Category Archives: Uncategorized
Hospital CEO pay rises faster than overall health care spending
Pay increases for many top Massachusetts hospital executives outpaced the growth of state health spending in 2014, according to new filings with the Internal Revenue Service.
Leading the pack was Elizabeth G. Nabel, president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who drew total compensation of $5.4 million that year, up 119 percent from her $2.5 million pay package in 2013. Most of the increase was attributed to a jump in deferred compensation in 2014, the year she vested in a retirement plan managed by Brigham and Women’s corporate parent, Partners HealthCare.
Cut Healthcare Spending or Face the Public Option
“If we don’t get a handle on spending at some point, we will have a government-financed system,” predicts the head of the Pacific Business Group on Health.”
HIPAA is 20 years old. What has it meant for healthcare?
On Aug. 21, 1996 — 20 years ago Sunday — President Bill Clinton signed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) into law.
Back when bipartisanship still occasionally happened in Washington, this law, championed by then-Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kansas) has come become to be defined by the privacy and security regulations that it enabled. Those took effect in 2002 and 2003, respectively, after the Bush administration modified rules that the Clinton administration rushed to finish before Clinton left office in January 2001.
But, as the formal name implies, HIPAA initially was known for giving people the right to “portability” of health insurance when they change jobs by limiting the ability for insurers to exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions. The complex law also led to standards for healthcare administrative transactions and a national system of provider identity codes.
HIPAA did call for a national patient identifier as well, but in 1998, Congress voted to deny the Department of Health and Human Services funding to implement a patient ID. The program still has never been funded, and the private sector has since taken it upon itself to address the issue.
So what has HIPAA accomplished in 20 years? Where has it fallen short?
THE POWER OF DISADVANTAGE
Cartoon – A Good Policy
Cartoon – There’s no time for thinking
Cartoon – Our Corporate Indebtedness
Fitch: Health insurer credit metrics hit hard in first half of 2016
Higher leverage ratios from acquisition-related debt combined with declining revenue growth and declining interest coverage ratios contributed to deteriorating credit metrics for publicly traded health insurers in the first half of 2016, according to a Fitch Ratings report.
The weakened credit picture has led Fitch to take several negative rating actions. The rating agency downgraded Louisville, Ky.-based Humana’s senior notes, revised Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group’s rating outlook to negative and placed ratings of Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna, Indianapolis-based Anthem and St. Louis-based Centene on negative watch.
