health insurance
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Analysis: Obamacare Can't Fail
The standard of success for the Affordable Care Act keeps getting weaker. Whether in enrollment numbers, federal savings, or the workings of its website, the White House has repeatedly lowered the bar for the law when it has missed expectations, replacing initial standards with ones that are lower, squishier, or nonexistent. Read More »
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Are CMS' Efforts Too Little and Too Late to Save the Collapsing US Rural Healthcare System?
With 35 percent of rural hospitals losing money and almost two-thirds running a negative operating margin, there’s simply no way rural facilities can invest in health IT without help...It’s clear that CMS understands we can’t leave rural hospitals to fend for themselves. But it also seems clear that a lot of hospitals invested in electronic health records (EHRs) they could ill afford to qualify for Meaningful Use funds—dollars that seldom covered implementation costs for solutions that didn’t yield significant cost savings and required additional technical personnel...“The high capital and operating costs associated with health IT, specifically EHRs, have put some hospitals in a difficult position,” wrote Becker’s Hospital CFO in a prescient January 2014 article. “Do they absorb the financial hit now, even if they know they can't afford it? Most organizations are doing so …”
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Are You Feeling 10 Percent Healthier This Year?
It’s open enrollment season for health insurance, and many Americans are getting a painful shot of reality – a hefty increase in the cost of their annual premium. Just in time for the season, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the average annual premium for family coverage rose 9 percent this year….at a time when the average American’s pay rose 2 percent. Read More »
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As Hospital Prices Soar, A Stitch Tops $500
With blood oozing from deep lacerations, the two patients arrived at California Pacific Medical Center’s tidy emergency room. Deepika Singh, 26, had gashed her knee at a backyard barbecue. Orla Roche, a rambunctious toddler on vacation with her family, had tumbled from a couch, splitting open her forehead on a table... Read More »
Aspect of Health Law Has Been Helping Veterans for Years
As Supreme Court arguments for and against the Affordable Care Act began Monday, the retiring director of the country's biggest Veterans Health System district said one element of the law transformed health care for veterans long ago. Read More »
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Assessing The Exchanges
Over the last few days, I have spoken in some detail about the state of the federal Obamacare exchanges with several officials of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the HHS agency that is running the exchanges), and with a number of reasonably well placed insurance company officials in Washington... Read More »
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Baby Birth Costs Vary 10-Fold In Hospitals, Study Finds
The cost of giving birth at a hospital can vary by tens of thousands of dollars, a price range that is “largely random” and unexplainable by market factors, a California study found. Read More »
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Background On The National Conference On Mental Health
On Monday, June 3rd, President Obama and Vice President Biden will host a National Conference on Mental Health at the White House as part of the Administration’s effort to launch a national conversation to increase understanding and awareness about mental health. Read More »
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Battle Heats Up Over HealthCare.gov Paper Trail
A battle over the paper trail documenting the troubled building of the Obama administration’s online health insurance marketplace heated up on Friday as contractors declined to withhold some documents from congressional overseers and the lead investigating committee’s ranking Democrat accused his Republican counterpart of unfair dealing. Read More »
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Cash-Only Doctors Abandon The Insurance System
Fed up with declining payments and rising red tape, a small but growing number of doctors is opting out of the insurance system completely. They're expecting patients to pony up with cash. Read More »
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CFOs: Don't Read This If You Like High, Ever-Growing Health Insurance Premiums
While the federal health reform gets a lot of media attention, in many ways the real action is in the “DIY Health Reform” movement driven by non-partisan entrepreneurs. For example, I outlined this prior to the State of the Union earlier this year – Mr. President: The Deficit Problem was Solved Last Week but for the Preservatives Read More »
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CGI Group Seen Rebounding From Obamacare Website Failure
CGI Group Inc. (GIB/A) Chief Executive Officer Michael Roach told investors at a conference two weeks before the debut of the Obamacare website that the contract marked the start of a “long-term relationship” and a “significant growth opportunity.” Read More »
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Changing The Structure Of Health Care Delivery Systems: To Benefit The Patient, The Providers, Or The Insurers?
In an important series of 3 articles beginning on the Sunday before the New Year, “Doctors Inc.”, Alan Bavley of the Kansas City Star looked at the increasing acquisition of physician practices by hospitals, and the impact this has on access to, quality of, and cost of health care for patients. [...] Read More »
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Cigna Named 2013 Red Hat Innovator of the Year
Cigna recognized for successful Infrastructure-as-a-Service transformation project built with Red Hat solutions Read More »
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Cloud devs: We Could Have Saved Buggy HealthCare.gov
Millions of Americans flooded the new health insurance marketplaces when they opened for business earlier this month. What we didn’t expect were the glitches, bugs, error messages, and a website that looks like it’s from 10 years ago. Almost two weeks later, people are still struggling to log in to the Obama administration’s online insurance marketplace, HealthCare.gov, let alone shop for insurance. Read More »
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