- The Obamacare-created Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was expected to save $2.8 billion in its first decade. In fact, it increased spending by $5.4 billion.
- Health risks of marijuana.
- Walmart offers telehealth for pets. Amazon may be next.
- Are we paying people not to work?
- One in 10 cancer patients have seen their treatment affected by drug shortages. Of those, 68% had trouble finding substitute medications and 59% reported treatment delay.
Category: Medicare
Monday Links
- There are about 36 million Health Savings Accounts holding $104 billion.
- What the elites don’t understand about obesity.
- Built-in programming for your self-driving car: Should it risk injury to you to avoid hitting a pedestrian? Or the other way around? (WSJ)
- The case for kicking ineligible people off the Medicaid rolls. (DMN)
- It may not be the onset of Alzheimer’s: memory lapses are normal.
- The ACCESS Act would allow roughly 5 million lower-income individuals to redirect their cost sharing subsidy (which now goes to insurance companies) into Health Savings Accounts (which they would own and control). Dean Clancy comments.
CBO: Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Not Very Innovative
The poorly named Affordable Care Act created the office of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). As Joe Albanese explains in National Review the new agency’s mission
…is to test new ways of paying for and delivering health-care services in federal health programs through pilot programs called “models.” These models are required by law to reduce costs and/or improve quality of care, which they pursue by enacting major policy changes.
Should Insurers Use AI to Manage Care? Yes, but with Checks & Balances
Many states have passed laws limiting prior authorization. Physicians hate prior authorization and claim insurers and health plans use it to ration care. I tend to be more sympathetic to prior authorization because in an industry where patients are insulated from the cost of their care, there needs to be some checks and balances over unnecessary care and care that is unnecessarily expensive. I often tell the story about the time my wife unknowingly tried to schedule a CT scan at a hospital outpatient clinic near our house.