When it Comes to Defining a ‘Medical Cost,’ Devil’s in the Details
Insurers are waiting for regulations that will clarify whether particular expenses fall into the medical or administrative bucket.
Will Young Adults Comply With the Coming Health Insurance Mandate?
A new report says insurance mandates should have certain characteristics to make compliance more likely.
SoCal Hospital Trade Group Mulling Doctor Pooling Plan
A foundation might mean more integrated care for patients, but some worry it would curb competition.
Could Streamlining Medical Billing Save $7 Billion a Year?
The study also found that streamlining administrative inefficiencies could save four hours per week for doctors and five hours for support staff.
WellPoint Brouhaha Puts Rescission Back in Headlines
The practice should be making fewer headlines in the future, since it’s officially prohibited under the health-care overhaul legislation.
A State Looks to Create Cheap, Limited Health Insurance
One obvious (if somewhat fraught) way to keep health-insurance premiums down is to cap how much a plan will pay for health care. That’s an approach Washington state is considering.
The state has asked insurers to submit bids for a program that would include coinsurance payments of 30% for inpatient treatment, and pay out a maximum of $75,000 a year, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports. That may sound like a lot, but people who are really sick or seriously injured can easily run up far higher costs.
Current state regulations don’t allow insurers to sell policies like this, the article says.
A few years back, Tennessee put in place a somewhat similar plan with an even lower annual cap ($25,000). As of 2007, the premium was about $150 a month.
Washington and several other states are struggling to maintain existing health-insurance plans for low-income people who don’t qualify for Medicaid, USAToday reported earlier this week. A program in the state that covers about 65,000 people will close later this year unless lawmakers come up with $160 million in new funding, the article said.
Photo: iStockphoto
Dems May Seek Billions More From Drug and Device Companies
Some health-care news out of Washington this afternoon:
More fees may be coming for drug and device makers, the WSJ reports. Dems may add $10 billion in fees for device makers over 10 years, on top of the roughly $20 billion already included in the House and Senate bills. The final health-care bill may also cut reimbursements or increase fees on drug makers by an additional $10 billion over 10 years, beyond the $80 billion the industry agreed to last year.
Democrats and big unions cut a deal on the proposed tax on high-end health insurance plans. Unions, some of which offer high-end benefits, don’t like that tax. But it plays a key role in the Senate bill, and President Obama has backed the tax, which he argues would slow the growth in health-care spending by pushing people toward more moderate health-insurance plans.
Under the deal, collectively bargained contracts (i.e. the kind negotiated by unions) would be exempt from the tax until 2018. The deal would also raise the threshold for the tax on all plans. The Senate bill taxed plans whose premiums were more than $8,500 a year for individuals and $23,000; under the deal, the threshold would rise to $8,900 for individuals and $24,000 for families, the WSJ said. Here’s coverage of the deal from the WSJ, New York Times and Politico.
Photo: Associated Press
Fees on Health Industry Could Hit $121 Billion Over 10 Years
Like everybody else who’s following the health-care overhaul, we’re waiting for CBO to score the latest version of the Senate Finance Committee bill. In the meantime, here’s a headline number to tide you over: $121 billion.
That’s the latest estimate on how much drug companies, device makers and insurance companies would pay in 10 years of fees imposed by the Finance Committee bill, the Associated Press reports. That figure comes not from CBO but from the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan Congressional panel that weighs in on tax issues. (The fees are a kind of tax.)
Yesterday’s figure was up from an earlier estimate of $92 billion. The reason for the increase: Companies won’t be able to deduct the new fees imposed by the bill from their corporate income taxes.
Now get back to waiting for the numbers from CBO — they should be out any day now.
Survey Finds High Fees Common in Medical Care
A survey shows the sort of irrational pricing of medical care that is an integral part of health care problems in the U.S.
Senate’s Health-Care Draft Calls for Most to Buy Insurance, Nixes Obama’s ‘Public Option’
A draft proposal in the Senate to overhaul the nation’s health-care system would require most people to buy health insurance, authorize an expansion of Medicaid coverage and create consumer-owned cooperative plans instead of the government coverage that President Obama is seeking.
