As of January 1st insurers and health plans are required to provide online tools to help enrollees estimate the cost of common medical services and procedures. As an aside, a future iteration of the law should also discourage medical professionals who work in hospitals or large practices controlled by private equity from only referring inside their systems without giving patients an opportunity to use the tools to shop elsewhere. I’ve never had a problem with doctors steering me to hospital-based services. Yet, I’ve heard horror stories about doctors being compensated or punish based on so-called keepage and leakage. This from Kaiser Health News:
Category: Policy & Legislation
Friday Links
- DOJ: Postal service can deliver abortion pills.
- NIH-funded food pyramid says lucky charms are better than steak; chocolate covered almonds are better than cheddar cheese.
- Pro-choice argument: the FDA’s step forward on abortion medications is not nearly good enough.
- The European Union bans 1,300 ingredients from use in cosmetics. The US bans 11. (NYT)
How Obamacare Affected Part-Time Work
The incentives:
Employers are not required to offer insurance to many, if not most, on‐call and temporary workers. To circumvent the mandate, therefore, employers may choose to reduce standard weekly hours below 30 or shift their mix of staffing toward greater use of on‐call, direct‐hire temporaries or agency temporaries. Additionally, employers may choose to outsource certain tasks to firms with fewer than 50 full‐time employees. Ironically, the employer mandate could reduce the quality of jobs for low‐ and mid‐skill workers by increasing the share of low‐hours, part‐time (defined as averaging less than 30 hours per week); temporary; and contract employment—categories that often are associated with relatively low compensation and job instability.
Thursday Links
- Funeral director sells body parts from more than 500 victims without family consent.
- Literature review: increased cost-sharing for drugs is associated with worse adherence, persistence, or discontinuation. Other effects are mixed.
- What happened to Southwest Airlines in a week, happens in health care all the time – especially at the height of the pandemic. (Exaggerating, of course)
- AMA study: Distrust of government is hazardous to your health.
- Scott Atlas: How universities suppressed scientific opinion during the pandemic.