Health Policy Updates: June 5 2018
Virginia decided this week to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Individuals up to the 138% of the FPL will be eligible; this is estimated to help 400,000 low-income Virginians. At the recommendation of...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: October 8 2017
This week, reports surfaced to confirm that the Trump administration is actively engaged in ACA sabotage. The strategy is to quite literally inflict financial harm on the American people, by way of...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: October 22 2016
The big policy news from this last week was that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the so-called “final rule” on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015,...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: September 3 2016
Given the problems that the ACA/Obamacare has faced, were there any realistic alternatives at the time the law was passed, that would have done any better? Megan McArdle, writing at Bloomberg, thinks...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: August 14 2016
A large part of the ACA/Obamacare was to expand Medicaid; many (though not all) states elected to do so. New data out this week in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that patients are benefiting. Compared...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Health Policy Updates: August 7 2016
I’m a week behind in sending this link out, but Sarah Kliff at Vox had a great post on “narrow networks,” an effective (if unpopular) strategy used by health care insurance companies to hold down costs...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: July 19 2015
Last week in one of the pieces I included, I mentioned being confused by conflicting reports regarding the increasing prices of insurance plans on the ACA exchanges. This week, there is a Vox.com...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates, April 18 2015
The big news this week – it looks like we finally fixed the Doc Fix?!?! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/us/politics/senate-approves-a-bill-on-changes-to-medicare.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: October 4, 2014
Obama has had to eat his words a bit on the promise that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” But is that necessarily a bad thing? Are there GOOD reasons that patients shouldn’t be...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: August 23 2014
Even I was surprised to see that some places charge as much as $10,000 for a single lipid panel. Wow. Do you ever see the same T-shirt being sold for $5 at Wal-Mart and $5,000 at Target? Why is health...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: June 21 2014
From the NEJM, on future directions of the ACA reforms: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1404298 “It is increasingly likely that the administration will drop enforcement of the individual...
View ArticleHealth Policy Updates: February 23 2014
If you have been looking for a succint review of the recent Republican “replace” Obamacare proposal (I have referenced it in a few prior emails), the NEJM has just published a pretty good one....
View Article
