Cartoon – The Market will Cure It
Tag Archives: Uninsured
Saving Lives And Saving Money
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/saving-lives-and-saving-money
As health care costs continue to rise, attention has turned to a tiny number of super-utilizers. A program that started in California has taken a different approach to treating these high-cost patients: Over the past two years, it has tracked them, healed them and saved a ton of money.
Struggling to Stabilize the Exchanges
Six years after passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the individual and small-group insurance markets—the markets that the ACA remade—are still having growing pains. Health insurers have endured large losses and a number of ACA-created co-ops and other small insurers have failed. Consolidation among providers and insurers is an increasing and concerning trend. And many insurers are poised to raise premiums substantially for 2017, further stoking frustration with the insurance industry.
Even as the press vilifies insurers, however, the ACA’s supporters can’t afford to be indifferent to their struggles. Private insurers sell the managed care plans that are the central vehicle for expanding access to middle- and lower-income Americans. One day, those plans may cover many of the 11 percent of Americans who remain uninsured.
Part of insurers’ difficulty is that the risk pool in the individual and small-group markets, particularly on the exchanges, is sicker and smaller than originally projected. But the three programs—reinsurance, risk corridors, and risk adjustment—that the ACA’s drafters would hope stabilize premiums in the revamped markets have also not performed as expected. Dashed expectations have led to market instability and to a flurry of lawsuits around the “3Rs.” What does this unpredictable and difficult situation mean for 2017 and for the ACA more generally?
Healthcare Coverage Reform Proposals
Cartoon – Doctors in Consultation
What can we expect in healthcare with Clinton, Trump?
Now that our presidential nominees are set and the general election has begun, what do our nation’s hospitals and health systems need to do, whether Secretary Clinton or Mr. Trump is elected in November? They, and their parties, offer stark contrasts, but what will they mean for hospitals?
Hospitals show some benefit from ACA
The Affordable Care Act has cut hospital charity care and bad debt expenses, but opponents say it is not enough to contain healthcare costs.
C-suite feels ripple effect from Medicaid expansion, study says
http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/c-suite-feels-ripple-effect-medicaid-expansion-study-says
Medicaid expansion is making a difference as to whether hospitals are investing in clinics, new equipment and hiring new staff, or looking at the status quo and layoffs, according to a recent report by Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.
Hospitals in Medicaid expansion states have realized a drop in uncompensated care; an increase in institutional financial security; new community efforts to integrate and improve care; and innovative programs to expand access to specialists, according to the study.
CEOs who head hospitals in both expansion and non-expansion states said they saw a drop in uninsured rates in expansion states that was not as dramatic in non-expansion states.
This has translated to a decline in uninsured patient stays by close to 40 percent. Non expansion states reported a decline of 2.9 percent.
Uninsured would drop by millions, enrollment would swell if Medicaid expansion holdouts opted in
Nineteen states have yet to expand their Medicaid programs under theAffordable Care Act, and a new study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows just how much enrollment would increase if they did: 7.8 to 8.8 million, while the number of uninsured would decline between 4.1 and 5 million, the research found.
That’s in addition to about 6.9 million people who would be subtracted from the ranks of the uninsured under the major coverage provisions of the ACA.
More than half of these people would be in three states: Texas (1.2 million), Florida (877,000), and Georgia (509,000). More than four-fifths of the uninsured people gaining Medicaid eligibility would be adult without children, while about 48 percent of the uninsured gaining eligibility would be white non-Hispanic; 52 percent are working either full- or part-time.
Sanders convention speech cites Clinton health care concessions
Sanders convention speech cites Clinton health care concessions
In a Democratic convention speech that revisited the agenda of his surprisingly competitive campaign for the nomination, Sanders reminded the audience that while he may have lost the race, he did succeed in convincing Clinton to support three important proposals: a “public option” for Obamacare, letting people join Medicare early, and a big funding increase for community health centers.
“This campaign is about moving the United States toward universal health care and reducing the number of people who are uninsured or underinsured,” Sanders said. “Hillary Clinton wants to see that all Americans to have right to choose public option in their health care exchange.”
HENRY KOTULA 