Ever since World War 2, when employers started using health benefits to compete for workers, the less employees had to pay toward health insurance premiums the more attractive the benefits. But under Obamacare, this axiom will not always be true.
Since WellPoint says it’s not losing money on the exchanges—at this point—that’s encouraging news for those who would like the Obamacare exchanges to remain a viable option.
St. Vincent Health has been sending roughly $50 million to $70 million every year to its parent company, St. Louis-based Ascension Health, to support other hospitals in Ascension’s 93-hospital network.
In spite of offers to strike a short-term extension, UnitedHealthcare and Indiana University Health are still hung up in contract negotiations on one key point: Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare wants to create a multi-tiered network of providers and services that would offer the lowest co-pays and deductibles for favored hospital systems—which IU Health is not.
In my financial situation, I could save from 2 percent to 30 percent buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. I suspect a lot of small companies and their workers will see similar results.
Congress’ recent willingness to play hardball with providers is driving providers to cautiously embrace concepts—like pay-for-performance and keeping patients out of the hospitals—they have long resisted.
There are clear signs that hospitals nationally, and even here in Indianapolis, are actually starting to make good on their promises to keep patients healthier and out of the hospital.
New research shows that expanding Medicaid won’t save money, in spite of the claims of Obamacare supporters, but it will provide modest help to patients’ health and pocketbooks, in spite of conservative critics’ contention to the contrary.
Obamacare has officially arrived, but both conservatives and liberals are calling it awful. That means the real debate over health reform is just beginning.
When Joe Swedish was named the next CEO of WellPoint Inc., investors frowned. At first.
In the Christmas spirit of hope, I’m offering a reading list of several optimistic reports about health care reform—even though many of my recent posts, and the mood of the country in general, have been decidedly downbeat.
The Obama administration has been releasing more price and quality information, but it is coming in a rather useless form for patients. That’s a problem for the prospects of consumer-driven health care.
There is good evidence that new technology deployed via new methods of medicine across the entire health care system can reduce the need for physicians. But there are too many barriers for such changes to occur in time to cut off the surge in demand brought on by Obamacare.
A new Medicaid expansion deal with the Republican governor of Iowa OK’d a cost-sharing requirement similar to what Indiana Gov. Mike Pence wants. But the Obama administration says it won’t extend that deal as low as Pence would like to go.
Based on some very rough assumptions, I calculate that Hoosiers could see premiums 14 percent to 28 percent higher in 2015, due in part to low enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges in 2014.
In response to insurers’ “zero-premium” strategy, hospitals figure out their own way to game the tax subsidies available in the new Obamacare exchanges: pay premiums for their patients.
IU Health is working with a hospital-based health plan in Pittsburgh that is now directly challenging the Blue Cross health plan there. Could the same thing happen here?
In spite of President Obama’s promises that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, the president’s health reform law is spurring health insurers to make him a liar on that point too.
The movement toward a “public health” model may be the most important current trend in American health care. Because the trend is more a result of market forces than of the Affordable Care Act, repealing Obamacare won’t stop it.
A new survey shows Hoosiers don’t like the Affordable Care Act, most would like to see it repealed, and by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, they support Pence’s handling of the question of expanding Medicaid.
