Medicare’s experiment gives private insurers the flexibility to both expand eligibility and rein in costs. The same insurers already manage most other care for roughly 30 million Medicare beneficiaries through the program known as Medicare Advantage.
The hope is they can take that experience and those skills, like coordinating care and vetting the quality of providers, and apply them to improve hospice. Because private insurers get paid a lump sum to manage each Medicare patient, they are also motivated to keep costs down.
Category: Medicare
Thursday Links
- Among the fifty-four models launched by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation since its inception in 2010 with the aim of reducing costs while preserving or improving the quality of care, the vast majority have led to neither cost savings nor improvements in quality. HT Jason Shafrin
- It can take an alarmingly long time (maybe 17 years) for empirical research findings to be incorporated into standard medical practice.
- Biden is launching Trump’s Operation Warp Speed II.
- FDA: patients at risk because of shortage of cancer drugs.
- BMJ study: every month delayed in cancer treatment can raise the risk of death by around 10%.
Wednesday Links
- Biden reverses course: ends the National Covid-19 Emergency. Says he still opposes the change.
- Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine properly vetted?
- Study: Competition with Medicare Advantage plans makes traditional Medicare better.
- Third Party Tracking: What happens when you go into the hospital is not just between you and the hospital.
- RFK, Jr. is suing top-ranking U.S. officials, alleging collusion with Facebook, Google, and Twitter to censor social media platforms, re Covid.
Saturday Links
- How parents decide when and how to punish their children. It’s similar to the principles of criminal law.
- Reducing carbon emissions through subsidies (the Biden/IRA approach) costs 6 times as much as a carbon tax.
- Why the Medicare Trustees report is too optimistic: It assumes the birth rate in the long-run will increase to a nearly full native replacement of 2.0 children per woman, despite a steady and now long-standing fall to around 1.65.
- 80% of new treatments in the pharmaceutical pipeline originate in the U.S. That’s been a Godsend for the more than 55 million people living with dementia across the globe, the tens of millions worldwide who will receive a cancer diagnosis, and the more than 38 million people living with HIV.
- David Henderson’s proposal to cut Medicare spending: offer beneficiaries cash instead of a benefit in kind. I would offer everyone approved for elective surgery half the DRG rate in cash as an alternative. This is actually how some European countries handle long term care.