When I was young physicians were an independent bunch. Most were self-employed males, who were either sole proprietors or in small group practices. In the past 20 or so years it has become increasingly common for doctors to work for someone else. According to Merritt-Hawkins nearly three-fourths (74%) of physicians now work for hospitals, health care systems or corporate entities. Of physicians accepting new work assignments today, 90% are accepting positions as employees rather than owners or partners.
Category: Health Insurance
Wednesday Links
- “Longer life with no greater proportion lived in good health equals more years in poor health—statistically, for the population at large.” Interesting throughout, with implications for research and public policy priorities.
- Obesity drugs could save Medicare $100 billion a year.
- 40% of privately insured patients receive no preventive care, despite the ACA mandate for free coverage.
- David Henderson grades the US on how far we have come toward achieving Karl Marx’s ten public policy goals.
- Monopoly matters: “in states in which the market share of the dominant health insurer exceeded 71 percent…[that] payer, on average, paid 14.7 percent less to hospitals than market-leading insurers in more competitive insurance markets.”
Thursday Links
- Why we need Association Health Plans for small businesses and gig workers: Less than one-third of small companies are even offering heath insurance to their employees.
- Why doctors so aggressively pushed the Covid vaccines.
- Sanders/Cassidy bill would speed genic drugs to the marketplace.
- Mattel is making a Barbie doll with Down syndrome: “It’s set to join existing dolls with behind-the-ear hearing aids, a wheelchair, alopecia and a prosthetic limb within the company’s heavily diversity and inclusion-focused line.”
- Against bringing back the Woolly mammoth.
- An early estimate of the cost of Covid from Harvard: $16 trillion!
‘Pass-Through Billing’ Health Care Scams
Nearly three years ago I wrote about rural hospital lab scams. That’s when a shady marketing consultant working with scammers convinces struggling rural hospitals that they have a solution for precarious hospital finances. Basically, every lab test ordered by affiliated physicians is billed through a rural hospital with a more lucrative lab contract. The hospital makes money for doing nothing, while the marketing guys get a big, fat cut of the proceeds. You and I pay higher prices as a result.