When Gov. Mike Pence tries next month to negotiate a Medicaid expansion deal in a meeting with the Obama administration, it will be a clash of the conservative and liberal approaches to fighting poverty.
Obamacare has officially arrived, but both conservatives and liberals are calling it awful. That means the real debate over health reform is just beginning.
Small business dumping, the uncertainty of Obamacare's exchanges, and the certainty of Obamacare's taxes will take a bite out of WellPoint's earnings next year. But company executives remain bullish on Obamacare's long-term impact.
There is good evidence that new technology deployed via new methods of medicine across the entire health care system can reduce the need for physicians. But there are too many barriers for such changes to occur in time to cut off the surge in demand brought on by Obamacare.
A new Medicaid expansion deal with the Republican governor of Iowa OK’d a cost-sharing requirement similar to what Indiana Gov. Mike Pence wants. But the Obama administration says it won’t extend that deal as low as Pence would like to go.
In response to insurers’ “zero-premium” strategy, hospitals figure out their own way to game the tax subsidies available in the new Obamacare exchanges: pay premiums for their patients.
A new survey shows Hoosiers don’t like the Affordable Care Act, most would like to see it repealed, and by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, they support Pence’s handling of the question of expanding Medicaid.
Pence wants to expand Medicaid coverage using some form of the Healthy Indiana Plan, which currently provides insurance to about 40,000 Hoosiers who agree to make monthly contributions to health savings accounts. The Obama administration has questioned that feature of the program.
Obamacare put an end to health insurers’ worst methods for avoiding risk. But that doesn’t mean insurers have ended their risk-shifting ways. Not at all.
Hoosiers’ poor health, combined with an aggressive health care system and an uncompetitive health insurance sector, means Hoosiers, in spite of the fact that they earn just 86 cents for every dollar earned by the average American, are spending nearly $1.13 on health care for every dollar spent by Americans.
Only four health insurers are offering policies in the Obamacare exchange in Indiana, whereas 17 have withdrawn from the market since 2010.
Rather than railing incessantly against Obamacare, Republicans would do themselves and the country a favor if they finally agreed on a common alternative for fixing the health care system.
More than half of the $2.5 trillion consumers spend annually on health care in the United States flows to hospitals and doctors, with drug companies and health insurers trailing well behind.
Before this year’s cuts, Indiana hospitals had added 12,000 jobs over the past six years, even as private employers across Indiana, collectively, added no net new workers.
The IU researchers, as have many before them, approach health care jobs as if every one of them is an unmixed blessing to the Indiana economy. Employers and workers could have easily told them that’s not the case.
Family and Social Services Administration Secretary Debra Minott took questions on the Healthy Indiana Plan two weeks after the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed off on a one-year extension and some sizable changes to the program, including a new limit on earnings.
I follow these blogs to keep up on health care financing. Tell me what else I should be reading.
Major health insurers like WellPoint Inc. are in line for another year of growth, as the health care overhaul implements key elements in its push to cover millions of uninsured people.
Gov. Mike Pence’s go-slow approach could push an expansion of Medicaid eligibility in Indiana to the end of 2014. And he’s OK with that.
Indiana is being granted a limited extension of its Healthy Indiana Plan while state and federal health care leaders continue negotiating a possible Medicaid expansion.
