The Health Care Blog

More on Physician Reimbursement, CMS, the AMA's RVS Update Committee (RUC)

by ROY POSES, MD (Note by Brian Klepper: At Health Care Renewal, Dr. Roy Poses, a Clinical Associate Professor at Brown University's School of Medicine, writes a consistently excellent blog on health care financial conflict . Both he and I...
May 12, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Economics, Physicians, Policy/Politics, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (10)

Health 2.0 Consciousness Dawns - Even In Jacksonville, FL!

by BRIAN KLEPPER Next Thursday, Matthew, Michael Millenson and I are converging at a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conference on public reporting of health care pricing/performance information in Amelia Island, FL, three short barrier islands north of my home in...
May 8, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Economics, Health 2.0, Health Plans, Hospitals, Policy, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (1)

Marrying for health care

By Sarah Arnquist About 7 percent of Americans recently reported in new Kaiser Health Tracking Poll that someone in their household got married so they could get health benefits. While 7 percent may be a bit high, I have no...
May 5, 2008 in Economics, Policy | Permalink | Comments (3)

The State of Employer-Sponsored Coverage - Brian Klepper

By Brian Klepper A detailed new study from the Economics Policy Institute confirms what many of us suspect but haven't had the data to easily nail down. This weightily-titled report by Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz - A Decade of...
April 28, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Economics, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (4)

Why it's impossible to close a hospital

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Hospitals are major employers in their local markets; they are often the largest provider of jobs in a community. In its latest TrendWatch report, Beyond Healthcare: The Economic Contribution of Hospitals, the American Hospital Association details the...
April 9, 2008 in Economics, Hospitals | Permalink | Comments (5)

The (Non)-Profit Motive

By Eric Novack From today's Wall Street Journal: "Nonprofit Hospitals, Once For the Poor, Strike it Rich." It has long, and often, been argued here on THCB and so many other places, that if we simply ‘take the profit motive...
April 4, 2008 in Economics, Eric Novack | Permalink | Comments (17)

On Corporate Medicine: A Response To Brian Klepper, and His Reply - Maggie Mahar

Maggie Mahar, the former Barron's journalist, author of Money Driven Medicine, and Health Policy Fellow at The Century Foundation and frequent THCB contributor chewed on my piece about Walgreen's recent acquisition of worksite clinic firms, and wrote a strong response...
April 2, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Economics, Maggie Mahar | Permalink | Comments (18)

The Myth of Health Care Consumerism

By Brian Klepper Last weekend I heard several great presentations at a meeting convened by Jeff Goldsmith, but one contained a point I hadn't heard nailed down before. Kaveh Safavi MD JD, from Thomson Healthcare's Center for Healthcare Improvement, detailed...
March 13, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Economics, Health 2.0, Policy, Policy/Politics, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (21)

Health 2.0: The Long Tail of Healthcare

By Scott Shreeve Long Tail: New business phenomenon in which low distribution and storage cost enable significant profits to be realized by selling small volumes of niche items instead of large numbers of popular items. The potential for online retailers...
March 10, 2008 in Economics, Scott Shreeve | Permalink | Comments (3)