Monday, March 31, 2008

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Brian Klepper's recent post , " What Walgreens Surely Sees " got Health Beat's Maggie Mahar thinking and the result is o...
Friday, March 28, 2008

What Worksite and Retail Clinics Mean for the Primary Care Crisis

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Today, Brian Klepper returns with one of the more intriguing posts we have seen from him. This time he looks at a relatively unnoticed acqui...
Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Democrats Ask GAO to Study the Individual Health Insurance Market--They Are Really Trying to Set Up McCain and Cast Doubt on His Health Reform Plan

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There is an old salesman's axiom, "Don't ever ask a question you don't already know the answer to." Key House Democrat...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Today's HMO Carnage on Wall Street

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Maybe times have been just too good for so long that people have forgotten just what a challenging business this can be. After easy profits ...

The Higher the Price the Better It Works--Placebo Drugs That Cost More Found to "Work Better"

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That was the somewhat humorous--but nonetheless valuable--conclusion from a study sponsored by MIT and led by a Duke behavioral economist. ...
Monday, March 10, 2008

Drug Prices Rise 7% For Drugs Most Commonly Prescribed For Seniors--Two-and-A-Half Times the Rate of Overall Inflation

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Many health care experts point to the creation of Medicare as the time that the American health care system's costs began to explode...
Friday, February 29, 2008

A Slowing Economy--What Impact Will It Have On The Health Care Sector?

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Health care is considered a business that tends to be resistant to economic downturns . Brian Klepper returns with a post asking just what...

Another Government Study Questions the Medicare Advantage Business

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You can now add the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to MedPAC and the CBO as highly respected government agencies who have issued r...
Thursday, February 28, 2008

Drug Patents and "Pay-For-Delay"--Drug Industry Payoffs That Need To End

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I call your attention to a recent op-ed by a member of the Federal Trade Commission , Jon Leibowitz , in the Washington Post . Commissioner...
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Health Insurance Industry "Racing to Defuse a Growing Furor Over Retroactive Policy Cancellations"

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That was the lead line in a Wall Street Journal story on the recent health insurance policy rescission controversy . The controversy is ove...
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Give Cuomo and the Physicians What They Say They Want--Show the Patient Just What the Doc Is Accepting From Everyone Else

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says that health plans are using the " Prevailing Healthcare Charges System " to "de...

How Profitable is Medicare Advantage? The United/Humana Deal in Las Vegas Says a Lot

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UnitedHealth and Humana have announced that Humana will acquire UnitedHealth's Las Vegas Medicare Advantage business for $185 milli...
Monday, February 25, 2008

The Argument for Specialty Hospitals

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The growth of specialty hospitals has always concerned me. Too often these niche players looked to be siphoning off the most profitable par...
Friday, February 22, 2008

Hillary Clinton Criticizes Barack Obama's Health Care Plan Saying It Would Not Cover Everyone--Is She Right?

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This is a repost of an original that addresses Hillary Clinton 's claim, repeated in this week's Texas debate, that only her health ...
Thursday, February 21, 2008

A "Health Care Fed" and Obama

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An idea that has been floating around for some time is that a " Health Care Fed " needs to be created as a means to control health...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Health Wonk Review Is UP

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This week's review of the best health care blog posts is up over at Merrill Goozner's, " Gooznews.com ." The former fore...

The Usual and Customary Controversy--Who's Cheating Whom?

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New York AG Andrew Cuomo recently announced an investigation into how insurers pay for out-of-network services . He charged that consumers ...
Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Bush Administration Now Willing to Increase SCHIP Spending by $19 Billion Only Weeks After Vetoing a Bipartisan Compromise

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At a February 7th Senate Finance Committee hearing, HHS Secretary Leavitt testified about the 2009 Bush budget request. This time, the Bu...

Lifetime Health Care Costs For the Obese and Smokers Lower Because They're Dead Sooner

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This was the impressive conclusion of a study published by the Public Library of Science Medicine . The study was sponsored by the Dutch Min...
Monday, February 18, 2008

Mom, Dad, the Kids and Medicare––Would an Obama Presidency Energize Young Adults to Demand Entitlement Reform?

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Barack Obama has made this election-year different. Not since the 1960s have young voters been so energized . One college town after anot...