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

Medicare Drug price control in the Inflation Reduction Act Moves Forward Except for Insulin

JAMA Network “How Do Commercial Insurance Plans Fare Under Proposed Prescription Drug Price Regulation?” Rena M. Conti, Richard G. Frank, Len M. Nichols December 2021, this article came out detailing Medicare negotiating directly with pharmaceutical companies and the impact of the negotiation on people insured by commercial plans. That is if commercial insurance plans were […]

SCOTUS Rebuffs United Healthcare Medicare Advantage

This is an interesting result I ran across in MSN as taken from Reuters. Both Kip Sullivan and I have written about Medicare Advantage plans over coding patients, resulting in overcharges to CMS Medicare. “Why is CMS Overpaying United Healthcare Medicare Advantage Plans?” – Angry Bear, “Medicare Advantage and Medicare Issues” – Angry Bear, “Kip […]

Your Subsidy Expires? What You Will Pay for Healthcare Insurance

As is typical, Charles Gaba at ACA Signups.net has the answers to the question. Charles does a lot more of this type of analysis such as the Healthcare’s Three – Legged Stool, ACA Enrollment, Risk Pools, etc. All three of these are at Angry Bear. I am not sure why Michigan state and federal legislators […]

Medicaid Estate Recovery imposed on Medicaid enrollees

  Andrew writes on healthcare, mostly the PPACA plan and the various metal plans, and the latest gig (ARPA) resulting in lower costs for anyone under 250% FPL and lower costs for anyone higher than 400% FPL. All made possible due to Biden and Democrat’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It will expire EOY 2022 […]

Medicare vs Commercial Insurance Pricing 2012 – 2019

Copy and Paste for now until I can get into the Health Affairs article. Hospitalization averages a third of all healthcare costs. The pricing (Pricing equals costs in this instance) varies by region which kind of tells me there “may” be variation due to the strength of ACOs in regions. Trends in Hospital Prices Varied […]

Healthcare Sector Indicators and Insights

This is mostly a C&P with editing involved. Taken from Altarum Health Sector Economic Indicators, and “Insights from Monthly National Health Spending Data through December 2021.” I have added the link Altarum to return to the original article. Without the additional government spending covering Covid costs and a recession during 2020 -2021, overall healthcare spending […]

Healthcare News – Georgetown Center for Children and Families

These are sections of healthcare news articles which I thought might catch your eye and may interest you on topics in healthcare. I added the links to each article so you can read “the rest of the story” if you care to do so. Georgetown Center for Children and Families – What can be found […]

Increasing Costs are driving Insurers and Systems Apart

Some History 2014: A frenzy of hospital mergers into ACOs as detailed by Philip Longman and Paul Hewitt could leave many families having lesser amounts of healthcare paid for by healthcare insurance due to healthcare industry consolidation leading to higher prices. We have seen this happen with higher prices for insurance plans, increased deductibles, and […]

Safe Healthcare Outcomes for Women Giving Birth

April 2019, I wrote on the topic of A Woman’s Right to Safe Healthcare Outcomes as asked by one organization a woman at ConsumerSafety.Org. It took me forever as I had to acquire greater understanding of the issues. In the end it was well received even though I did not feel it did the topic […]

VA health care system treats vets better than private facilities

Coming fresh off of featuring Kip Sullivan’s “Single Payer Health Care Financing Presentation – Three Part Series,” also “Continuing the Conversation concerning Medicare and Medicare Advantage Part 1 and Part 2.” and Kip Sullivan and Ralph Nader Talk Tradition Medicare vs Medicare Advantage; I came across this article by Suzanne Gordon concerning Veteran healthcare and […]