November 2010

Grand Rounds Vol. 7 No. 10

by Louise November 30, 2010

Welcome to Grand Rounds. As we get ba ck into the work week routine after the Thanksgiving weekend, we have a great collection of health care articles for you to browse through. Enjoy! [...]

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Most Americans Do Not Get To Make Their Own Health Insurance Choices

by Louise November 24, 2010

This article is not the first I’ve seen that calls into question whether Obama was being truthful when he said that health care reform would be structure so that people would still be able to keep their existing health insurance if they wanted to. And it would seem that his statements did amount to a bit of over-promising. But even before the PPACA came up for a vote, many Americans weren’t in control of whether or not they got to keep their existing health insurance. [...]

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Grand Rounds Submissions

by Jay November 23, 2010

We’re honored to be hosting the next Medical Grand Rounds on November 30th. Grand Rounds is a weekly gathering of the best health and medical articles written by doctors, nurses, students, patients, and others in health care related professions.

Please submit your favorite articles to Louise at louisen78 [at] gmail [dot] com before 10:00pm MST of November 29, 2010.

Please include the authors name, article title, url, and a brief description of the article.

This week, enjoy the first Grand Rounds to ever be hosted on Facebook by Amanda Brown DVM

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Capping Profits And Admin Costs Across The Healthcare Industry

by Louise November 23, 2010

[...] Time will tell, but it seems that as long as doctors, hospitals, medical device makers, and pharmaceutical companies are exempt from any rules concerning profits and administrative costs, the MLR rules might not have much long term impact on the actual cost of health insurance. Premiums will keep rising (at a pace similar to what we’ve seen over the last several years) as long as the cost of healthcare continues to climb at the same rate it has for the last decade or so.

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How US Healthcare Compares With Other Developed Countries

by Louise November 19, 2010

[...] While many studies comparing health care around the world tend to look at generalized data like life expectancies and total cost of healthcare, this one was more focused on how healthcare in each country impacts individual people, and whether people are satisfied with their health insurance, personal medical costs, and access to care. [...]

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430 People Already Enrolled In GettingUsCovered

by Louise November 18, 2010

[...] Even when policies are free or very low cost (such as Medicaid or Child Health Plan Plus), a significant number of eligible individuals continue to go without coverage, for a myriad of reasons. So it stands to reason that plenty of uninsured people who are eligible for GettingUsCovered won’t apply. Some likely aren’t aware of the availability, and many others simply can’t afford to pay the premiums. But apparently Colorado is enrolling people at a fairly fast pace – as of November 1, there were 20 states that had fewer than 50 people enrolled in their newly-created high risk pools.

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Thanksgiving Cavalcade Of Risk

by Louise November 17, 2010

Welcome to the Thanksgiving Cavalcade. It’s an exciting time to be hosting because risk is a hot topic right now. Insurance and healthcare risk, as well as monetary policy and finance, etc [...]

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Funding Cover Colorado

by Louise November 10, 2010

For nearly two decades, Cover Colorado has been providing health insurance to people in Colorado who don’t have access to group health insurance coverage and have pre-existing conditions the make them uninsurable (or unable to get coverage without exclusion riders or rate increases that put their premium above that offered by Cover Colorado) in the individual health insurance market. While we’re lucky to have such a resource, it doesn’t come cheap [...]

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Diabetes Accounts For Nearly A Quarter Of US Hospital Costs

by Louise November 9, 2010

Diabetes now accounts for nearly a quarter of all hospital spending in the US – about $83 billion a year in hospital fees. The report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality was released in August, but I just came across it today, and the details are staggering. The vast majority – 95% – of all diabetes cases are Type 2 diabetes, which is nearly always caused by poor diet and/or a sedentary lifestyle. In addition, 70% of hospital stays for diabetics are paid for by government health insurance: 60% by Medicare and 10% by Medicaid. [...]

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