Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina will offer individual health plans through new on-line exchanges ranging from $185 for the lowest-cost plan for 25-year-olds to $947 for the top plan for a 60-year old. Those rates were among those the insurer included Thursday in a preview of the plans it will look to…
Here is a link to a story run by Marketplace on the crazy advertisements trying to influence whether people buy health insurance on the new Obamacare health insurance exchanges. The producers at Marketplace did an amazing job of making me sound almost semi-coherent. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic – the topic…
Until recently, hospitals in California had little reason to reduce the fees they charged for procedures like knee and hip replacement. Insurance companies might come their way, trying hard to bargain down their rates. But the hospitals knew that if enough of them said “no” to these lower fees, insurance companies would be left with…
We have experienced an impressive slowdown in the growth of healthcare expenditures in recent years, a slowdown attributed in part to the plethora of important drugs which have gone generic in recent years. But state Medicaid programs, according to a recent study in Health Affairs, could have slowed healthcare costs even more, if they had been quicker to switch patients from trade to…
Pretty soon, people will be able to start shopping for health insurance on the infamous Obamacare exchanges. In North Carolina, one of the states asking the feds to take the lead in this effort, only one insurer is offering insurance coverage in every county of the state. That is Blue Cross Blue Shield, and they…
The hospital price transparency bill that was signed into effect on August 21 has elicited criticism from the Duke health community. House Bill 834 mandates that hospitals and medical care agencies in North Carolina—including Duke University Medical Center—provide pricing information on 140 of the most common health care procedures to the Department of Health and…
Imagine you are the breadwinner for a family of four, and have been out of work for a while in the recessionary economy. Your financial situation is so dire that you have had to enroll your family in Medicaid. Then you find a job, not one that will make you wealthy but one that pays…
I just came across this picture, from the Kaiser family foundation website, illustrating just how often employee healthcare costs take up 10% or more of employee payroll. The number was already pretty high more than a decade ago, but it’s gotten even higher: For large employees, this amounts to almost $5 per hour put aside…
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma’s decision to publicly post prices for common procedures could prompt other hospitals and medical facilities to follow suit. Want to know how much it will cost to repair your torn Achilles tendon? At the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, you won’t run into a wall of bureaucracy trying to find out: The…
Physicians have been, at best, slow to adopt electronic medical records. But who can blame them? These computerized systems often cost lots of money, and force physicians to spend gobs of valuable time learning a new way to track how they care for patients. On the other hand, we would all be better off if…