Click to access CSHS-Price-Brief_July_2016.pdf
Health care prices in May 2016 were 1.5% higher than in May 2015, the third consecutive month at this rate. The May 2016 12month moving average was 1.2% for the fourth straight month. Year-over-year hospital price growth rose modestly to 1.0% from 0.8% in April. Physician and clinical services prices rose only 0.3% in May, down from 0.6% growth in April. Drug price growth fell to 3.3% from 4.0% in April.
Click to access CSHS-Spending-Brief_July_2016.pdf
National health spending in May 2016 was 5.0% higher than in May 2015. Spending on prescription drugs dropped to 5.2% growth, continuing its decline from the 12.2% spike in 2014. The health spending share of gross domestic product (GDP) stood at 18.1% in April as moderate health spending growth of 5.2% still far outpaced anemic GDP growth of 3.3%. Official government projections released on July 13 anticipate spending growth of 4.8% for all of 2016, the lowest rate since 2013.
http://www.chcf.org/articles/2016/07/reflections-17-years?_cldee=aGVucnlrb3R1bGFAeWFob28uY29t
California’s individual health insurance marketplace today bears little resemblance to that of the mid-2000s. Since 2014 Californians have been able to purchase individual coverage without regard to their medical history. They can switch plans and carriers during annual open enrollment periods. Consumers face strong incentives to obtain coverage: They incur tax penalties if they remain uninsured, and all who are lawfully present and meet income standards are eligible for subsidies through Covered California. As a result, a greater share of Californians is now covered through the individual market than is uninsured (14% versus 11%, according to one national survey). While affordability concerns remain, early data show that Californians who bought insurance through the individual market spent significantly less than those buying before the ACA. And the percentage of Californians with individual coverage spending more than 10% of their household income on health care costs also went down.
http://www.chcf.org/articles/2016/06/how-one-doctor-realized
http://www.chcf.org/projects/2009/chcf-health-care-leadership-program
Oh, the things they don’t teach you in medical school. . . .
Every practicing physician carries around a list of blunders, miscommunications, errors, and missed chances — a pile-up of regrets and lessons learned the hard way. These doctors carry on by doing the very thing that propelled them through med school and residency: toughing it out, pushing through the next obstacle to achieve their goal. It can sometimes feel like a Pyrrhic victory.
The road can get really rough in the middle of the journey. Frustrations mount, hopes darken — especially for physicians moving into leadership roles. The pressures from all sides can drain the satisfaction out of a career in medicine, leading to depression, lousy home life, self-defeating workaholism, and ultimately, professional burnout.
That’s what Geoffrey Leung, MD, was at risk of experiencing when he applied for the California Health Care Foundation’s leadership program two years ago. Now finishing up his second and final year in the fellowship, Leung wants other aspiring physician leaders in California to know there’s a path out of the swamp.
http://www.chcf.org/aca-411/insights/physician-participation?_cldee=aGVucnlrb3R1bGFAeWFob28uY29t
The share of physicians accepting new Medi-Cal patients is an indicator of the program’s capacity to meet demand. If a decreasing share of participating physicians are willing or able to take new Medi-Cal patients, beneficiaries in the program may have trouble getting the care they need. The proportion of physicians accepting new Medi-Cal patients has historically lagged behind the proportion accepting new patients covered by Medicare, which has a higher reimbursement rate, as well as behind the proportion accepting new patients with private health insurance.
New 2015 data now available on ACA 411 show the percentage of physicians participating in Medi-Cal has declined since 2013 — during the same period Medi-Cal enrollment skyrocketed by 39%. This raises serious concerns about whether the supply of physicians participating in Medi-Cal can meet the increased demand.
Physicians’ willingness to treat Medi-Cal beneficiaries is critical to ensuring Medi-Cal enrollees have adequate access to care. Without a sufficient number of doctors serving Medi-Cal beneficiaries, Medi-Cal enrollees may not be able to receive care in a timely manner. Beneficiaries may delay seeking needed care with disastrous effects or may end up receiving care in more costly settings.
Click to access PDF%20BalancingAffordableCoveredCa.pdf
Subsidies offered through the health insurance marketplaces established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have reduced the cost of health insurance for millions of Californians. Subsidy amounts, however, are set nationally and do not take into account the local cost of living, which varies dramatically across the state.
Even with the help of subsidies, many Californians struggle to afford coverage through Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace, especially those living in areas where a high cost of living already strains household budgets.
In this analysis, researchers identified an affordability threshold — the minimum amount a typical household would need to earn to have sufficient funds to cover their basic needs and Covered California premiums and out-of-pocket costs after federal subsidies.
The affordability threshold varied widely by county, mostly due to the local cost of living, but in every county it fell above the maximum income to qualify for Medi-Cal as an adult (138% of the federal poverty level or $33,543 for a family of four or $16,395 for one person). This suggests that in every California county, there are families and individuals — specifically those earning above 138% of FPL and below the local affordability threshold — who are falling into an affordability gap. They earn too much for Medi-Cal but not enough to afford health insurance through Covered California, even with subsidies.
Many U.S. communities saw gains in their health and health care between 2011 and 2014, but wide variation in progress indicates there is room for improvement across the country, The Commonwealth Fund’s newly updated Scorecard on Local Health System Performance finds.
Those areas of the U.S. that improved did so largely because more people had insurance coverage and could afford to get the care they needed, and because health care providers performed better on quality and efficiency measures—such as limiting hospital readmissions. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has contributed to many of these improvements, the researchers say.
Still, the analysis of 306 U.S. local areas on health care access, quality, avoidable hospital use, costs of care, and health outcomes shows that while care improved more than it worsened in nearly all communities, the gains were often modest. Among the more worrisome trends are the rise in obesity rates in more than 100 areas and the stagnation in preventable death rates nearly everywhere.
The Commonwealth Fund’s interactive scorecard features data visualizations, an online tool enabling comparisons of U.S. communities, and complete area-by-area results on the scorecard’s 36 health system indicators.
