but with employers, who control a far bigger slice of the health benefits pie and have been highly reluctant to limit their workers' choice of hospitals and doctors.
Are employers ready to limit workers’ choice of doctor?
The real test of so-called narrow network health plans will come not with Obamacare’s exchanges, which cater to individuals, but with employers, who control a far bigger slice of the health benefits pie and have highly reluctant to limit their workers' choice of hospitals and doctors.
Think again: Why Obama’s disclosure of hospital charges won’t help you
In the first post on my new blog, The Dose, I explain why the recently released Medicare charge data are meaningless for everyone but uninsured patients.