May
16
The Political Squabbles of Health Care: Appointing a New CMS Chief
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For more than six years, the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not had a confirmed chief administrator. That is a concerning fact – CMS is responsible for the health insurance and care of nearly one in three Americans, and has a yearly budget of more than $800 billion dollars. The Department of Defense, in comparison, has a budget of just over $500 billion dollars. With such a huge amount of money and responsibility at CMS, why has the position of head administrator remained vacant for more than half a decade?
May
10
Will Obamacare Hurt Young People?
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By most accounts, now is a great time to be a young person on the health insurance marketplace. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, children can stay on their parents’ insurance plans until the age of 26; state insurance exchanges will make it easier for young people without a job to purchase individual insurance online; and many new insurance plans will be specifically tailored to suit the market of young, healthy buyers looking to pay lower premiums. Read more
May
6
Inpatient or Outpatient? Medicare’s Murky Definitions
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Webster’s Dictionary defines an inpatient as: “a hospital patient who receives lodging and food as well as treatment.” An outpatient, on the other hand, it: “a patient who is not hospitalized overnight but who visits a hospital, clinic, or associated facility for diagnosis or treatment.”
If you’re staying overnight in hospital, you’re an inpatient. If you’re out before the night, you’re an outpatient. It sounds fairly clear – until we introduce the term “observational care.”
Observational care is not rigidly defined. More or less, it means that the patient is physically within the hospital, being monitored by doctor, but not undergoing any type of surgery or treatment for a life-threatening condition. A person under observational care is considered to be an outpatient, even if they spend a night (or more than one night) in hospital.
So, why the concern over the definition of inpatients, outpatients and observational care? Because a patient put under observational care, rather than admitted to the hospital as an inpatient, may have to pay tens of thousands of dollars more. Read more
Apr
30
A Medicaid Gamble in Oregon
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Medicaid, the health insurance program for low income Americans, will pay $50,000 to hospitalize and treat an elderly woman for congestive heart failure due to a heat stroke. Medicaid will not, however, cover the cost of a $200 air conditioner. Does this example illustrate a problem with the Medicaid system? According to Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, yes. Read more
Apr
24
Insurance, Prosthetics, and the Boston Marathon Bombings
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Of the 264 people injured in the Boston Marathon Bombings, at least 13 have suffered the loss of all or part of a limb. Already there have been stories of perseverance and strength – one husband and wife, standing together at the finish line, both lost the lower part of their left legs. They are recovering as well as can be expected, and the experience of these and other amputee survivors has brought the issue of prosthetics and health insurance to the forefront of health care news. Read more
Apr
19
Globalsurance Customers Experience Increased Security after HTH Merger with Blue Cross Blue Shield
Filed Under Blue Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Health Insurance, HTH, merger, USA Health Insurance | Leave a Comment
After the recent merge of HTH with Blue Cross Blue Shield, the latest product from the growing company has been launched. It is hoped that the new “GeoBlue” product line, which will replace HTH’s “Global Citizen” plan, will allow for increased brand recognition and the merge is expected to be especially promising for clients in the USA, who will now be able to benefit from Blue Cross Blue Shields vast network of hospitals. Read more
Apr
18
The Insurance Question on Colon Cancer Screening
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This week, an article published by Kaiser Health News called attention to the issue of colon cancer. Excluding lung cancer, colorectal cancers are responsible for the most cancer-related deaths in the United States; however, the recent media interest in colon cancer has nothing to do with fatality rates – it has to do with health insurance.
Apr
11
In the world of health care, fast food is a common topic of discussion for its links to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. However, it turns out that fast food may be affecting the health of the United States in a different way altogether: by insuring, or not insuring, its employees.
On April 4th, the largest ever fast food workers’ strike took place in New York City. Held outside the McDonald’s restaurant on Times Square, this demonstration included 400 workers from Burger King, KFC, Wendy’s and McDonald’s. The strikers’ message was simple: Read more
Apr
10
Medicaid for Ex-Felons
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Every year, 650,000 Americans are released from jail. Upon departure, there are few reasons to be nostalgic – except when it comes to health care.
In prison, an inmate is guaranteed access to health services, thanks to the eighth amendment of the United States Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. National Commission on Correctional Health Care has created a set of standards for jailing institutions to follow to ensure that the prison is not in violation of the constitution Read more
Apr
2
Consumer-Directed Insurance – You Control Your Care
Filed Under general insurance, Health Insurance, USA Health Insurance | Leave a Comment
For many Americans, especially healthy and young Americans, health insurance doesn’t exactly make sense. Why pay hundreds of dollars every month for the unlikely eventuality that a sudden illness or injury will occur? Surely there must be a better way; a health insurance system to provide preventative care and a dash of emergency coverage, designed for people who don’t often need to go to the doctor.
Actually, there is such a system – it’s called consumer-directed health care.
Mar
26
How Obamacare Will Affect You
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It’s been three years since the Affordable Care Act (also known as the ACA or simply Obamacare) was signed into law, but according to a recent study, most Americans still don’t understand it: 48 percent of people in the United States are unsure if their state has chosen to expand Medicaid, nearly half believe that Obamacare will allow illegal immigrants to buy insurance, and two-thirds of uninsured Americans, the precise people for whom the health care law was designed, don’t know how they will be affected.
Mar
19
What If Ryan Had Won? The Republican Budget Proposal
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Obamacare was signed into law on the 23rd of March, 2010. Since that time, the bill has survived filibuster threats, congressional debate, and challenges in the Supreme Court. Three years later, Republican legislators are still trying to kill Obamacare.
The most recent attacks on Obama’s Affordable Care Act have come during U.S. budget negotiations. At the moment, the White House is working overtime to narrow massive budget deficits and prevent the defunding of defense, education and other federal programs. Health care spending has been a major consideration during these budget talks, and Republicans are especially keen to save money by repealing entire chunks of Obamacare. No Republican proposal does this more so than the recent budget plan from former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Read more
Mar
14
The Body or The Mind? Insurance Parity for Mental Health
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A broken arm or a broken heart – which is worse? Probably the arm, but, what about a broken limb versus severe, chronic depression? That question is a little tougher: both ailments may require a hospital stay, prescription drugs, and follow up visits to a physician. It’s hard to compare mental and physical health, which may explain the push in recent years to give mental health care the same insurance rights afforded to caring for physical health. Read more
Mar
11
Caring for the Community: Health Impact Assessments
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If you have lung cancer from smoking, that’s your fault; not the result of a childhood surrounded by tobacco advertising and nicotine-dependent adults. If you’re obese, that’s because you don’t eat well; not because you live in a city where car dependence is a must. If you have a chronic illness, it must be the result of family genetics or poor lifestyle.
For most people, these statements don’t ring true. We know instinctively that our health is influenced not just by the choices we make, but by the places where we live – suburban dwellers tend to suffer more from obesity than urban dwellers, low income people living in an area with good public transit will have better access to jobs and health care services, and so on. In recent years, public health care organizations in the United States have begun to put more emphasis on how a community can affect the health of an individual, and one significant example of such interest in community health is the rising popularity of Health Impact Assessments. Read more
Mar
8
Nothing demonstrates the politicization of health care reform quite like a strongly worded letter. One letter of particular interest this week was sent from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. What was so important that Governor McDonnell couldn’t just pick up the phone and have a private conversation? Governor McDonnell wanted to tell Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, along with media outlets and his fellow members of the Republican party, that the state of Virginia was totally, completely and absolutely not approving Medicaid expansion. Read more
Mar
6
The Sequestration – Dangerous Cuts to Health Care
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In 2012, the United States experienced eight outbreaks of the food borne illness salmonella. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, well, it is. With eight outbreaks, 2012 had more instances of salmonella than any other year in recorded history; thanks to cantaloupes, peanut butter and yellowfin tuna, more than 400 people fell ill after consuming food infected with salmonella.
With salmonella breaking U.S. records, the federal government will surely increase funding this year to improve the quality of food inspections programs. Right? Wrong. Thanks to mandatory federal budget cuts on the 1st of March, food inspections agencies are just one of the many programs losing millions of dollars in 2013. Read more
Mar
4
There are many reasons why you might pay higher insurance premiums than your next door neighbor. If you’re a smoker and your neighbor is not, you probably pay 14 percent more for health insurance. If you work in an injury-prone profession such as mining, and your neighbor is a schoolteacher, your yearly premium will certainly be higher than his. But here’s the most common reason you might pay more for health insurance – if you are a woman. Read more
Feb
28
The MedPAC Report on Medicare Reform
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We talk about a fiscal cliff, but the United States’ financial problems are really more like a picture by M.C. Escher – the government keeps going round and round, and for every fiscal cliff avoided, there’s another one just around the corner. Although the federal government avoided billions of dollars in cuts just last month, the next cliff is coming – at the end of the week, to be precise.
On Friday, automatic cuts will kick in, and Washington must reduce spending by $85 billion in order to, say, keep the military running. The President and Congress are spending this week in a flurry of budget meetings to discuss how to save the country from financial ruin – higher taxes, cuts in defense, education and public workers are just some ideas on how to prevent the crisis. Of course, as always, health care reform is also on the table. Read more
Feb
26
Starting at age 21, you need a Pap exam every year. Chronic hives and itching? Better get an allergy test. Chest pain might mean heart disease, so take an imaging stress test to be on the safe side.
If you’re familiar with these guidelines, congratulations! You’ve been keeping up with the norms of the health care industry. Unfortunately, you now have to forget everything you think you know about these and other common tests – according to over 500,000 physicians and 25 medical organizations around the country, annual Pap smears, allergy tests, imaging stress exams and many other procedures are both needless and potentially dangerous. Read more
Feb
19
No Documents, No Care? Health Insurance for Illegal Immigrants
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The United States is often referred to as a nation of immigrants; indeed, since the 17th century, millions of colonists, slaves and migrants have crossed land and sea to make America their home. Today, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 12.5 percent of the nation’s population is comprised of people not born in America but lawfully residing within its borders. Of course, calculating the number of illegal immigrants is somewhat more challenging – educated estimates put that number around 11 million.
Illegal residents normally avoid seeking health care, and employers seldom provide them with the insurance avenues to do so. In the case of an emergency, however, an illegal immigrant may have little choice. What happens when 11 million undocumented U.S. residents need to go to the hospital? Read more
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