The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found employers are projecting a 7 percent hike for health care costs in 2024. Aon projected the average costs for U.S. employers paying for their employees’ health care could increase 8.5 percent to more than $15,000 per employee in 2024. Voters remember the pain, not the gain by […]
Introduction: It appears HHS and CMS are taking action with Medicare Advantage plans and their payments to brokers selling Advantage plans. They allowed Kaiser Family Foundation healthcare to republish a Modern Healthcare article. I am lucky enough to have access to and republished at Angry Bear. According to the article, “insurers increasingly not only pay […]
Finally, someone of stature is taking a look at private equity acquiring hospital chains, milking their funds, and leaving a shell of what the original hospital was earlier. I am hoping Elizabeth Warren can force the issues with these take overs private equity takeovers. In the end, many communities depending on these hospitals are left […]
Pandemics are bad for economies. Vaccinations are an important bulwark against pandemics. But all viruses and all vaccines are not alike. In the case of the annual flu vaccine, annual vaccination against flu variants can be a problem: antibody-producing memory cells crowd out new antibody-producing cells, and people develop relatively few neutralizing antibodies against the […]
The latest news? Do not drink. A shot of anything is generally 1.50 fluid ounces, which is 41.7 grams. Whiskey can range in proof, starting at 80 proof. Simple math and using 80 proof whisky (40% alcohol) yields 16.68 grams of alcohol. I am going to guess Bourbon is similar. I got tired of reading the […]
I put much of this short article in up just to make the point, “we had no basis for what we were doing. And wat we did promote was not a cure. It was preventive actions on droplets within six feet rather than a plan to limit exposure to an aerosol spread of Covid. The […]
by Merrill Goozner GoozNews Hospitals are pushing back on an experiment that would put providers on budgets. CMS should ignore their lobbyists and consultants playing games with numbers. Changing the way hospitals and doctors get paid is central to reforming our dysfunctional health care system. Payment reform can achieve better health outcomes, improve the patient […]
by Lawrence O. Gostin and Sarah Wetter MEDPAGE TODAY — A slew of cases this term could reshape health policy. Undecided Issues still before SCOTUS which should be decided this month. The Justices will then take off for a bit to reconcile the decisions they made causing issues amongst the population. Nothing unusual here, it […]
Today, the Supreme Court released its opinion in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Here’s a little background—you can be forgiven if you’ve lost track of how this case has evolved since I first wrote about District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s order granting a nationwide injunction banning mifepristone in April of 2023. In April of 2023, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal district […]
Privatization Warning by Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early The American Prospect When the Department of Defense (DOD) or U.S. intelligence agencies face a crisis, they often assemble a task force to conduct a review and recommend solutions. In response to cost overruns on care for nine million patients of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the […]