Tag: "health policy"

We-Have-To-Pass-It-To-Find-Out-What’s-In-It Fact of the Day

A chain of events would create a two-month period during which a family has medical coverage but no insurer must pay its claims.

Nonpayment of premiums for subsidized policies would trigger the oddity: Federal law provides a three-month grace period before cancellation – but insurers are responsible only for the first month.

Doctors say the liability might keep many physicians from participating in next year’s program. A single prostate cancer patient’s course of treatment can cost $93,000, they say.

More from Jim Sanders.

May 23, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

At least 30 states have attempted to shut down teeth-whitening businesses, and far more often than not, dental-industry interests, not consumers, drove these actions.

Republicans ask insurance companies how much premiums will rise under ObamaCare; the results are not good.

Big problem for ObamaCare: 20% of Americans don’t have checking accounts.

May 22, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Americans on Pet Spending, and Other Links

Americans spent approximately $61.4 billion in 2011 on about 218 million pets, not counting several million fish. HT: Timothy Taylor.

Miami hospital tells what buyers actually pay. HT: Sarah Kliff.

Unions not happy with health care reform law.

May 22, 2013 | 16 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

42,173 Canadians received medical treatment outside of the country in 2012.

The cost of government regulation: $14,768 per household.

A class action suit claims the IRS improperly seized 60 million medical records of 10 million people.

May 21, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Shocking: Employers Can Satisfy ObamaCare Rules with Bare-Bones Health Plans

They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn’t cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit. Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing.

Larger employers, generally with more than 50 workers, need cover only preventive services, without a lifetime or annual dollar-value limit, in order to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty…Such policies would generally cost far less to provide than paying the penalty or providing more comprehensive benefits, say benefit-services firms. Some low-benefit plans would cost employers between $40 and $100 monthly per employee, according to benefit firms’ estimates.

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

May 20, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Bill Gates: Is No Government Better Than Lousy Government?

I was completely surprised that nobody was funding some of these vaccines. When I first looked at this I thought, well, all the good stuff will have been done. It was mind-blowing me to find things like Rotavirus vaccine were going unfunded. One hundred percent of rich kids were getting it and no poor kids were. So over a quarter million kids a year were dying of Rotavirus-caused diarrhea. You could save those lives for $800 per life. That’s like $20 or $30 per year of life. It’s just ridiculous that an intervention like that isn’t funded.

And I’m really surprised at the variance. Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems and some richer ones run terrible programs. The north of Nigeria has about 30 percent vaccination coverage, and they’re above average in terms of wealth within Africa. You compare that to, say, Somalia, which has absolutely no government at all, and they get about 60 percent vaccine coverage of children. So you have a place literally with no government getting a better vaccine coverage than a place that’s above average wealth.

This is from an interview with Ezra Klein.

May 17, 2013 | 13 comments | by

Resolving the Question about Federal Employees, I Think

We previously asked whether federal employees could enter the (ObamaCare) exchanges and get tax subsidized contributions from their employer at the same time. Timothy Jost, at the Health Affairs blog, seems to have an answer. According to this Department of Labor notice, employers must notify new employees, as well as current employees no later than March 1, 2013:

  1. Of the existence of the marketplace, the services it offers, and how employees can contact it;
  2. That if the employer’s share of total allowed costs of benefit provided by the benefits plan is less that 60 percent of total costs (that is, it does not meet minimum value requirements), the employee may be eligible for a premium tax credit through the marketplace; and
  3. That if the employee obtains coverage through the marketplace, the employee will lose the employer’s contribution and corresponding tax benefits.

May 16, 2013 | 9 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Enroll America, the group that is supposed to be leading the charge to get people insured, will not be enrolling anyone.

Nearly one-third of death certificates are wrong.

Kroger’s would need to spend $20 million to come into compliance with the new calorie-posting regulations.

May 13, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

2.3 million workers could see their hours reduced because of ObamaCare.

Con artists posing as (ObamaCare) navigators are engaged in identity theft. HT: InsureBlog.

NYC school kitchen managers called on the carpet for ordering butter. (It’s now a banned food item.)

Is President Obama getting ready to go after your 401(k) account?

May 10, 2013 | 11 comments | by

You Probably Thought the Problem Was Too Much Alcohol

Pfizer Inc. (PFE), the drug’s producer, now has a site for you: its own Viagra.com, where you can get the blockbuster impotence fighter without wondering what shady source you’re dealing with. Using CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS) to verify prescriptions and fulfill orders, the site is Pfizer’s latest attempt to fight counterfeiting. In its announcement this week, the world’s largest drug maker cited a 2011 analysis it did of pills bought from 22 sites ranking high in search results for “buy Viagra.” About 80 percent were fake, containing only 30 percent to 50 percent of the drug’s active ingredient, sildenafil citrate. The new site is a reminder of the original value of consumer branding: as a guarantee of quality. It’s also evidence of the failure ― and the perverse effects ― of online drug regulation.

Virginia Postrel at Bloomberg.

May 10, 2013 | 12 comments | by
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