From this week’s historic data dump, I learned who the top 20 recipients of Medicare payments are in Indianapolis (hint: mostly labs, ambulances and eye surgeons). But the real takeaway is that meaningful price information about doctors is still a long way away.
For now, at least, the year-to-year price increases of individual insurance under Obamacare look a lot like they did before Obamacare. That’s not a failure, but it’s not a success either.
Franciscan Alliance, always the first to report its year-end financial results, put out numbers that show a real decline in profit from operations of 58 percent.
The health insurer predicted growth in government-funded health insurance programs would push revenue above $100 billion by 2018. That prompted investors to push WellPoint stock above $100 per share—an all-time high for the company.
Based on 2012 data, 23 of 30 hospitals in central Indiana are generating profits from their operations of 10 percent or more. The Indiana Orthopaedic Hospital and St. Vincent's Carmel campus are on top. After that, there are a few surprises.
Health care is going through dramatic change—but is doing so under some of the dullest names possible. So I’m offering a few alternatives that are more to the point. How about, ‘No-more-bankruptcy care’?
For 2014, at least, Obamacare's dreams of expanding individual insurance coverage in Indiana have simply failed. There's no getting around it.
Obama’s latest delay of Obamacare insurance rules could sabotage the law’s exchanges. The president must be counting on Republican critics, like Indiana Insurance Commissioner Stephen Robertson, to stop him.
Employees, rather than employers, will soon choose their own health insurers—either through the Obamacare exchanges or through private exchanges. Does that mean health insurance brokers, the people who match up employers with insurers, will no longer be needed?
Even though the state’s three largest hospital systems–IU Health, St. Vincent Health and Franciscan Alliance–eliminated a combined 2,700 jobs, it created just a blip in the long-term run-up in hospital employment.
The Obama administration’s delays of Obamacare’s employer mandate penalties mean it will be another year or two before hospitals see the additional revenue the law was supposed to bring them.
Even if Gov. Mike Pence and Obama’s health secretary can’t come to terms this weekend, there are ideas bouncing around the state legislature that suggest other ways Indiana could expand coverage to low-income Hoosiers.
Rich employer benefits are not always so attractive, sick patients are not always money losers for insurers, and hospitals and doctors are now health care preventers rather than health care providers. This is the bizarre world to which Obamacare has brought us.
The latest enrollment data from the Obamacare exchanges show that three out of four Hoosiers are purchasing decent coverage—not the super high-deductible plans that concerned hospitals.
Ever since World War 2, when employers started using health benefits to compete for workers, the less employees had to pay toward health insurance premiums the more attractive the benefits. But under Obamacare, this axiom will not always be true.
Since WellPoint says it’s not losing money on the exchanges—at this point—that’s encouraging news for those who would like the Obamacare exchanges to remain a viable option.
St. Vincent Health has been sending roughly $50 million to $70 million every year to its parent company, St. Louis-based Ascension Health, to support other hospitals in Ascension’s 93-hospital network.
In my financial situation, I could save from 2 percent to 30 percent buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. I suspect a lot of small companies and their workers will see similar results.
Interest in the Obamacare exchanges varies widely across the 14 states in which WellPoint Inc. is selling insurance plans. Indiana is near the bottom of the pile.
Congress’ recent willingness to play hardball with providers is driving providers to cautiously embrace concepts—like pay-for-performance and keeping patients out of the hospitals—they have long resisted.
