Wednesday Links

Posted on by John C. Goodman

Blue Cross say its reforms would save $767B over 10 years. Chief among them: pay the same price for medical care, regardless of where it is delivered. That means a facility can’t bill a higher rate to Medicare, just because it has a link to a hospital.

To save a child from a rare disease, a one-time injection costs $1.7 million. (NYT) I don’t have a problem with the cost. But who is going to pay for it?

Should doctors bill for answering patients’ emails? (NYT) I say, yes. Other professionals bill by time. Why should doctors do the same?

Ten myths About nutrition. Myth No 1: fresh is better than frozen, canned or dried fruits and vegetables.  (NYT)

3 problems with Covid boosters: (1) the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated; (2) vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines; (3) antibodies rapidly wane after a few months.  (WSJ)

7 thoughts on “Wednesday Links”

    1. Devon, Your Golden Rule was purchased by United Health Care which was the largest insurer in the WORLD by written premium in 2022. 2nd was Centene, America’s largest Obamacare AND Medicaid company. 3rd was Anthem Blue Cross!

      1-2-3 in the WORLD in written premium are 3 AMERICAN [health insurance] companies! haha I bet, the other 34 Blue Cross MONOPOLIES will be high on this list, like Florida Blues. Obamacare has been very good for American health insurance companies. Centene was the BEST stock on the S&P 500 in 2018. Are the American health insurance stocks in a bubble if the FREEDOM Caucus has its way?

      Florida Blues just did a Press Release saying polling indicate the public thinks Obamacare costs money when 80% of Floridians can get Obamacare for under $10 a month because the taxpayers are paying the bill. They said that includes illegal aliens!

      Americans will save 7 TRILLION if America opens up the Market to insurers other than Blue Cross MONOPOLY. Why should Blue Cross get all the employees of cities in Iowa? Blue Cross gets all County workers in Iowa too. All schools, all universities and of course all of the State employees. Blue Cross is even selling non-insurance in IOWA, by Farm Bureau – a Blue Cross agency, that is using medical underwiting to decline the sick and is HSA Qualifying and doesn’t cover farmers on the job (NO KIDDING). So farmers must say their son was recreational tractor driving when he rolled the tractor. The son wasn’t working. He was playing so he is covered!

      I assumed you would think Blue Cross has good ideas. YOU like their employer-based benefits that employees lose if they get too sick to work. Do you get paid extra for being goofy?The city of Ames, Iowa is being charged $28,500 a year per family by Blue Cross which is $6,000 over the national average. They are also selling life insurance to employees that if they get ovarian cancer and become too sick to work they lose their life insurance too! Holy tamale Batman, is this legal to sell with non-licensed HR clowns? The answer is yes! YOU could sell this garbage Devon because you are not licensed, so you qualify. Forget that Full and Proper Disclosure stuff, that’s only if your licensed. So you would not be bound by ETHICS so you can just LIE! YOU have no license to lose.

      FYI, Devon, a 30-year-old couple plus (2) kids can get Trump’s high-quality low-cost STM for a 30-year-old couple and 2 children for just $3,636/year in the 50010 zip code. That’s $25,000 per year per employee cheaper than Blue Cross Employer-Based benefits. Your Blue Cross article reports the average cost for family insurance is $22,200 a year. There is a whole lot of scamming going on Devon. YOU just refuse to write about it and you’re usually WRONG like this article. Also, Obamacare in this zip code for this family is $7,620 a year with a $9,000 per person deductible from Blue Cross.

      But, the Obaqmacare HMO from Blue Cross pays NOTHING at the MAYO Clinic which is just a couple of hours away. Reported to be the BEST hospital in the world. With Trump’s low-cost STM for just $3,636 a year the MAYO Clinic is a participating provider. But the Democrats call it JUNK but Obamacare’s HMO that the sick can’t go to the MAYO Clinic the Democrats, Media and Republicans just love.

  2. Should doctors bill patients for answering email? I say yes but don’t try to tell me that that 5-minute email is going to be rounded to the nearest 15 minutes at $400 per hour. I was checking a website for a direct primary care doctor who is local and for $100 a month you get unlimited office visit and calls (at the providers discretion)

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  3. Food myths: A new meat market opened near my house. Everything they sell is frozen and vacuum sealed at the meat processing plant. Some people are put off by the idea that meat isn’t wrapped in front of them but the store explains that frozen is fresher.

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  4. One small correction, Ron.
    You refer to group life insurance, which an employee could lose if they got sick and lost their job.

    However, the industry standard is that such an employee has the right to convert their life insurance to a personal policy if they lose their job. I used to sell this product.

    Now they may find it hard to afford a conversion, though if they had cancer they might work extra hard to find the money,

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    1. Bob, you didn’t sell anything as bad as the Life Insurance that they are selling to the City of Ames employees. I have looked at thousands of policies and this is the worst. If a woman gets cancer she can’t work less than full time 40 hours per week and keep her insurance! She can’t even work part time.

      Also, the maximum that may be CONVERTED is $10,000 but the rates are based on medical underwriting at the time of conversion.

      These employees assume the life insurance is REAL so they spend their hard earned money so their children may have something if they die. Stealing this life insurance is much like taking the food out of the mouths of their orphaned children.

      BOB, the public is amazed that employer-based life insurance is a scam! Sure agents have always known it was a scam but the Employer-Based benefits are under the eye of the public now in this TIME of reform.

  5. The first link yesterday covered site-neutral payments, but there is more to the story.

    CMS has been trying to establish this practice for several years within Medicare. The American Hospital Association has thrown up numerous lawsuits to slow this down, with intermittent success.

    The Blue Cross announcement that is reproduced here is a little puzzling to me, in this respect:

    Why do private insurers need to be encouraged by Blue Cross to cut their overpayments when outpatient care is done in a hospital setting? What prevents these private insurers – including Blue Cross itself — from cutting their overpayments tomorrow morning?

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