Medicare Maneuvers, Part 1: The Problem
July 2, 2008
Payment cuts for doctors who treat Medicare patients - which have been looming for about a year - finally went into effect yesterday. The payment cuts of 10.6% will affect the 600,000 doctors who treat Medicare patients, and thus millions of elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees who rely on them.
Maybe if you’re under 65 and/or not relying on government health care benefits you think this isn’t your problem. You’re wrong.
A little history (based on the writings of Jonathan Cohn):
The DNA Dilemma: Desperate for a Diagnosis?
June 11, 2008
Yesterday, we posted on last month’s passage of the Federal Government’s Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
We hope that the law will help protect Americans’ coverage and employment despite their genetic likelihood for disease. This should allow them to feel more comfortable with seeking information about their own DNA in order to better manage their health.
Prior to this legislation passing, however, patients were seeking more private ways of testing their DNA - primarily through take-home kits.
DNA, Disease, and Discrimination
June 10, 2008
Can you imagine being faced with the difficult decision of having your breasts removed - not because you have breast cancer, but because you’ve determined that you carry the genes for it? Women at risk for the disease can now find out whether they have the same DNA that killed their mothers and grandmothers.
In recent years, advances in genetic research have helped push medicine into realms once reserved for science fiction.
In the 1850s there were only 140 categories of disease, differentiated by their symptoms. By 1993, genetic mapping had allowed scientists to distinguish 12,000 categories of disease, to determine that some diseases were linked genetically despite having widely different symptoms, and to find better drugs and measures to treat or prevent these diseases.
Can You Profit from Health Care? Part 2
May 21, 2008
A couple weeks ago WhatIf explored whether the U.S.’ largest industry – health care – is recession-proof. It seems health insurance companies’ profits are starting to slip. Rising health care costs means that insurers must pay out more to cover health services, which means they raise the price of their policies to recoup these costs. As a result, the number of employers purchasing insurance is decreasing.
Even so, the nation’s largest publicly-traded health plans say they will continue to raise premium prices and reduce provider payments in order to please Wall Street. “We will not sacrifice profitability for membership,” WellPoint President and CEO Angela Braly said recently.
When Insurers Take Their Toys and Go Home
May 10, 2008
For the past few years there has been work in cities and states across the country to improve our citizens’ access to health care. From San Francisco to Vermont, 39 states and a number of cities are in the process of creating legislation that would help address their numbers of uninsured.
Washington, D.C. is one of these. A look at the trouble our nation’s capital is facing on this issue may shed a light on why the words “health care reform” are often greeted with less than a smile.
Insurers Dropping Patients Should Think Twice
April 24, 2008
UPDATE:
On April 17, California’s Department of Managed Health Care announced the state’s most assertive stance yet on policy recission: that an independent arbiter will review and hold accountable the state’s 5 major insurers for its past 4 years of canceled policies. Thousands of people will have a chance to win back their coverage and be reimbursed by the insurers for outstanding medical bills if they were deemed to have had their coverage wrongly rescinded.
Originally posted March 17, 2008:
Dialysis Treatment – A Punch in the Kidneys
April 2, 2008
Here’s a fact that may surprise you: kidney failure is the one disease that you can get coverage for – from the Federal Government - no matter what.
For this reason, after 30 months of treatment by a private insurer, dialysis facilities bill Medicare regardless of whether the patient is over 65 or financially stable. For those with kidney failure (End Stage Renal Disease) due to diabetes or other causes, having a machine take over the complicated (and therefore expensive) task of cleaning their blood several times a week allows them to live.
Costs of Cancer Care?
March 31, 2008
Part of the heartache of cancer is that surviving it is ultimately a game of statistics. There are no assurances - except in the worst case scenarios where they are grim.
Even determining the best treatment is a matter of weighing likelihoods rather than having clear-cut solutions. On top of all that, patients must deal with the cost of various treatments.
Fortunately, cancer death rates have been falling in recent years - for several reasons:
- There is more and more information available on how to prevent cancer.
- Regular screening can catch the disease in early stages when it’s more treatable.
New WhatIf Content on Health Care Costs, Resources
March 27, 2008
The newest pieces on our website expand from the interactive quiz we put up a couple weeks ago:
Do you think you know what’s behind rising health care costs?
Take our quiz and find out. The Top Ten claims about what’s causing health care costs to steadily climb are exposed as true, false, or a little of both.
For a brief explanation of the answers to the quiz - how common claims about rising health care costs fit into the whole story - check out our new Health Care Costs Summary.
Health Care: The Joke Is On You
March 7, 2008
It seemed to be health care night over at Comedy Central’s nighttime “news” shows last night. First, John Stewart interviewed former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle about his new book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.
According to the Publishers Weekly summary of the book:
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