Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana expects the average premiums it charges on the health insurance exchanges being created by Obamacare to be about $60 per year less for each of its health plan members than they would have been without the law.
Even in the face of alarmingly high hospital prices, no one should conclude that hospitals are the bad guys in the health care system. Hospital executives are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing as the business leaders of their institutions.
A new study found that Indianapolis-area hospitals are charging patients insured by their employers 264 percent more for outpatient services than the federal Medicare program pays for the exact same services at the same hospitals.
Gov. Mike Pence’s go-slow approach could push an expansion of Medicaid eligibility in Indiana to the end of 2014. And he’s OK with that.
Medicare data show some county-owned hospitals around Indianapolis scored better than big-name hospitals like IU Health and Community.
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.
The ‘modest’ 4 percent rise in health insurance premiums, when compared with wages, shows things are getting worse, not better, for health care consumers.
How would a single-payer national health insurance program change the finances for employers, workers, doctors and hospitals?
In this age of austerity, there’s almost no chance of Indianapolis hospitals creating a Cleveland Clinic-like hub of innovation.
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.
The local orthopedic surgeons are presenting themselves as low-cost providers in an attempt to reverse growth restrictions imposed by Obamacare.
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.
Obamacare is destined to fail for one key reason: it will make health insurance cost more and buy less.
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.”
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.
Even as it tries narrow networks, health insurer is trying to offer more choice of doctors now, but push for lower provider payments later.
Franciscan St. Francis Health earned a $6.6 million bonus from the Medicare program for its success at keeping central Indiana patients out of the hospital and the emergency room. So the hospital system will expand its participation in so-called accountable care programs to all its Indiana territories.
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.
Hospitals already operate like for-profit businesses, but now a financial pinch is making more hospitals join their ranks. Aggressive moves by St. Vincent’s parent organization are just the beginning.
As the Pence administration continues to negotiate with the feds, local hospitals say their recent cuts would not have been changed even if Indiana had expanded its Medicaid program.
