A report published in Health Affairs estimates that Medicare Part D spending will rapidly increase in the coming years. The reasons are both good news and bad news. Basically, new drugs in the pipeline and an increasing array of specialty drugs will drive spending growth. From 2009 to 2018 spending on Medicare Part D drugs increased about…
Category: Medicare
Fight Childhood Obesity by Making School Lunches Less Appetizing
About 30 million school kids qualify for free or low-cost school lunches through the National School Lunch Program. A dozen years ago a federal law tightened school lunch nutritional requirements with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The federal law hoped to increase school kids intake of vegetables, fruits, fiber, grains and unsweetened beverages. The federal initiative was in response to findings that children who got free lunches were gaining more weight than higher income children not in the program. Prior to the tightened federal standards, low-income children enrolled in the school lunch program were more likely to have a body mass index closer to the obesity threshold than their higher-income peers. Rather than alleviate hunger, there was concern that the school lunch program was contributing to childhood obesity. According to the CDC, 21% of kids age 6 to 11 are obese, while 17% of adolescents age 12 to 19 are obese. Nearly 10% have severe obesity.
Insulin
Before a Trump executive order, employers could not provide free or subsidized insulin to their diabetic employees without sacrificing the employees’ right to have a Health Savings Account. This meant that employees had to spend their entire health insurance deductible out of pocket before any employer cost sharing took effect. The Trump administration’s change leaves employers and employees free to engage in the kind of cost-sharing arrangements that make economic and health care sense.
Save Tons of Money with DIY Health Care
We have all had physicians suggest an x-ray, blood test or other screening test during an office visit. It is important for patients to have a personal physician who they can consult for routine health matters. However, increasingly entrepreneurs are offering direct-to-consumer health screenings without visiting your doctor.