Health Insurance Exchange Decisions…So Far!
But in this partisan world, not all states are going ahead with the idea of creating these exchanges. The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff has a nice summary, in one simple picture, of where things stand:
People have criticized The Affordable Care Act for amounting to a large transfer of wealth, from wealthy Americans to those not as well off. But the real transfer of wealth has been from United States to other developed nations, whose healthcare costs we have subsidized for many years by paying so generously for many of…
In the New York Times on Friday, Roni Caryn Rabin writes a great article about the crazy price hikes that hospitals and medical clinics impose upon patients who come to them from “out of the network.” Examples include a more than $6,000 doctor visit, one for which Medicare would have paid less than $200. Examples…
It was 93 degrees and humid. Jimmy Lawrence put his first five quarters into the vending machine and selected a Coke. The machine refused to give him his beverage. Because the temperature was more than 90 degrees, the computer program within the vending machine had raised the price to $1.50. Is that fair pricing? …(Read…
Healthcare systems are big and complex beasts, that are very hard to transform overnight. In the United States, for example, we have long had a system of care dominated by fee-for-service payment. In this kind of system, the more tests and procedures and office visits that a physician orders, the more that physician gets paid….
Catholic Charities describes itself as a “social justice movement,” one that sees its mission as providing “service to people in need” and giving aid to local agencies “in their efforts to reduce poverty.” Given the role of healthcare expenses in pushing people into poverty, then, you would think Roman Catholic leaders would be big fans…
Euphemistically referred to as Consumer-Directed Health Plans, high out-of-pocket insurance is in theory supposed to incentivize people to scrutinize the cost and quality of their medical care, thus bringing pressure on providers to lower the price and/or raise the quality of their services. This theory isn’t borne out in practice. As a matter of practice…