Patients get what they pay for
Patients, in spite of what it may feel like, pay only a tiny fraction of the total health care bill directly from their own pockets. It’s no wonder then that prices and good service are hard to find.
The Dose
Articles
Slower rise in health insurance costs is an illusion
The ‘modest’ 4 percent rise in health insurance premiums, when compared with wages, shows things are getting worse, not better, for health care consumers.
Swapping Obamacare for a single-payer system?
How would a single-payer national health insurance program change the finances for employers, workers, doctors and hospitals?
BioCrossroads drops dreams for hospital innovation
In this age of austerity, there’s almost no chance of Indianapolis hospitals creating a Cleveland Clinic-like hub of innovation.
A dose of light reading
Starting with this post, I’m going to periodically give you a peek at my reading list. I’ll highlight reports and reportage that I have found either helpful or provocative. I hope you do, too.
OrthoIndy channeling Walmart in comeback bid
The local orthopedic surgeons are presenting themselves as low-cost providers in an attempt to reverse growth restrictions imposed by Obamacare.
Expect deja vu: Obamacare won’t fix health care
By and large, Obamacare will leave in place the same major problems in the health care systems that existed before the law was passed—in both Indiana and across the nation.
Already a wreck, the worst is yet to come with Obamacare
Obamacare is destined to fail for one key reason: it will make health insurance cost more and buy less.
Relax, rejoice: Obamacare will revive health care
This is the first of three blog posts, each of which will make a compelling case for one of three distinct positions on Obamacare in Indiana: why it will succeed, why it will fail and why it will be a “non-event.”
Reworking Obamacare’s numbers: Half of Hoosiers to gain, half to lose
Digging into the filings by health insurers, I concluded that half of Hoosiers buying individual coverage next year on exchanges will pay less than before Obamacare. The other half will pay more.
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.