May 15, 2014
Remember Cash for Clunkers? That program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles with better gas mileage.
But because a lot of the vehicles eligible for the rebate would have sold anyway, taxpayers ended up paying about $24,000 per additional car sale that these incentives produced.
And it looks like Obamacare is in a fierce race to beat Cash for Clunkers to become the poster child for mismanagement of federal taxpayer resources:
May 14, 2014
They howled ICD-10 was delayed. And they howled loud and fierce.
Apparently, the life of U.S. healthcare hangs in the throes of 68,000 diagnosis codes.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has switched to ICD-10. But here’s a secret. The World Health Organization’s version of ICD-10 has about 16,000 codes, equivalent to ICD-9-CM.
Let’s reiterate: The rest of the world is not using ICD-10-Clinical Modification set, which has 68,000 codes.
The Canadian version of ICD-10 has about 16,000 codes, but the physicians do not use those codes for billing and reimbursement. They use a more limited code set of about 600 three-digit codes.
May 13, 2014
In Washington, Amitabh Chandra stood before a roomful of economists, policy makers and health care experts earlier this month. As director of Health Policy Research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he closed a presentation about the slowdown in health care spending over the last decade by citing an article in The New York Times.
“Changes in the way doctors and hospitals are paid — how much and by whom — have begun to curb the steady rise of health care costs in the New York region,” the article declared. “Costs are still going up faster than overall inflation, but the annual rate of increase is the lowest in 21 years.”
May 13, 2014
Okay, maybe those doctoral economists will come in handy. Jokes aside, bringing life-saving drugs to market will never be cheap – and it will require government participation.
However, there’s a difference between red tape syphoning better-spent dollars to line the pockets of insurance companies who DON’T actually care for our population, and making sure a drug company developing an Alzheimer’s treatment can recoup their billion dollar investment.
May 13, 2014
Dr. Dog Nunamaker leaves no stone unturned in his AAPS panel. Topics include the myth of health care insurance, the logistics of subscription-based medicine, and Atlas MD’s burgeoning success…
May 13, 2014
Jeffrey Singer, M.D., or Dr. Singer, is a general surgeon in Arizona. He’s also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.
He claims that healthcare costs are too damn high—and they’re only getting worse. He’s got every reason to make that claim. Turns out that last week, researchers at Harvard and Dartmouth released a report estimating that healthcare costs will continue to grow faster than the economy for at least the next two decades.
May 12, 2014
High-deductible health plans appeared after legislation was passed in 2003 that required persons opening a health savings account to enroll in a high-deductible plan. They gained prominence recently as employers watched their own healthcare spending skyrocket.
And in 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that healthcare spending had grown at a record low pace from 2009 to 2011.
However, in this new HSA environment, practices need to think more like a business.
May 9, 2014
The federal government may believe that the future of healthcare is the Affordable Care Act.
However, a New Jersey entrepreneur has a different vision — one where patients pay out of pocket for just about everything. And they pay a group of doctors and medical practices that are so fed up with the insurance-based system that they are opting to go it alone.
May 8, 2014
Spending on health care has consistently grown faster than the rest of the U.S. economy. What’s behind this trend is less certain, though. Economists point to two causes: the prevalence of diseases and conditions afflicting the U.S. population, or the rising costs of treating diseases.
New research from American University Associate Professor Martha Starr and Virginia Tech Research Professor Ana Aizcorbe shows it is the latter, with higher prices for treatment accounting for 70 percent of growth in health care spending.
May 7, 2014
In the fee-for-service world, like the real world, there is an annual cycle. And, of course, there are seasons.
You know “flu season,” “poison ivy season,” and maybe even “Lyme disease season”.
But there is also a season that has little to do with medicine and everything to do with a broken payment system.