Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Change HealthCare hack

This post uses material that a Facebook friend posted. I re-post it here with her permission. Any provider that uses a Billing Software (that has Change HealthCare integrated in their system as the main clearinghouse) can’t get claims to insurance companies once they medically bill for something/services in their software. Change Healthcare is the ‘bridge’. […]

Millions of People Could Benefit from Obamacare

Millions of People Who Could Benefit from Obamacare Don’t Because They Don’t Know About It, and Neither Does the New York Times Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker. I and others have written about the PPACA multiple times over since it came out and has been improved repeatedly since its introduction. Lets start […]

United Healthcare Physician Practice Mergers and Pricing

This is not just Physican practices being bought up. A while back I was writing about hospitals merging with other hospitals and healthcare practices being bought up. The advantage of such is in negotiating rates with insurance companies. ~~~~~~~~ A measurement of the competitiveness of a hospital within a certain area of the country is […]

Trump administration’s Impact on the ACA and the marketplace: (Part 1)

The Trump administration and the ACA marketplace: An assessment (Part 1), xpostfactoid, Andrew Sprung. In the wake of Trump’s vow to repeal the ACA if elected, Larry Levitt, EVP of health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, outlines the former president’s past and purported future healthcare agenda. Trump certainly meant harm to the ACA. His comments […]

Rein in Misuse of Medical Prior Authorizations

Factual story, not quite a year old. and more than likely still, still having relevance. Prior authorizations for care before getting it should not be problematic. Prior authorization should have been far easier. Except some healthcare insurance use delays to discourage patients. Indeed. one would think no more than 24 hours would be needed for […]

Chasing the mosquito man’s truck

Remember chasing the mosquito man’s truck? silive.com, Cassy Sommer  During the fifties and sixties, it was not unusual to see trucks spraying DDT near heavily wooded and swampy areas. I certainly do not recall kids running behind truck spraying the areas. Some claim this was a common practice. My aunts and mom would have had […]

Distinguishing science from pseudoscience

When I was in college majoring in microbiology, we were taught that diseases like scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jacob and kuru were caused by “slow viruses.” Over many years, it has become clear that misfolded proteins, not viruses, are the cause of these and other spongiform encephalopathies. Stanley Prusiner struggled for a long time to convince the scientific […]

Who owns your medical records?

Who owns your medical records? Gooz News, Merrill Goozner February 12, 2024 Hint: It’s not you. Nor do they belong to taxpayers, who paid for their collection. Merrill Goozner talks about Medical records. Merrill comments also offer up more detail about Lurie Hospital being hacked. Angry Bear had also covered the Lurie Hospital. Cyber thieves […]

Vaccination works

Other than among Jehovah’s Witnesses, vaccination rightly gained widespread trust and acceptance in America. Inoculation against smallpox was around for hundreds of years before Jenner described the eponymous vaccine. Polio was a scourge in the US through the 1950s until it was virtually eliminated by vaccination. Many deadly diseases like whooping cough and measles were […]