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Happy Holidays!
These days staying well-informed about health policy is more essential than ever. Our weekly round-up offers an easy-to-read summary of the latest news about our healthcare system from non-paywalled sources.
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Breaking News in Healthcare Reform
Snippets of news & commentary with a special focus on
health policy, Medicare for All & California
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“Fiddling with payment incentive programs is not a real solution for our extravagantly expensive medical costs. Single payer is the real solution, combining efficiency with universal access.”
Largest ACO Program Saves Piddling Amounts for Medicare
Health Justice Monitor | Kip Sullivan, Jim Kahn | December 22, 2023
“To fix consolidation in health care will require us to address the system that leads physicians to see profit-driven private equity as their best path to staying afloat, even if they initially entered medicine to help people.”
Private Equity Is Buying Up Health Care, But the Real Problem is Why Doctors are Selling
The Hill | Yashaswini Singh, Christopher Whaley | December 21, 2023
“Hospitals across the country are dropping MA, because, as one hospital executive confirmed, these plans … are always trying to figure out how to deny payment for services.’”
Medicare Advantage Under-Performance
Health Justice Monitor | Ana Malinow, David Leibowitz | December 20, 2023
“…UnitedHealth reached its enormous stature and influence by assimilating … companies into one vertically integrated conglomerate that determines which doctors, hospitals and medications millions of Americans have access to, how much they’ll have to pay for treatment, and whether they will get coverage at all for medically necessary and often life-saving care.”
Building a Giant
The American Prospect | Krista Brown, Sara Sirota | December 20, 2023
“The expansion is ‘critical’ for people in rural areas, ‘which often face the greatest shortage of mental health providers’….”
Medicare is About to Add Hundreds of Thousands More Mental Health Providers
Axios | Maya Goldman | December 20, 2023
“…the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined … [for] the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.”
U.S. Government Spent More On Health Care In 2022 Than Six Countries With Universal Health Care Combined
STAT News | Annalisa Merelli | December 19, 2023
“…the government contractor’s chronic understaffing and cost-cutting measures may have put inmates’ lives in danger.”
Senators Raise Alarm About Nation’s Largest Prison Health Care Provider
CNN | Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken | December 19, 2023
“While rising premiums and out of pocket expenses are Americans’ biggest worry, many also worry about the decline in the quality and access to healthcare, and a further 10% worry about losing healthcare coverage altogether.”
Private Health Insurance Premiums Reach a Record High of $7008/Year in 2024
PR Newswire | ValuePenguin | December 19, 2023
“The government anticipated receiving about 22,000 disputes in 2022. However, they received nearly 490,000 from April 2022 through June 2023….”
No Surprises Act Dispute Portal Reopens Again Amid ‘Challenging’ Policy Rollout
Healthcare Dive | Susanna Vogel | December 18, 2023
“A rash of coverage rejections is fueling calls to increase government oversight of the largely unregulated use of AI by the health insurance industry….”
Lawsuits Take Aim at Use of AI Tool by Health Insurance Companies to Process Claims
CBS News | Elizabeth Napolitano | December 18, 2023
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