Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Report: Hard to Measure How Much Community Benefits Hospitals Provide
It is not uncommon for doctors, hospitals, clinics and other medical professionals to claim they lose money on Medicare and especially Medicaid. Medicaid, the federal-state partnership for low-income Americans is an especially stingy payer for physician services. Medicaid fees vary from state to state and among physician specialties. However, that is a discussion for another day. Medicare is another story. For Instance, Medicare pays about three times the fees that Rhode Island Medicaid pays for primary care consults. Some other states’ Medicaid programs pay closer to what Medicare pays for the same services. This brings me to an article in Kaiser Health News.
The American Hospital Association contends that the federal government reimburses providers significantly less than it costs to care for Medicare recipients. Unlike private insurers, the federal government does not negotiate prices with hospitals. Medicare bases the amount it pays on hospitals’ locations, labor costs, and other factors.
Wednesday Links – 26 October 2022
- John Cochrane on Liz Truss: She had good ideas, but mismanaged the marketing and the politics.
- Politicizing science: The leading journal Nature Human Behaviour has effectively announced that it will not publish studies that show the wrong kind of differences between human groups.
- Medicare Advantage Star Ratings: Are too many plans above average?
- Lessons from the lockdown: Charter schools and Catholic schools did better than public schools. (WSJ)
- Between December 2020 and mid-May 2022, the U.S. wasted 82.1 million doses of Covid vaccine. (WSJ)
Is Aging a Disease? Or is it Merely the Cause of Age-Related Diseases?
As people age their health deteriorates and they become more prone to diseases and chronic conditions. For instance, heart disease kills more Americans than any other ailment. Heart disease is correlated with advanced age. About 80% of deaths from heart disease are age 65 or older.
Cancer too is a disease of old age. Fewer than 25 cancer diagnosis per 100,000 population occurs in people under the age of 20. For those age 45 to 49 the rate of cancer per 100,000 people is 350. Once you reach age 60 cancer rates are triple, with more than 1,000 per 100,000 population.