One of the computer chips that can replicate all human vital biological systems is illuminated in a microscope at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., on Friday, July 8, 2016. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s “Human on a Chip” research is experimenting with technology that replicates all human vital biological systems. The chip could mean the end of animal testing for drugs and household products
Kaiser Permanente, one of the biggest health care systems in the country, has promoted two executives to run its largest regions: Northern California, with roughly 4 million enrollees, and Southern California, with 4.2 million.
Together, the two Golden State units cover 77 percent of Kaiser’s 10.6 million enrollees nationally.
Janet Liang, currently the unit’s chief operating officer, was named president of the Northern California region. Kaiser said her current job will be folded into the new one.
Julie Miller-Phipps takes on the same role in Southern California.
Accountable care is supposed to be about paying for value. But six years after passage of the Affordable Care Act heralded the shift away from fee-for-service, Dr. Greg Carroll, corporate clinical leader of GOHealth Urgent Care, has an important question: “Where’s the value?”
Under pressure from onetime rival Bernie Sanders and the liberal wing of her party, Hillary Clinton has pushed for a “public option” form of coverage in the state and federal health insurance exchanges.
The decision is considered to be a middle ground option away from Sanders’ primary campaign push for single-payer coverage. The proposal was recently endorsed by President Barack Obama.
However, the public option has drawn fire from the hospital sector, which fears it would depress the payments it receives to provide care. As a result, the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals reached out last week to the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee.
Increased cost-sharing, particularly high deductibles, lead patients to neglect necessary healthcare, according to a position paper from the American College of Physicians (ACP).
“The effects are particularly pronounced among those with low incomes and the very sick,” said Nitin S. Damle, M.D., president of the ACP in an announcement that accompanied the paper.
By exposing individuals to the full cost of certain expenses, cost-sharing undermines the primary function of insurance, says the ACP, noting that underinsurance may be a more challenging problem than lack of insurance.
More than 40 percent of marketplace plan enrollees and more than 20 percent of those insured through employers who report being in fair or poor health or having a chronic condition express confidence that they can afford necessary care, the paper says. But those with high-deductible plans have less confidence in their ability to afford a serious illness than those with low-deductible plans.
The ACP notes that rising premiums have led many employers to shift costs to employees in the form of higher average deductibles, which more than doubled between 2005 and 2015, even as wages remained largely flat.
Healthcare spending will comprise 20 percent of the U.S. economy by the middle of next decade, according to new data from the Office of the Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and published in Health Affairs.
Expenditures on healthcare services will grow at an average rate of 5.8 percent per year between 2015 and 2025, about 1.3 percent higher than projected annual growth in the U.S. gross domestic product, CMS concluded. By 2025, healthcare spending will comprise 20.1 percent of the U.S. economy, up from 17.5 percent in 2014. Expenditures totaled $3.2 trillion last year.
Despite the seemingly robust spending growth, it remains lower than the 8 percent annual growth clip that occurred in the two decades before the Great Recession of 2008, which helped to slow expenditures significantly. In 2015, spending grew at a 5.5 percent rate. This year, it is projected to be 4.8 percent, attributable in part to the slower expansion of newly insured under the Affordable Care Act.
“The Affordable Care Act continues to help keep overall health spending growth at a modest level and at a lower growth rate than the previous two decades. This progress is occurring while also helping more Americans get coverage, often for the first time,” said CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt in a statement.
Advocates of taxing these drinks say that they contribute to high rates of obesity and diabetes, and that putting a bigger price tag on them can reduce consumption and improve people’s health. Critics argue the taxes are unpopular and that it is discriminatory to single out one item in the grocery cart.
The American Beverage Association, one of the staunchest opponents of soda taxes, has funded successful opposition campaigns throughout the United States, including in California.
