Health Reform Discussed By Team
Wednesday December 8, 2010
BRATTLEBORO -- Medical experts working with the Harvard-based team assembled by the state Legislature said Vermont can continue its role as a trailblazer in health care reform with the latest act from Montpelier.
Dr. Ashley Fox and Nathan Blanchet said the Green Mountain State has a chance next year to serve as a model for health care reform during the well-attended Vermont Citizens Campaign for Health annual meeting Tuesday evening at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.
But while there are a variety of favorable trends moving forward in the next legislative session, advocates also laid out a list of key concerns they will face as well.http://www.reformer.com/ci_16803132?source=email
The Checkup - Life Expectancy Drops In U.S.
By Rob Stein
It's About Health Care Costs, Not Regulations
The meeting took place in a conference room on the second floor of City Hall. Dan Demeritt, Gov.-elect LePage's spokesman, sat in the corner at one end of the room. He took notes, as business owners unburdened themselves.
"Paul Paradis from Paradis True Value in Bar Harbor. I see there's a lot of things keeping my business from growing and hiring people."
The hardware store has eleven employees. Paradis offers them private health coverage through Aetna, and the premiums, he says, just keep going up and up. It's forced him to pass the higher expenses along to his employees--an attempt at savings that he says actually costs him money.
Long Road for Lawyer Defending the Health Care Law
By KEVIN SACK
WASHINGTON — Memo to the third floor at Justice Department headquarters: Ian Gershengorn will soon be pacing the corridors again.
When preparing for oral arguments in big cases, Mr. Gershengorn makes a habit of walking long laps around the building’s rectangular core, first past the civil and antitrust divisions, then the Office of Professional Responsibility and the appellate branches, mumbling to himself while hunched over note cards. People try not to stare.
Working: Gap Health Insurance Grows In Popularity | L.M. Sixel: Working | Chron.com
As employees face higher co-pays, deductibles and health care premiums, a relatively new insurance product has become increasingly popular.
It's known as "gap" or "bridge" insurance, and it covers some of the out-of-pocket health care costs that are becoming more difficult for employees to shoulder, such as annual deductibles that are rising to $1,000, $2,500 or even $5,000.
Families that live paycheck to paycheck can't absorb the increase in costs, said Brad Peak, vice president of products and marketing with the insurance carrier Assurant Employee Benefits in Kansas City, Mo.
Raising Premiums And Other Costs For Oregon Health Plan Enrollees Drove Many To Drop Out
+Author Affiliations
- *Corresponding author
Abstract
The Oregon Health Plan was created to be a sustainable program that could weather budgetary storms without having to cut enrollees from Medicaid. A 2003 redesign of the program increased premiums, raised cost sharing, and imposed rigid premium payment deadlines for members in the “Standard” version of the program but not for members of the “Plus” version. This paper adds two years of longitudinal data to a previous study on the impacts of these changes. It shows that the redesign was a key factor driving a 77 percent disenrollment rate in the Standard program, from a high of 104,000 enrollees in February 2003 to just 24,000 by the end of the study period, November 2005. Those who were in the Standard plan when the reduced benefits and higher member costs went into effect were also nearly twice as likely to have unmet health care needs compared to those in the Plus plan. These changes underscore that in a period of economic downturn, policy makers must understand the impact of increased cost sharing on vulnerable populations
America’s Most Vulnerable
By CHARLES M. BLOW
As we begin inevitably wrangling over budget cuts and other austerity measures, we must not lose sight of the plight of the most vulnerable among us — the ones who have little say and few choices: the nation’s poorest children.
No comments:
Post a Comment