You might wonder why this question at this time of year, but that’s exactly the point. Now that crunch time and the pressure of renewal are behind us, take a deep dive into your health plan to learn where your health care dollars are going. Performing a checkup on your health plan means reviewing data [...]
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 [...]
Article is by Melanie Evans, from Modern Healthcare Some hospitals and health systems are starting to review and revise their prices to make themselves more attractive to individual consumers who increasingly experience sticker shock when they pay for services out of pocket under high-deductible health plans. Part of that effort involves analyzing how much those [...]
These days change and added regulations are happening at a rapid pace and at Diversified Group, we’re here to help our client employers avoid confusion. That being said, here are a few words of advice we can give that may help you… Don’t Tolerate a Sky-High Renewal – Planning can come to a halt when [...]
It’s a question asked by anyone who’s been hospitalized in the U.S. The numbers seem to have no rhyme or reason. Particularly when you consider that the cost for an appendectomy here in the U.S. is almost $30,000, while the cost to have the very same procedure performed in Europe would be just $4,000 – [...]
"A health law fine on the uninsured will more than double" Article is by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press, from wfsb.com Washington (AP) - The math is harsh: The federal penalty for having no health insurance is set to jump to $695, and the Obama administration is being urged to highlight that cold fact in its [...]
Article as seen in NBC Connecticut Forty-nine of the 50 hospitals with the highest price markups are for-profit. Twenty of the hospitals in the report are located in Florida Dozens of U.S. hospitals are hiking up healthcare costs more than 1,000 percent – over 10 times the costs allowed by Medicare – and for the [...]
Article is by Jay Hancock, as seen in the Kaiser Health News In the late 1990s you could have taken what hospitals charged to administer inpatient chemotherapy and bought a Ford Escort econobox. Today average chemo charges (not even counting the price of the anti-cancer drugs) are enough to pay for a Lexus GX sport-utility [...]
Article is by Mary E. O’Leary, as seen in the New Haven Register HARTFORD >> As the legislature looks to rein in medical expenses, state Senate leaders blamed hospital consolidations and the purchase of physician practices for ballooning costs and an increasing threat to physicians who may want to remain independent. State Senate Pro Tem [...]
