September 2011

Colorado Legislators Delay Health Benefits Exchange Grant Application

by Louise September 28, 2011

[...] That issue again appears to be a sticking point, with Colorado House Republicans blocking the health insurance exchange board from applying for a $22 million grant because the application mentioned changing Colorado regulations to “conform to federal requirements”. The grant application is due at HHS on Friday, and the exchange board will not be able to meet that deadline. They are hoping, however, to address the legislator’s concerns and be able to get the application submitted by the end of the year, to be considered in the second round of funding. [...]

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Colorado Health Insurance Exchange Board Hires Attorney General’s Office

by Louise September 27, 2011

[...] I’m confident that the Colorado Attorney General’s office will be able to provide competent legal advice to the exchange board. In addition, it appears that the board is getting an excellent value, since they’ll be paying less than $79/hour for a lawyer. But I assume that John Suthers is hoping to prevail in the lawsuit challenging the individual mandate, and I am a bit skeptical about whether the rest of the ACA (including the health insurance exchanges) could survive without the individual mandate.

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A Great Cavalcade And Some Good Advice About Life Insurance

by Louise September 23, 2011

[...] a good one for people considering such a product – or really, most any very specific life insurance policy that only covers a particular debt, like your car loan, mortgage, or credit card balance. A regular term life insurance policy will likely be a much better value and can be used by your dependents to pay off whatever debts you may have and cover their own cost of living.

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Transferring Costs From Medicaid To Emergency Departments

by Louise September 21, 2011

[...] Denying arbitrary “non-emergent” ED claims for Medicaid patients doesn’t seem like a way to actually reduce ED overutilization. Instead, it seems like a way to cut Medicaid costs by increasing the number of unpaid claims that EDs have to write off each year. In order to cover their costs, hospitals will have to further increase prices for privately insured patients. That in turn causes health insurance premium hikes, which leads to calls for negotiations to artificially lower premiums. Where does it end?

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A Good Trend In Medicare Spending

by Louise September 16, 2011

[...] She specifically addresses Medicare costs, but it stands to reason that the same cost-saving strategies and paradigm shifts will also help to lower healthcare costs that are being reimbursed by private health insurance carriers. Not only do private carriers tend to follow Medicare’s lead, but the focus on value over volume from a provider perspective will benefit everyone, as it’s unlikely to be applied only to Medicare patients.

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Negotiating Premiums Doesn’t Lower The Cost Of Healthcare

by Louise September 14, 2011

[...] How would it help to have health insurance exchange boards negotiating with health insurance carriers to try to lower premiums – without addressing the root problem, which is the ever-increasing cost of healthcare? [...] Much of the focus of the healthcare reform rhetoric has been on health insurance (availability, premiums, etc.), and some important issues have been addressed in the process. But we cannot continue to focus primarily on the cost of health insurance (or try to artificially lower it) without reducing the cost of healthcare.

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Decline And Rate Up Statistics – Interesting But Confusing

by Louise September 12, 2011

[...] Your policy will cost the same amount regardless of whether you use a broker, but an experienced broker will be able to help you make sense of the plan comparison information, including the underwriting statistics. A policy or carrier’s statistical likelihood of declining or rating up any one application isn’t really relevant to each specific client… what is relevant however, is each carrier’s underwriting guidelines for the particular pre-existing condition the applicant has. [...]

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Runaway Health Care Spending, But Do Families Really Earn Nearly $100K?

by Louise September 9, 2011

[...] Although I’m a bit perplexed by the $99,000 median household income figure cited in the Rand study, I think that the gist of the study – basically the fact that health care is eating up a huge portion of family and government income in America – is important for people to understand. We can’t tackle a problem without first knowing what the problem is. And one of the obstacles in the way of curtailing health care costs in the US is that our current system is so convoluted and complex that it’s nearly impossible to see all the areas where health care spending is impacting us – at the federal, state, and household levels.

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Colorado DOI Improving Transparency Of Rate Review Process

by Louise September 8, 2011

[...] This should help boost public participation in the rate review discussion, and add to the general understanding of how the rate review process works. The DOI is obviously working hard to create as much transparency as possible with regards to rate increases. Rates will continue to increase as long as the cost of health care continues to climb (and as long as we continue to increase our utilization of health care) but at least the logic behind the rate increases will be more clear.

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