Tag: "Health Care Costs"

Can Safety Net Hospitals Survive?

The Need:

health-care-costsHealth-care providers faced between $74.9 billion to $84.9 billion in care costs for the uninsured and people who struggled to pay their medical bills, according to new estimates published in the journal Health Affairs. Using the lower of the two estimates, Urban Institute researchers calculated that hospitals provided $44.6 billion of the uncompensated care, publicly supported community providers delivered $19.8 billion, and office-based physicians provided about $10.8 billion.

Dwindling resources:

Some of the most notable cuts outlined in in the [Affordable Care Act] are to what’s known as Disproportionate Share Hospital payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs. These safety-net hospitals are expecting to see a total $22.1 billion cut to Medicare DSH payments between the 2014 and 2019 fiscal years, and the ACA originally called for $17.1 billion in cuts to the Medicaid DSH program through 2020.

Jason Millman.

May 13, 2014 | 7 comments | by

Unnecessary Care

As many as 42% of Medicare beneficiaries in 2009 underwent unnecessary medical treatments, costing the federal government as much as $8.5 billion, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. The analysis is the first large-scale examination into what Medicare spends on procedures that are widely considered to be unnecessary, such as advanced imaging for lower back pain and placing stents in patients with controlled heart disease. (KHN)

May 13, 2014 | 14 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

money-crossroadsPrices within the same provider network can vary 300 percent.

Employers dumping sickest workers into ObamaCare exchanges: “It’s all over the marketplace.”

Syphilis is making a comeback.

By 2023, ObamaCare’s health insurance tax will cost 152,000 to 286,000 private-sector jobs and reduce output by $20 to $30 billion.

May 09, 2014 | 13 comments | by

The Medicare “Doc Fix” Might Not Be Such a Bad Solution After All

This is Austin Frakt:

yuHowever, from another point of view, the formula — as flawed as it is — has helped keep Medicare spending lower than it might otherwise have been. Instead of cutting physician payments by the large amount the S.G.R. demands, Congress has increased payment rates, but typically by only tiny amounts — at an annual rate of just 0.7 percent.

But, although fees have only increased 8 percent since 2000, Medicare’s spending on physicians has increased 69 percent per patient. This is because the number and intensity of treatments has increased significantly. Could doctors have responded to lower real fees by cranking up volume?

May 06, 2014 | 16 comments | by

Should Doctors Decide if Your Health Care is “Worth It”?

StethoscopeThis is Aaron Carroll:

I’m truly conflicted here. Like any good “economist”, I’m worried about future health care spending. I know that fee-for-service just sucks, and that the financial incentives for practice are totally misaligned. But I remain totally skeptical about pay for performance (see this, this, this, this, this, this, and this). I don’t see much evidence that programs like that work, and I don’t believe that the things we can measure are necessarily the same as how we’d ideally define quality.

I’m also concerned with making doctors the ones responsible for deciding what’s “worth it.”

May 05, 2014 | 14 comments | by

Will ObamaCare Prove More Costly Than Medicare and Medicaid?

One consistent argument in favor of expanding government-run health care in the U.S. goes like this: “We’re the richest country in the developed world, so we should be able to provide universal health care like all the other developed countries.”

Well, we are a heck of a lot richer than we were in the 1930s or 1960s, when Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid rolled out. Despite our significant increase in income, those three programs are bankrupting the nation. And ObamaCare wreaks more fiscal havoc at a significantly faster rate than any of those programs.

With two simple charts, Charles Blahous of the Mercatus Center shows how much more expensive ObamaCare will be than Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid — just five years after Congress enacted them.

In one chart, Blahous illustrates that the federal deficit will be about 5.5 percent of GDP five years after ObamaCare’s enactment — versus only 3 percent five years after Social Security’s enactment and less than one percent five years after Medicare’s and Medicaid’s enactment.

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Source: Mercatus Center.

Read More » »

Apr 25, 2014 | 18 comments | by

Seven ObamaCare Taxes That Are Hiking Health-Insurance Premiums This Year

Ahealth-care-costsmerican Action Forum’s Robert Book analyzes how seven ObamaCare taxes contribute to higher health-insurance premiums in 2014. The results?

  • ObamaCare exchange premiums are $354 higher,
  • Fully insured employer-based premiums are $196 higher, and
  • Self-insured employer-based premiums are $94 higher.
Apr 24, 2014 | 12 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

prescription-drugsPrices for a dozen generic drugs jumped 2,000 percent in one year: FDA to blame.

Users report better experience on broken state ObamaCare exchanges than federal healthcare.gov exchange.

Did Kathleen Sebelius request kickbacks from H&R block for enrolling ObamaCare applicants?

Man covered by ObamaCare owes half the cost of a $54,000 helicopter ambulance bill.

The Heartbleed virus infected Heatlhcare.gov: ObamaCare exchange enrollees advised to change passwords.

Apr 22, 2014 | 14 comments | by

Twofer: Ryan’s Medicare Plan Saves Taxpayers $20 Billion and Reduces Seniors’ Premiums

Paul Ryan keeps making his Medicare reform proposal more politically palatable, while still saving money all around:

08Ryan’s plan has gone through several versions, but all of them have been based on the old bipartisan idea of “premium support.” The idea was that instead of paying for senior citizens’ medical services directly, the federal government would help them purchase private coverage plans.

The CBO still projects savings for the federal government — $15 billion — but it shows that beneficiaries will pay less, too.

(Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg View)

Apr 18, 2014 | 14 comments | by

Deductibles in ObamaCare Exchanges

dfgFrom the Heritage Foundation, ObamaCare in Pictures.

Apr 14, 2014 | 32 comments | by
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