TelaDoc, the largest telehealth firm in the United States, saw its stock price nosedive by more than 60% in the past month. TelaDoc’s stock price is down 78% from its high last year. This is significant considering health care experts predicted telemedicine would get a huge boost from Covid and telehealth visits become mainstream. What’s behind the stock slide? Was it profit-taking by early investors or has the public’s interest in telehealth waned? By the way, TelaDoc was founded in Dallas in 2002 and funded my early policy work on telemedicine 15 years ago under different leadership.
Covid Forced Nurses’ Salaries Higher; Hospitals Hated It
It is common for hospitals to use nurse staffing agencies, sometimes called “rent-a-nurse” to fill shifts when needed. The downside is temp agency nurses costs more per hour than staff nurses who are hospital employees. During times when nurses are in short supply, as was the case with Covid, nurses are in such high demand they can safely work for staffing agencies knowing they will have plenty of work and higher pay.
Bait and Switch on Medicare Drug Price Controls
All told, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Democrats’ (reconciliation) bill would have diverted $266 billion in Medicare spending to pay for other programs if passed into law. Taking a quarter of a trillion dollars out of an already-stressed Medicare program would be a disaster for seniors….
reforms championed by the Trump administration … would have required negotiated savings between PBMs and drugmakers to pass directly to seniors by accounting for the rebate when determining the cost-sharing amount. Currently, patients often end up paying costs based on the sticker price of medications rather than the price that has been negotiated between the manufacturers and PBMs.