In the health insurance exchange, premiums will rise significantly. At least according to Robert Laszewski of Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review: One of the reasons health insurance in the exchange will cost a lot more in most states is because the new health law outlaws many of the existing plans now being offered and [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Health Insurance' Category
Insurance and Receipt of Recommended Care
Insurance doesn’t have much effect on whether patients receive recommended care: Source: Asch SM, Kerr EA, Keesey J, Adams JL, Setodji CM, Malik S, et al. Who Is at Greatest Risk for Receiving Poor-Quality Health Care? New England Journal of Medicine. 2006;354(11):1147-56. PubMed PMID: 16540615. HT: Ashish Jha of The Health Care Blog.
Read the rest of this entry »The Most Important Health Policy Study of Our Generation
Perhaps the most important paper on the effect of health insurance on health, spending, and access to care was released this week. Although randomized controlled trials are rare for measuring the effect of insurance, the design of the Oregon Medicaid program introduced random variation into who received Medicaid coverage. The authors write: In 2008, Oregon [...]
Read the rest of this entry »150% Rate Hike?
Robert Laszewski reports on the premium increases projected in Maryland’s health insurance exchange. …Maryland Blue Cross has filed for an average increase of 25% for individual coverage warning young people could pay as much as 150% more…
Read the rest of this entry »Baskets of Care
What are the best practices for providing care for a specific condition? This question is not easy to answer. Further, the best practices for treating the average patient may differ from the best practice for treating certain other types of patients; particularly when a patient suffers from multiple conditions simultaneously. Despite these challenges, this information [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Variation in Healthcare Spending: Medicare vs. Private Insurance
Is regional variation in health care spending larger for Medicare beneficiaries or those enrolled in private health plans? Before answering that question, one should better understand the sources of this variation. Regional variation in spending can be due to variation in the utilization, variation in prices, or both. A paper by Philipson et al. (2010) [...]
Read the rest of this entry »What does a NICE health economist do?
What role do health economists at the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) play and how do they conduct their cost effectiveness analyses for new treatments? I answer this question today based on NICE’s own documents. According to their guidelines manual, the role of the health economist in clinical guideline development is to: [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Los Angeles and San Diego Health Care Markets
The California Healthcare Foundation has produced two market studies of the Los Angeles and San Diego health care markets. Key findings from the Los Angeles study include: The area’s dense urban environment has given rise to a large, fragmented health care market. Health care reform and a drop in private insurance enrollment have led to [...]
Read the rest of this entry »The Teeth of the Individual Mandate
…are not very strong. Here are the penalties individuals will have to pay if they don’t have insurance: These penalties are not steep. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the cost of a single employer health insurance plan in 2012 was $5,615 and the cost of a family plan was $15,745. This means that in [...]
Read the rest of this entry »How much money is your employer contributing to your health insurance?
The answer is $0. “But Healthcare Economist,” you may say, “I know that my employer contributes $X to my health insurance so this must be false. Further, businesses always complain about the high cost of health insurance.” Although businesses do contribute to your health insurance in a nominal way, these contributions are almost entirely offset [...]
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