Read it? Heck no - Just pass it!

From the "Have to Pass it to Learn What's in it" Files:"Older adults of the same age and income with similar medical histories would pay sharply different amounts for private health insurance due to what appears to be an unintended consequence of the new health care law."Well first, I take great issue with the assumption that this was, in fact, "unintended." After all, the whole point of the bill...

Something Different: Maritime Insurance and Terrorism

Insuring a commercial ship requires a special type of coverage, generally available from carriers that specialize in this area of the biz (Lloyds' syndicates come to mind). Unlike, say, your average home or car policy, there are very few carriers willing (and/or able) to take on this kind of risk. They assess various factors, including potential liability, which can come in many different forms.Such...

Obamacare Bites

I have been trying to deal with the constraints of Obamacrap but this is too much. For all the talk about keeping your plan, giving everyone lower health insurance premiums and saving the world from capitalism, this thing with children's health insurance really bites.Hardly a week goes by when I don't get a call from someone wanting to buy health insurance on their child. The only thing I can offer...

Cavalcade of Risk #134 now up

Julie Ferguson presents this week's epic collection of risk-related posts. With security theatre, zombies, cats 'n cars & more, what's not to lo...

Dodging the (Tax) HIT

This morning's email brought a link to this HIT piece [ed: /groaner!] on the so-called Health Insurance Tax portion of ObamaCare©:"A hidden tax known as the Health Insurance Tax, or HIT, which will increase health care costs and threaten our ability to grow and create jobs ... and will have a direct impact on businesses and their employees’ bottom line."No kidding.Mr Plemmons, the Executive Director...

Shecantbeserious Goes on a Medical Mystery Tour! [UPDATED]

Our favorite guest-blogger, Certified Medical Office Manager Kelley Beloff, is back, and has the scoop on the real life implications of the latest ObamaCare© goofiness: Medical Mystery Shoppers:As part of my daily readings for my job as a medical practice manager, I came across this article from the New York Times, “U.S. Plans Stealth Survey on Access to Doctors.” The article discusses how the United...

Grand Rounds, Colorado-style is up...

Louise Norris hosts this week's collection of interesting medblog posts, complete with vintage pictures that really capture the mo...

If They Won't Play Nice, Beat Them Up

The Massachusetts Attorney General has a solution to the rising cost of health care (and health insurance). If the providers won't behave she will make them do her will.Forbes magazine reports the OAG (Office of Attorney General):“at least setting temporary statutory restrictions on how much prices may vary for comparable services”...

Google It! (Or not)

From the Time Flies Dept: Over three years ago, we reported on Google's EMR (Electronic Medical Records) initiative "Google Health," which was touted as "a long-anticipated U.S. health information service that combines the leading Web company's classic search services with a user's personal health records online."Partnering with Walgreen's and CVS, not to mention the highly esteemed Cleveland Clinic,...

Swedish Meatball MedCare & Scottish Non-Care

Over the years, we've chronicled the (mis)doings of the MVNHS© and CanuckCare. Some critics have asked why we don't focus as well on more...ahem..."successful" national health care systems, such as Sweden's. Aside from the fact that America is more culturally akin to Great Britain and Our Neighbors to the North©, there's the rather striking fact that Sweden's health care scheme is not exactly a paragon...

Risk Management and Floods

The good people of Minot, ND may be forgiven for allowing their flood insurance policies to lapse:"When the federal government lifted a requirement a decade ago that low-lying valley homes have flood insurance, most residents stopped buying it."Now, one may argue that, just because the gummint doesn't require you to purchase flood insurance (as opposed to health insurance, of course), doesn't automatically...

Stupid Client Tricks: P & C Edition

So, your car sits idle (but hopefully not idling) 22 hours a day. Your car payment and insurance meters, though, run 24/7. Wouldn't it be great if there were some way to turn that down-time into cold cash?Turns out, there just might be, but there's a catch. Actually, there are a lot of catches.Here's the scoop:Yesterday's McPaper featured a front-page item on "personal car-sharing:""Seeing a...

Cavalcade of Risk #134: Call for submissions

Julie Ferguson hosts next week's CavRisk. Entries are due by Monday (the 27th).NB: We're now using this submission tool: The BC WorkAroundOnce there, you'll be asked to provide:■ Your post's url and title■ Your blog's url and name■ Your name and email■ A (brief) summary of the post ("Remarks")At the bottom of the form, you'll see a drop-down menu; simply select "Cavalcade of Risk" then press "Submit"...

The ObamaPool©: Rest Period!

It's important to remember that, when we "passed the bill to read what's in it," we were told that some 4 million people would be jumping into the state-run ObamaPools©.Would that it were so.Talk about underselling:"Barely a dozen Mainers have signed up for an insurance plan that covers pre-existing conditions, which has been available in the state for nearly a year."Remember, this is highly subsidized...

DTC explained

Direct to Consumer (DTC) advertising has been a pharma staple for quite some time. We've all seen them; heck, most of us could probably parrot back key points ("for more than 4 hours," "nausea, dizziness, constipation," "if you're pregnant or may become pregnant," the list goes on).Some folks have finally had enough, and produced this video template for pretty much every DTC campaign you can think...

Health Wonk Review, "Big Men" edition is up...

Tinker Ready hosts this week's roundup of thoughtful posts on health care policy and wonke...

Thursday Morning Linkfest

■ FoIB Holly R sends us this tidbit, the truthfulness of which I can confirm from personal experience:"Staying out of [the] hospital is cheaper and safer ... One in three hospital patients experiences an adverse event."This makes sense, of course: after all, there's lots of sick people there.■ My better half recently started a new job helping an insurer with IT issues. It's something we tend to take...

What are they smoking?

So, Jennifer Arnold of Avalere Health ("a leading advisory company focused on healthcare business strategy and public policy") tips us to their recent study which claims that, contrary to all actual evidence, ObamaCare© won't disrupt the commercial insurance market. Or, as Avalere so quaintly terms it, "Employer Sponsored Insurance (ESI)."According to the brain trust at AH (LLC!), "the ESI market...

Stealing Health Care

Need health care? Can't afford it? Rob a bank.James Verone lost his job of 17 years due to the recession. He has supported himself with part time and temporary jobs but that wasn't enough.On a side note, he is to be commended for this attitude. Rather than wait on the government to bail him out he went out and looked for work....

Obamacare - Millions on Medicaid

The folks in Washington that crafted Obamacare never bothered to read the bill before making it law. Nor did the ask OMB to score all the associated costs of the law.So now, almost a year and a half later, they are just now discovering a "glitch" in the Affordable Care Act, the one we call Obamacrap.According to the Washington Post, Obamacrap will cause employers to lay off employees, drop group health...

It's all in the Genes

Cancer treatment continues to be an expensive and difficult proposition. One of the main challenges is the diagnosis itself, and of course treatment protocols run a large gamut. One particularly promising avenue has been the use of genetic testing in determining a particular cancer's origin. This kind of testing is often (generally?) excluded from coverage under most health insurance plans (and perhaps...

Obamawaivers

I gotta ask, just who is Ezra Klein and why should anyone care? More importantly, how does this guy manage to keep his job when he is so far off base that he should be tossed out of the game just on principle.On the Obamacrap waivers he offers this view.the law to do something in the four years between passage and implementation. So they created a host of early benefits: modest, high-polling ideas...

Grand Rounds is HOT!

Shrink Rap hosts this week's sizzlin' round-up of great medblog posts. I really like the way it's laid out, with summaries PLUS excerpts. Looks like the Shrink Rap folks are en fue...

Punishing the Good Guys: An Update

About a month ago, we reported on the travails of Bill and Mary, two hard-working folks who played by the rules and, as a result of circumstances beyond their control, were punished for doing so. Specifically, Mary is not eligible to take a dip in the Ohio ObamaPool© because she was recently insured. She was left with few options, none of them particularly appealing.Recently, Bill learned about an...

Bladder up!

I've always subscribed to the conventional wisdom that emptying a full bladder as soon as (practically) possible was always the "way to go."But new research seems to pour cold water on this idea:"New research shows that seemingly trivial things, such as the fullness or otherwise of your bladder, have a huge influence on the way you make decisions."Who knew?!The question, though, is whether or not...

MVNHS©: Into the Breach

For those still skeptical that government-run health care means rationed health care, here's a little somethin' to nudge you along the road to reality:"Official figures for April showed 51 trusts - a third - missed the target for 90% of patients to be seen within 18 weeks ... The target for hospitals to see 90% of patients within 18 weeks was to reflect the fact that there needed to be leeway ......

ObamaWaiver© Mania Waning? [UPDATED & BUMPED]

Maybe so:"The Obama administration says it will end a controversial health care waiver program in September.Officials announced Friday that all applications for new waivers and renewals of existing ones have to be in by Sept. 22."Considering that the program wasn't even in the bill we had to "pass to see what's in it," this is quite an accomplishment.As it became more and more obvious that these were...

Bark, Screech, Yowl!

Try as I might, it's difficult to imagine a more useless, bigger waste of money than auto accident coverage for one's pet:"(A)n auto insurer's pet-injury coverage typically kicks in if a pet is traveling in your car, is injured in an accident and needs veterinary care."Seriously?This is not to be confused with regular ol' pet health insurance, which can help pay more typical veterinary bills. What...

Ode to Rube Goldberg

If you ever played the board game Mousetrap as a child you have an idea of a typical Rube Goldberg contraption. The health insurance exchanges as required by Obamacrap are an example of taking a simple idea and making it overly complicated . . . Goldberg style.The folks at Kaiser Health News pretty much nailed it.In order to...

Immigrants, Babies and the MVNHS©

"Walk into Ealing Hospital and you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a foreign land ... new figures revealed that 80 per cent of the children born at the West London hospital over the previous year were to foreign nationals."And it's not just labor and delivery costs, either:"(A) team of translators, funded by the taxpayer, has to be on hand around the clock."And now to the crux of the matter:"(R)enewed...

What to make of this...

Consulting firm Accenture recently published the results of their survey of physicians, which reveals a disturbing (but unsurprising) trend:"(T)he rate of independent physicians being employed by health systems will grow by an annual five percent over three years. By 2013, less than one-third of physicians are expected to remain truly independent."I characterized this as "unsurprising" because we've...

Breaking: Aetna Quits the Bluegrass State

From this morning's email:"Effective July 1, 2011, Aetna will stop selling new Individual Insurance and Small Group policies in Kentucky. After reviewing their portfolio of Individual and Small Group plans in Kentucky, Aetna determined they can no longer meet the needs of their customers while remaining competitive in the Individual and Small Group market."If you're a current insured, you can still...

Huntsman Countdown

God created the world in 6 days. Apparently Jon Huntsman feels his contribution is worthy as well as he is counting down the days until he allegedly will announce his candidacy for president.But is Huntsman a non-Romney candidate worthy of this race? Perhaps not but let's leave that part of it to the political handicappers.HuffPo has their own view on Huntsman and his SCHIP political baggage.As governor,...

The Medicaid - Obamacare Challenge

Folks on Medicaid have trouble finding a doctor to accept them as a patient. Obamacrap is going to expand Medicaid rolls by 15 million or more in 2014 and that is just the ones who are uninsured now. Doesn't count those who have coverage through their employer and voluntarily drop out when they can get "free" health insurance.In 2014 those earning 133% of the Federal Poverty Level or less get free...

AMA Backs Off Obamacrap Mandate

The AMA is backing off their earlier support of Obamacrap. The contentious individual mandate is no longer endorsed by the doctor group. According to the Chicago Tribune:The AMA should "regard the purchase of health insurance to be a matter of individual responsibility to be encouraged by the use of tax incentives and other noncompulsory measures," those opposed to the mandate said in their resolution.Individual...

UHC/Medco Update: Resolution

On Monday afternoon, I spoke with Lynne H, UHC's Director of Media Relations. As noted last week, I had already discussed the issue with the Communications VP at United Health Group, and the UHC Account Coordinator at Medco. There have been two basic concerns here:First, the original mis-pricing which cost my co-worker over $100, andSecond, ascertaining the extent of the problem (how many other insureds...

Hearts and Noses

Surprisingly, DC isn't the only place you'll find clowns (amateur or otherwise):[Hat Tip: David Willia...

(Un)Healthy Exchanges

Mike Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (and FoIB), has a thought-provoking proposal:"A key battleground is whether states will implement the law by creating government bureaucracies that Obamacare euphemistically calls health insurance "exchanges" ... Creating any sort of exchange is unnecessary, wasteful and counterproductive."But it's in the law we had to "pass to learn...

Cavalcade of Risk #133 now up

IronMan hosts this week's eclectic collection of risk-related posts. As usual, it's thoughtfully laid out and easy to click throu...

Ohio DOI Info Bleg

Under new rules, Ohio agents must now renew their licenses every two years (this is separate from CE requirements, and a change from the previous "perpetual license" model).The renewal process is itself unnecessarily (and counter-productively) difficult, tedious and ill-defined. I'd like the Department to investigate and correct this, but with the new administration, I no longer have the connections...

Miracle Weed

A while back, Bob pondered whether or not medical marijuana would be a covered expense under ObamaCare©. Well, we're still waiting on that one, but at least one unlikely player has stepped forward to offer assistance to, um, "providers:""Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. [see note] has long sold weed killer. Now, it's hoping to help people grow killer weed ... Scotts Chief Executive Jim Hagedorn said he is exploring...