Archive for the ‘Costs of Care’ Category
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
One month's supply of Cozaar--$59. One month's supply of generic Lisinopril--$4. Ninety-five percent of patients on Cozaar could be on Lisinopril instead. However, the majority of the patients I see in the hospital who have high blood pressure have been put on a class of medications called ARBs (Cozaar is an ARB) by ...
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Monday, August 25th, 2008
At my last employer, an uninsured patient paid the hospital somewhere between 3 and 8 cents on every dollar of revenue. It cost the hospital 40 cents on a dollar of revenue to treat that patient. Although small, the hospital still turned a profit last year. How? The managed care ...
Posted in Costs of Care, Health Insurance Premiums, Universal Healthcare | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
When Elizabeth Cohen posted her tips on how to cut prescription drug costs(http://tips.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/10/dealing-with-rising-prescription-prices/), she made no mention of the numerous $4 programs at Wal-Mart, Target, Krogers, etc... that are available to consumers. We recently helped a member who was averaging over $900 per month in "generic" prescription drug costs cut that number by $700 simply ...
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Friday, August 1st, 2008
This past Sunday in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mike Stobbe wrote an article, "Booming business helps patients navigate medicine" about companies such as Compass who are helping guide patients through the healthcare process (http://www.ajc.com/search/content/business/stories/2008/07/27/advocate.html). The article focuses primarily on a company called Health Advocate who for a few dollars per month makes ...
Posted in Behavior Change, Costs of Care | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
http://www.qualityforum.org/pdf/news/IBPriceTransparency_6-page_Final.pdf
This is a good starter article for some basic information and sources for pricing transparency. Unfortunately, it glosses over a few major barriers that Compass has effectively solved for its customers:
1. "Retail" charges by providers are generally meaningless to patients with traditional insurance unless the insurance contract with the provider ...
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
As I spend more time at industry functions, I have experienced a number of people speaking of consumer driven healthcare simply in terms of high deductible health plan. In reality, how large or small the deductible is has very little to do in terms of teaching people to be better ...
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
In this study, SHPS surveys a large number of self-insured clients and finds some very surprising results: Wellness programs and traditional insurance plan design tend to increase healthcare expenditures while disease management, employee cost orientation / education, and effecient plan administration tend to decrease healthcare expenditures. Whether or not you ...
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Monday, July 7th, 2008
Jacob Kuriyan, PhD, president and chief executive of Physmark Inc., wrote an opinion piece for the LA Times titled "New rules for healthcare" (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oew-kuriyan7-2008jul07,1,1295924.story). The basic theme of the article was that the best way to control costs would be to allow employers and insurers to focus on chronically ill ...
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Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
Before I begin, it is important to define the word co-insurance. Co-insurance is simply the fixed percentage of total healthcare costs that an employee pays. Example: an employee with a 20% co-insurance benefit would pay $20 out of a $100 doctor bill. The employer or insurance company would pay the remaining ...
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
The Washington Post reported yesterday that President Bush will once again delay the balanced budget paycuts for physician fees until a compromise solution can be worked out. Currently, Medicare pays only 80% of the cost of healthcare services for most providers. Further cuts will only promote cost-shifting to employers and increased service referrals ...
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