Latest Hub Issues & Best Blogs

Listing all issues/blogs by date.

How a Small Employer Preps for Health-Care Reform
Gene Marks

Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 8/24/10

Another over-40 softball season has concluded. My team performed as expected: We were 3-15. I'm feeling every inning of those 15 losses. My hamstrings ache and my knees are throbbing. I have a bruise on my right hand from when I fell trying to catch a routine pop fly. I'm going to the bathroom a lot more in the middle of the night, but I don't think that's softball-related. That's right: My body's going to hell just as the new health-care reform law is starting to take effect. Great timing. I'm not sure its provisions are going to help my sore back any time soon. They're definitely going to affect my small business—and many others like mine—right away. Fellow business owners and over-40 softball players, are we ready? Read more...

Sebelius Could Face Health-reg Fight
Jennifer Haberkorn

Politico, 8/23/10

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius could find herself pitted between top Democrats on Capitol Hill and state insurance commissioners over a key section of the health care overhaul. Sebelius is waiting for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to suggest rules surrounding how much insurance companies must spend on medical costs versus administrative expenses or profits. The report, expected in weeks, isn’t likely to be as strict on insurers as top Democrats have hoped.
 Read more...

Ratios Condemn Patients to Inferior Care
John R. Graham and Robert E. Hertzka

Sign On San Diego, 8/22/10

In 1999, Gray Davis signed a law mandating a statewide ratio of one nurse to five patients in surgical wards, one to six in psychiatric wards, one to four in pediatric wards, one to three in maternity wards, and one to two in intensive care. The law was strong-armed to enactment by the California Nurses Association, an activist union with national ambitions. Today, the union wants Congress to make this a federal diktat, and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer now carries the union’s water on Capitol Hill. Such laws move responsibility for safe hospital staffing away from communities and local governments in favor of distant bureaucracies that cannot be held accountable for the harm they cause. The California law has resulted in cases of reduced patient care: If a nurse calls in sick, wards sometimes cannot admit new patients because they would violate the rules. Read more...

Most Canadians Fear for Health System: Report Card
CTV Globe Media, 8/23/10

Most Canadians are concerned about the future of health care in this country, finds a new report card from the Canadian Medical Association. The survey found 80 per cent of Canadians worry that the quality of health care will decline in the next two to three years. They also fear the strain of aging baby boomers will be too much for the system to handle. Another three-quarters of people are worried they won't be offered the same level of health coverage that they once did as baby boomers start to retire. Read more...

Insurance Agents Fight for Survival in World After Health Reform
Julian Pecquet

The Hill, 8/22/10

Insurance agents and brokers, afraid of being rendered irrelevant in the post-health reform world of simplified insurance shopping, are fighting for their very survival. The agents want lawmakers' and regulators' support in getting the Obama administration to recognize their role in the federal insurance Web portal, which lets consumers compare coverage options online. Read more...

Obamacare Has Failed, Cont’d
Grace-Marie Turner

National Review Online: Critical Condition, 8/23/10

The wheels are coming off Obamacare even sooner than most had predicted. The American people are not being fooled by the sugar-coated sales campaign, jobs are being lost, health costs are rising, and the first program to be launched is a dud. ... A new CNN poll shows that 56 percent of Americans oppose the health-care law, with only 40 percent supporting it — virtually unchanged from March when the legislation passed. Rasmussen’s latest poll of likely voters shows that 56 percent want it repealed and 54 percent say the law is bad for the country. Read more...

The Devil in the Obamacare Details
Maureen Martin

The Heartland Institute, 8/23/10

Many legal scholars who oppose Obamacare say there’s an angel—not a devil—in the details of this law because it lacks what’s called a “severability clause.” These clauses, commonly included in legislation, provide that if part of a law is found unconstitutional, that part can be severed and the rest remains valid. In March, the State of Virginia filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate portion of the bill—the provision penalizing Americans who fail to buy private health insurance. Virginia did not challenge the rest of the new law, which contains no severability clause. Read more...

Explaining ObamaCare To Stupid
Merrill Matthews

Forbes, 8/23/10

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Democrats were promised repeatedly by their leadership and the "professional left" that once ObamaCare passed, the public would embrace it. Voters would even reward Democrats at the polls in November. Former President Bill Clinton, for example, told audiences that the reason Democrats faired so poorly in the 1994 off-year elections, when Republicans took over the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years, was his failure to pass ClintonCare. However, no one claimed in 1994 that Democrats were beaten for failing to pass health care reform; everyone understood it was because they tried to pass a massive government-run takeover of the health care system. Had Democrats succeeded, as President Obama has now done, the beating would likely have been worse. Read more...

Health Reform: Here We Go Again
Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Michael Ramlet

Kaiser Health News, 8/23/10

Consistency may emerge as the only merit of the health care reform circus. Damaging, poorly developed policies and a broken process characterized passage of the health law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Implementation is shaping up in the same vein. Consider the latest controversy over “medical loss ratios”. The MLR measures how much of premiums insurers pay out for medical care (versus, say, administrative cost). The new law requires that insurers have an MLR of at least 80 percent for individuals and small businesses, and 85 percent for large employers, or pay a refund to beneficiaries. Read more...

CDH Lowers Premiums $14.6 Billion This Year
William R. Boyles

The Consumer-Driven Health Care Institute

A surprise slowdown in health plan firm medical cost trends in the first half of 2010 will be followed by more of the same in 2011, Consumer Driven Market Report is predicting. The reason: at least part of the slowdown is due to the same factors which have made HSA and HRA premiums come in several points below PPOs. This includes fewer office visits, more use of generic drugs, fewer ER visits, and the incentive to avoid out-of-pocket costs. New estimates we just completed show that CDH plans saved employers $9.5 billion in premiums in 2009 and $14.6 billion this year, with HSA enrollees saving $941 and HRAs saving $622 per member. The Consumer Driven Market Report study, the first of its kind on CDH savings across the entire U.S. population, uses published data from AHIP and Kaiser Family Foundation. Read more...

<<  < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >  >>