January 2009

Women And Healthcare

by Louise January 30, 2009

[...] If you’re up for a little controversy, PalMD at White Coat Underground has written about conscience clauses that allow medical providers to refuse to to provide care if it conflicts with their personal beliefs. A very good point raised in the article and comments is that the conscience clauses tend to be invoked in matters of reproductive health. [...]

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Salaries For Healthcare Executives

by Louise January 28, 2009

[...] With other private industries, we have more of a choice in terms of quality, price, and whether we want the product in the first place. Somehow it doesn’t feel right that healthcare is set up just like all of our other industries, with executives making 7 and 8 figure salaries while millions of Americans are without health insurance and don’t have realistic access to healthcare at all.

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Email It To Me

by Louise January 27, 2009

I am a big fan of The Office.  Michael, Jim, Pam, Dwight… they thoroughly entertain me every Thursday night.  Michael isn’t known for his stunning wisdom, but last week there was an exchange between Michael and his boss David that deserves to be shared: David Wallace: I’ll fax over some of the things we’re looking [...]

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Customary Charges Are Not Always Reasonable

by Louise January 24, 2009

[...] Pricing varies from one provider to the next; negotiated reimbursement rates vary within a single health insurance network; patients often don’t know what the price will be until after the fact. And as David Williams pointed out, the prices are often far from reasonable. We can’t do without healthcare, and that’s why unreasonable “reasonable and customary” charges exist.

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Health Insurance And Clinical Trials

by Louise January 21, 2009

Diane Primavera, our local Colorado state representative from Broomfield, has proposed a bill that would prevent health insurance companies from canceling policies of insureds who choose to enroll in clinical trials of experimental treatments. We appreciate Primavera’s healthcare reform efforts for Colorado. [...]

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Health Insurance More Important For Humans Than Pets

by Louise January 20, 2009

[...] But before any state starts mandating that shelters and pet stores provide pet insurance information to customers, we should probably focus on making sure that people know how to qualify for Medicaid and SCHIP, and are automatically provided with information about eligibility for human health insurance.

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Health Insurance And Infertility Treatment

by Louise January 19, 2009

[...] One of the benefits of health insurance is the negotiated fee schedules between providers and health insurance carriers. When claims are considered “covered expenses” the billed amount is almost always reduced by the insurance company. Unfortunately, infertility treatments aren’t covered expenses and don’t get repriced by health insurance networks. [...]

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Different Perspectives

by Louise January 15, 2009

[...] Sometimes we need to be reminded that not everyone is aware of the actual cost of health insurance or health care. To us, reform that lowers costs across the board is a very important issue. But with such huge discrepancies in what people are paying for their health insurance, we’re not even in the same book yet, say nothing of on the same page.

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Non-Profit Does Not Necessarily Mean Low Cost

by Louise January 14, 2009

I recently posted an article on the Colorado Health Insurance Insider about my views on making Medicare available as an opt-in option for Americans younger than 65. I got a comment on the article that I thought brought up some good points and wanted to expand on some of the ideas. The reader pointed out that a good number of private health insurance plans are non-profit [...]

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