The Real Reason Healthcare Costs Keep Rising Article is by Joseph Jenkins, as seen on BenefitNews.com All across America, big hospital systems are buying up or partnering with smaller hospitals. According to Health Care Cost Institute data, that makes for monopolistic market power and higher costs for employers. Here’s a striking example of how this [...]
According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, industry consolidation and diminishing competition are causing the price of many generic drugs to rise. Experts say this is because only a few manufacturers are producing certain drugs and a number of older generics are being phased out. At the same time, governments are trying to protect [...]
The article below is from LinkedIn Pulse, by Andy Neary Employers across the country are looking to provide employees with the largest and widest PPO networks as a means of giving employees choice. Somehow the health insurance industry has determined that networks should be "all-inclusive". The more medical professionals and facilities in your network, the [...]
An article talking about what one company’s cancer support program hit home recently because unfortunately, far too many of us have been impacted by cancer. At this company, oncology nurses are engaged to help families touched by cancer – from helping patients find providers to obtaining second opinions, facilitating transmission of medical records to educating [...]
With the Supreme Court decisions and regulatory challenges of 2015 behind us, it’s time to catch your breath and resolve to take better control of your healthcare bene t plan. Here are a few things to think about as you contemplate the New Year. Look at TeleHealth – Many companies, large and small, have added [...]
Article is by Arielle Levin Becker, from The CT Mirror What began with a plan to replace an aging piece of medical equipment has turned into a dispute over the delivery of cancer care along Connecticut’s affluent shoreline. And at a time when policymakers have expressed worries about preserving competition in the state’s fast-consolidating health [...]
Article is by Lisa Schencker, as seen in Modern Healthcare.com Many not-for-profit hospitals across the country could potentially lose their tax exemption if they became subject to the same type of reasoning that recently led a New Jersey court to erase one hospital's property-tax exemption in that state, experts say. A New Jersey tax court [...]
Article is by Molly Rosbach, as seen in YakimaHealrd.com Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital has been advertising that its medical charges are dramatically lower than those of its main competitor, Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center. But the ads are misleading because they omit a big piece of the picture when it comes to health care [...]
Article is from Zack Pace, from Employee Benefit News (EBN) Commentary: As you’ve no doubt noticed, the federal government made sweeping legislative and regulatory changes to the Affordable Care Act during the fourth quarter of 2015. During the last two weeks of December, I felt like I was drinking from a six-inch fire hose. How [...]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) just announced that the fee that supports the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will increase from $2.08 to $2.17 per covered life, an increase of 4.3%. The increase will apply to health plan years that end on or after Oct. 1, 2015 and before Oct. 1, 2016. Under the [...]
