Even if you don’t watch the news on a regular basis, you’ve probably heard rumblings recently about the Medicare open enrollment period. It’s the time when qualified seniors can sign up for a new Medicare Advantage (MA) plan, switch from original Medicare to MA or select a new or different Medicare prescription drug plan. The […]
Even if you don’t regularly pay attention to the news, you couldn’t avoid hearing about the recent government shutdown, which lasted a record 35 days and affected approximately 800,000 federal employees, about one-third of whom were veterans. The Congressional Budget Office reports the closure resulted in $11 billion of lost growth in gross domestic product […]
The 2018 midterm elections ended a few weeks ago (and in a couple states, continuing on). The election outcome resulted in the Democrats taking over the United States House majority and the Republicans retaining predominance in the Senate. According to preliminary exit polling, more than 40 percent of voters cited healthcare as the most important […]
The high variance of WC rules and regulations by state makes it difficult to generalize about future trends.
The health plan you purchase today may not resemble the plan of your parents or grandparents at all. For decades, Americans received healthcare under the traditional fee-for-service system. Insurance companies reimbursed patients or payers based on every service provided to patients. This seemed logical on the surface, yet problems became clear as the industry realized […]
Over the past few years, America has witnessed its health care system shift from a predominately pay-for-service model to one with various reimbursement models that focus on long-term behavioral health improvements, promoting efficiency and reducing costs. It may seem like a tall order for physician payment methods to improve patient care, but the industry agrees […]
Approximately 43.6 million adults in the U.S. suffer from some type of mental illness, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). That is more than 18 percent of the U.S. population. At that rate, it’s nearly impossible for someone to go their whole lives without either experiencing mental illness first hand […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services predicted that spending on prescription drugs would rise by 6.8 percent in 2014. Their estimate was a bit off. Instead, spending on prescription medications leaped by 13 percent to $374 billion, according to a recent paper from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. It was the […]
Kaiser exec calls for changes in pharma Roughly 25 years ago, if you wanted a cell phone, a digital camera and a video camera, you would need to shell out almost $3,000. And for your money, you’d get big, clunky devices that provided primitive results. These days, you can buy all of this […]