April 2011 - The Health Care Blog

“Trust Us” Just Doesn’t Cut It

By PAUL LEVY I apologize in advance if some of you are tired of hearing about Massachusetts and its experience with different payment models for health insurance. I write about this, not only because it is interesting locally, but also because people...

Published Wed, Apr 13 2011 12:14 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Massachusetts, Global payments, Capitated payments

Health 2.0 Show TODAY

Don’t forget that there’s a Health 2.0 Show, our free online hour long show at 10 PST/1pm EST. Today (Thursday). Register here for FREE. We’ll be taking a look back at some highlights from the Health 2.0 Spring Fling, and have brought back...

Published Thu, Apr 14 2011 9:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: micro

Three Formulas

By MERRILL GOOZNER During the last election campaign, Tea Party-backed Republicans across the country rode to power on a tidal wave of advertising attacking health care reform as a cut in Medicare. It is. If efficiency programs like the accountable care...

Published Fri, Apr 15 2011 8:16 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, Obama, Merrill Goozner, Paul Ryan, Medicare costs

Interview with Andy Cohen, CEO, Caring.com

A couple of weeks back Andy Cohen, CEO and Founder of Caring.com stopped by Health 2.0’s offices to give us an update on the site. having established itself as a (Andy would say the) go-to site for caregivers needing to figure out what to do when...

Published Fri, Apr 15 2011 5:07 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Health 2.0, Elderly, caring.com

Summary of CMS Proposed Rule on Accountable Care Organizations

By JORDAN T. COHEN (Second in a series. See Part 1 and Part 3.) CMS recently released the proposed rule that will regulate PPACA’s Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). The MSSP relies on the accountable care organization (ACO) model in order to generate...

Published Mon, Apr 18 2011 8:57 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: CMS, Tech, Affordable Care Act, MSSP rules, MSSP, Jordan Cohen

Cato’s Cannon on Medicaid–Right but Wrong, again

One of my sparring partners, Cato libertarian whizz-kid Michael Cannon, has a new column out about Medicaid and why block grants would stop a big problem. He’s right about the problem. Because states get a matching (and in some cases way more than...

Published Mon, Apr 18 2011 8:16 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Matthew Holt, micro

Controlling the Medicare Budget — Time to Fast Forward to 1999?

By ROGER COLLIER The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government deficit will exceed one and a half trillion dollars this year, with federal health care annual expenditures expected to hit the trillion dollar mark by 2012. The largest federal...

Published Wed, Apr 27 2011 5:13 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, IPAB, National Bipartisan Commission of the Future of Medicare

THCB Live: Oracle

Matthew Holt interviews Marc Perlman and Kris Joshi of Oracle about their role in health care, and what Oracle is making of the changes in the health IT scene. The interview was at the HIMSS conference this past February. Tweet this Share on Facebook...

Published Wed, Apr 27 2011 5:53 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Tech, HIMSS11, Oracle, Perlman, Joshi

Are We Entering an Era of Political Cooperation on Medicare?

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS There’s a chance that we’re starting to see a convergence of opinion on Medicare among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. I know the recent bickering makes this seem like an odd contention, but consider the following: In recent...

Published Fri, Apr 29 2011 6:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

A Case for Self Insuring Small Business

By MICHAEL TURPIN During the course of 2009, an alarming trend line was broken. For the first time ever, more employers under 50 employees were not offering medical insurance to employees than those who continued to provide employer sponsored healthcare...

Published Fri, Apr 08 2011 4:23 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Michael Turpin, Healthcare costs, Self-insuring, Private sector, Medical cost shifting, Small Business

The Massachusetts Mistake

By ROGER COLLIER A year after the passage of health care reform, fewer than half of Americans support it, a similar percentage believe that it has already been found unconstitutional or soon will be, health care costs are continuing to rise far faster...

Published Sun, Apr 10 2011 8:06 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Roger Collier, Massachusetts, Affordable Care Act, Healthcare reform

PatientsLikeMe goes big, doesn’t stay home

PatientsLikeMe has, since before we first featured them at Health 2.0 in 2007, been the patient online community continually pushing the boundaries for patients with rare diseases. It started with MS, ALS and Parkinson’s and slowly moved towards...

Published Mon, Apr 11 2011 1:10 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: micro

Patient-Driven Care Instead of Patient-Centered Care

By PAUL LEVY After being part of a discussion at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement today, I have decided to change my profile, above, from this: Advocate for patient-centered care, eliminating preventable harm, transparency of clinical outcomes...

Published Wed, Apr 20 2011 1:10 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Paul Levy, Hospitals, Patient-centered care, Patient-driven care

Interview: Covisint

Matthew Holt interviews Brett Furst of Covisint at HIMSS. Tweet this Share on Facebook Read More...

Published Thu, Apr 21 2011 1:10 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, HIMSS 2011, Covisint

IPAB — The New Punching Bag

By MERRILL GOOZNER Remember death panels? Politicians have found a new way to use health care reform as a punching bag. The Independent Payments Advisory Board (IPAB) will be a 15-member expert panel appointed by the president and approved by the Senate...

Published Thu, Apr 21 2011 10:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Merrill Goozner, Rationing, Death panels, IPAB