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Residency, salary, and primary care doctors – ctd. | The Incidental Economist
I wrote before that residency is already terrible, and reducing the pay to zero isn’t a good idea. I’m not arguing, however, that the primary care shortage isn’t a problem worth addressing. We don’t have enough primary care docs.
Paying for Quality: Understanding and Assessing Physician Pay-for-Performance Initiatives - RWJF
During the past five years, an increasing number of health plans and self-insured employers have instituted financial incentive programs, known as pay-for-performance (P4P). Efforts to evaluate these programs are now underway. In this study, researchers focused on...
Healthcare Economist · Medicare Part D’s Effect on Drug Use, Other Medical Services, and Health
Medicare Part D increases beneficiary utilization of drugs, but does not decrease utilization of other medical services or improve health. That is the conclusion Kaestner and Khan (2010) reach using data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey . Many other studies have found that prescription drug insurance plans increase drug use. After Medicare Part D drug insurance was enacted, Lichtenburg and Sun (2007) found a 12.8% increase and Yin et al. (2008) calculated a 5.9% rise in drug use. The Kaestner and Khan paper, however, finds that “Medicare Part D was associated with an 63% increase in the number of annual prescription.” Even among individuals in poor health, whose demand for pharmaceuticals may be more inelastic, “gaining prescription drug insurance was associated with a 56% increase in the number of annual prescription.”
For those who haven’t had their fill of the Medicaid reform discussion, the full results of the UVa surgical outcomes study have been published in the online edition of Annals of Surgery . (I ask everyone who has had their fill for forgiveness.) There are a couple of points that keep coming up in the comments and in responses from other bloggers, so I want to spend at least one post addressing them.
Building the Case for Medicaid Reform - The Agenda - National Review Online
Children's Health Insurance, Scarce and Expensive
The next shoe to drop in Obamacare involves providing health insurance for children from birth to age 18. As we have indicated in prior posts, some Georgia health insurance companies are no longer offering "child only" health insurance and at least one will no longer accept child only applications after 8/15/2010. Now word comes that Blue Cross plans in two different states are taking a different approach. The Blues in Texas and Illinois have announced filing for approval of a new child only health insurance policy.The Health Care Blog
First, trying to predict how the Court will rule is at best just speculation. I know what Justice Kennedy said both today and yesterday and it certainly doesn’t look good for the Obama administration and upholding at least the mandate. But I will remind everyone, based upon oral arguments, most Court watchers expected a ruling in favor of the biotech industry on a recent case involving health care patents. “Surprisingly,” the Court ruled against the industry. Whatever the justices are now thinking, there isn’t a lot anyone could do differently until we actually get a ruling and know exactly what gets thrown out, if anything, in the 2,800-page law.
In April 2006, the state of Massachusetts passed legislation aimed at achieving near universal health insurance coverage. A key provision of this legislation, and of the national legislation passed in March 2010, is an individual mandate to obtain health insurance. Although previous researchers have studied the impact of expansions in health insurance coverage among the indigent, children, and the elderly, the Massachusetts reform gives us a novel opportunity to examine the impact of expansion to near-universal health insurance coverage among the entire state population. In this paper, we are the first to use hospital data to examine the impact of this legislation on insurance coverage, utilization patterns, and patient outcomes in Massachusetts. We use a difference-in-difference strategy that compares outcomes in Massachusetts after the reform to outcomes in Massachusetts before the reform and to outcomes in other states.
The Impact of an Individual Health Insurance Mandate On Hospital and Preventive Care: Evidence from Massachusetts
Actuaries: Folk Heroes or Evil Incarnate? « Business Risk Management
I’d like to take a moment on this late Friday afternoon to tell you a story. It’s about an actuary. Now, most people outside of the insurance industry probably don’t know what an actuary is or what an actuary does. An actuary is a professional statistician.
So what’s the deal with children and pre-existing conditions and the new health care reform law? There’s a lot of confusion out there, and even after several hours of reading on the topic, I’ll admit to still being a bit confused. A lot of websites are explaining that six months after the bill was signed into law, health insurance companies won’t be able to exclude children with pre-existing conditions. But I don’t think it’s really that simple. A very informative Kaiser Family Foundation summary details the differences between the House Bill (HR3962), the Senate Bill (HR3590) and the final bill (HR4872).
Pre-Existing Conditions, Children, And Health Care Reform
