Latest Blogs
-
Kim and Todd Saxton: Go for the gold! But maybe not every time.
-
Q&A: What you need to know about the CDC’s new mask guidance
-
Carmel distiller turns hand sanitizer pivot into a community fundraising platform
-
Lebanon considering creating $13.7M in trails, green space for business park
-
Local senior-living complex more than doubles assisted-living units in $5M expansion
Amid Obamacare’s changes, WellPoint keeps old playbook
Even as it tries narrow networks, health insurer is trying to offer more choice of doctors now, but push for lower provider payments later.
Most individuals will pay less, not more, in Obamacare exchanges
Even with premiums doubling from 2012 to 2014, Obamacare’s subsidies will offset premium increases for most Hoosiers buying health insurance via the new federal exchanges.
Get ready to see for-profit religious hospitals
Hospitals already operate like for-profit businesses, but now a financial pinch is making more hospitals join their ranks. Aggressive moves by St. Vincent’s parent organization are just the beginning.
Would Medicaid expansion have saved hospital jobs?
As the Pence administration continues to negotiate with the feds, local hospitals say their recent cuts would not have been changed even if Indiana had expanded its Medicaid program.
There’s no reason for hospitals, doctors to lose the transparency debate
I launched The Dose with a post about the general use-lessness of the hopsital price data released in May by the Obama adminsitration. For what it's worth, the Journal of the American Medical Association, published by the nation's largest doctors' group, agrees with me. In a perspective piece published on July 10, http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1710451, JAMA contirbutor […]
Want Cliffs Notes on health reform? Look at Wishard
Soon to change its name to Eskenazi Health, the county-owned hospital in Indianapolis is using a business model that tries to promote patients’ health, rather than merely treat their diseases.
Obama hands employers free play on health insurance
The Obama administration’s one-year delay on enforcement of penalties against employers that fail to offer affordable health insurance gives employers the chance to cancel their benefits for the year and pocket a boatload of cash.
Call the midwife: Doctors, hospitals, patients all guilty of driving up childbirth costs
I can see the business model of the physicians and hospitals at work as they recommend tests of questionable necessity. Yet when it’s my own wife and son, it’s easy to think of a terrible outcome to avert with just one more test.
Physician pay: What goes up must come down
Compensation in the most common physician specialties has been growing much faster than inflation for the past five years. Now, financially squeezed hospitals are set to reverse that trend.
Me-too diabetes drugs look good enough for Lilly
Eli Lilly and Co. is more than 15 years late to the game in the world of diabetes drugs. And it isn’t bringing much that doctors and patients haven’t already seen. Still, that might be good enough to make a few billion a year.
WellPoint’s respite from criticism will be short-lived
With recent attention focused on hospital prices, WellPoint and its peers have been enjoying a nice break from their long-running status as Public Enemy No. 1 in the nation’s health care debate. They shouldn’t expect it to last.
IT revolution coming to local health care
Local providers will increasingly look for help from IT firms like Indigo Biosystems Inc. and VoCare Inc. as part of a coming wave of health IT innovation that is likely to mirror the IT revolution that began 30 years ago.
Medicare report a fresh threat to local hospital finances
A new recommendation from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, if enacted, would likely end one of the ways Indianapolis-area hospitals have generated healthy revenue from their recent spree of physician acquisitions.
Hospitals, insurers should end hide-and-seek with prices
To get control of health care spending, prominent health policy wonks are calling for new rules requiring hospitals and insurers to raise the ‘veil of secrecy’ they have thrown over their prices for decades.
232,000 Hoosiers hang in balance in Pence-Obama wrangling over Medicaid
New analysis shows Obamacare would cut state’s uninsured rolls 49 percent, compared with just 18 percent if Gov. Mike Pence opts out of a Medicaid expansion.
Hospitals proving themselves wrong about prices
Whenever a new report claims hospitals are charging too much, a stock set of defenses comes out. But hospitals are cutting prices and expenses as we speak, undermining those arguments.
Are employers ready to limit workers’ choice of doctor?
The real test of so-called narrow network health plans will come not with Obamacare's exchanges, but with employers, who control a far bigger slice of the health benefits pie and have been highly reluctant to limit their workers' choice of hospitals and doctors.