Right off the bat we should explain that the question is not, “why are medical costs are so high?” Answers to that are so varied and complicated you could devote almost an entire blog to it (ahem). Instead, this question is why there is such an enormous difference between two prices:
The “Sticker Price” – what the patient is charged by the hospital, and has to pay if he or she is uninsured
The “Insurer Price” - the heavily discounted price the insurer pays
There is a HUGE difference between these prices. In this post we’ll try to figure out why. [click to continue reading...]
In honor of Dr. King’s birthday, we wanted to share some quotes from his speeches and writing that we feel are especially relevant to health care. [click to continue reading...]
When we talk about pre-existing conditions we tend to focus on problems with buying insurance on the individual market, where:
insurance companies can refuse to cover you;
insurers can charge you much more than healthy people; and
if you get sick, insurers can find ways to drop your coverage.
But it’s an issue that affects even those who are lucky enough to have decent coverage through an employer or government program. Knowing that they couldn’t afford or would be outright rejected for other coverage, many people with pre-existing medical conditions feel trapped in their current plans.
Health reform changed all that. Most of the bill doesn’t take effect for another two years, but there are a few parts that provide some immediate relief to people with health problems. To answer your question, we’ll look at new options for people with pre-existing conditions both right now and in 2014, once the law is fully in place. [click to continue reading...]
It’s been a weird year in health care coverage. Political fighting in Washington over issues like the debt ceiling, repealing health reform, and Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan got tons of coverage in the media– but at the end of the day, nothing really changed. Medicare and the Affordable Care Act are still intact, and deficit agreements that would have reduced health spending were blocked by Republicans.
Meanwhile, major health care stories outside of Washington that had a huge impact– like the famine in Somalia and major state-level changes in women’s access to abortion– went under-reported in the media.
And so, for our year end list, we present what we think were the real top five health stories of 2011. [click to continue reading...]
Yesterday, in our look at where the EPA’s new air pollution rules stand, we forgot to mention a new one that slipped under our radar. This rule will help clean up some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Also, we’ll look at a bill Republicans are trying to pass to undermine the EPA. [click to continue reading...]
"Try not panic, but there's a bomb on the health care bill!"
It’s hard to imagine a more boring headline than this one: “Department of Health and Human Services issues final regulation on medical loss ratio requirements under the Affordable Care Act.” But according to Rick Ungar, a blogger for Forbes magazine, these latest rules triggered “a bomb buried in Obamacare” placing us “on an inescapable path towards single-payer for most Americans.”
In a special Thanksgiving edition of health snapshots: how to use economics to keep from overeating, reasons to be thankful for “Obamacare,” the truth about whether eating turkey makes you sleepy, and more! [click to continue reading...]
But here’s the thing: they’re not the only villains… and sometimes they’re even working on our side. In this post we’ll look at a showdown in Pittsburgh, where one health insurer stepped in to save a struggling network of local hospitals. Now, a giant health system is trying to punish the insurer– with a move that would reduce access to care and drive up costs. [click to continue reading...]
