The Health Care Blog

Designing an Effective Insurance Exchange. Or Not.

By ROGER COLLIER If health care reform legislation is passed, it will almost certainly include provisions for Insurance exchanges. Theoretically, these could be key to controlling costs and expanding access to coverage. In practice (and in addition to assumptions about...
June 13, 2009 in Economics, reform, Roger Collier | Permalink | Comments (4)

A Special Reform Edition of Health Wonk Review

by BRIAN KLEPPER Over at Managed Care Matters, the always thoughtful and energetic Joe Paduda has, once again, done us all a service. Tasked with hosting this edition of Health Wonk Review, he has assembled a great range of pieces...
June 12, 2009 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Health Industry's Achilles Heel

By BRIAN KLEPPER and DAVID C. KIBBE "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff Timing matters. The health industry has demonstrated steadfast resistance to reforms, but its recently diminished...
June 10, 2009 in Brian Klepper, David Kibbe, Health Plans, Obama administration, Policy, Policy/Politics, Quality, reform, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Bringing Patients into the Health IT Conversation About "Meaningful Use"

By DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER The Obama health team at HHS and ONC are gradually establishing the rules that will determine how approximately $34 billion in ARRA/HITECH funds are spent on health IT over the next several years....
May 21, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, Google, Health 2.0, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Marketplace, Policy, Policy/Politics, reform, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (35)

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Continuity of Care Record Gains Ground As A Standard

By BRIAN KLEPPER We live in a time of such great progress in so many arenas that, too often and without a second thought, we take significant advances for granted. But, now and then, we should catalog the steps forward,...
April 10, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, Google, Health 2.0, Personalized Medicine, Policy, Policy/Politics, reform, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (20)

Will CIGNA Remake The Health Plan Marketplace?

By BRIAN KLEPPER America’s health plans are floundering. If their job has been to provide the nation’s mainstream families with access to affordable care (let’s leave quality out of it for the moment), they have failed miserably, though they were...
March 30, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Health 2.0, Health Plans, Marketplace, primary care, reform, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (15)

Leave Natasha Richardson out of the health care debate

By Sarah Arnquist Please don’t turn Natasha Richardson’s tragic death into a symbol for why Canadian-style universal health care is bad and the United States is better. In the last six hours, I’ve seen articles from at least a dozen...
March 29, 2009 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (30)

A Broker's Lament: We Brought This On Ourselves

By JOHN SINIBALDI A huge segment of the American population is simply far too strapped to ever afford the premiums and costs associated with health insurance/health care as it is structured today. It isn't the employees of government (local, county,...
March 7, 2009 in Economics, Health Plans, Marketplace, Obama administration, Policy/Politics, reform, Small Business, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (60)

Five Recommendations for an ONC Head Who Understands Health IT Innovation

By David C. Kibbe, Brian Klepper and John Moore. Now that the legislative language of the HITECH Act -- the $20 billion health IT allocation within the economic stimulus package -- has been set, it's time to identify a National...
March 6, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Current Affairs, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, evidenced-based medicine, Health 2.0, Physicians, Policy, Policy/Politics, primary care, public health, Quality, reform, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (14)

Health 2.0 more interesting than porn!

By Matthew Holt Last Thursday I gave a talk to a very high powered group, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics. My old colleague Matt Quinn is now working for the soon to be very rich Agency for...
March 1, 2009 in Health 2.0, Policy, Policy/Politics, reform, RHIOs, Technology, User Generated Content | Permalink | Comments (5)

The AMA Wins a Round Against Accountability and Patient Information

By Brian Klepper On January 30th, a 3-judge DC appeals court overturned a lower court decision that would have forced public release of Medicare physician data. Writing for the majority in a split 2-1 judgment, Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson...
February 6, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, Current Affairs, Health Plans, Policy, Policy/Politics, Quality, reform, Technology, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (12)

CEOs' Urgent, Shared Commitment to Change

By Gary S. Kaplan A few weeks ago, I joined five of my peers in health care leadership throughout the country to help launch Health CEOs for Health Reform, a coalition dedicated to transforming health care and creating a more...
January 27, 2009 in Current Affairs, Marketplace, Policy, Policy/Politics, Quality, reform, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (25)

Dr. George Lundberg for Surgeon General

By Brian Klepper The report that Mr. Obama's Surgeon General choice might be neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta produced an upwelling of strong opinion, particularly in the medical community. Some argued that Dr. Gupta has clearly demonstrated...
January 25, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Current Affairs, JAMA, Physicians, Policy/Politics, public health, reform, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (17)

Rationing -- how will it be spun?

By Sarah Arnquist The House of Representatives' $825-billion stimulus package proposed last week included $1.1 billion to fund comparative effectiveness research -- research that evaluates two or more medical technologies or treatments to see which is most effective. This is...
January 23, 2009 in Obama administration, Physicians, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (11)

Five "Shovel-Ready" Health Care Reforms

By Brian Klepper & David C. Kibbe Microsoft Health Vault's leader Peter Neupert has a wonderful blog post that makes two important points really well. One message is that health care reform is about the outcomes, not the technology. We...
January 21, 2009 in Brian Klepper, David Kibbe, evidenced-based medicine, Health Plans, Marketplace, Obama administration, Physicians, Policy, Policy/Politics, primary care, Quality, reform, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (18)

Why It is Inevitable that the Debate over Health care Will be Partisan

By Maggie Mahar In a post earlier this week, Bob Laszewski reported that “the extension and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has now passed the full House and the Senate Finance Committee and is on its...
January 20, 2009 in Maggie Mahar, Obama administration, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (8)

New NRC Report Finds "Health Care IT Chasm," Seeks New Course Toward Quality Improvement and Cost Savings

By DAVID C. KIBBE Like the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) 2001 counterpart report, "Crossing the Quality Chasm," a new report from the National Research Council of the National Academies is complex, full of new ideas assembled from multiple disciplines, and...
January 12, 2009 in Electronic Medical Records, Marketplace, Obama administration, Policy, Policy/Politics, Quality, reform, The Industry, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (20)

"The Innovator's Prescription": Christensen's Book Offers Insightful Dx, Unrealistic Rx

By Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe Being big fans of Clay Christensen and his theory of disruptive innovation (DI), we have been awaiting his just-released book The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Healthcare . The book is co-authored...
January 8, 2009 in Economics, Electronic Medical Records, Health Plans, Policy, Policy/Politics, reform, Technology, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (8)

Let's Reboot America's Health IT Conversation Part 2: Beyond EHRs

By DAVID KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER Yesterday we tried to put EHRs into perspective. They're important, and we can't effectively move health care forward without them. But they're only one of many important health IT functions. EHRs and health IT...
January 6, 2009 in Brian Klepper, David Kibbe, Health 2.0, reform, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, User Generated Content, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (9)

Let's Reboot America's HIT Conversation Part 1: Putting EHRs in Context

By DAVID C. KIBBE & BRIAN KLEPPER Kibbe & Klepper are back with an update to their pre-Christmas piece on EHRs and the forthcoming Obama Administration's investment policy towards them. Lest you think that this is just a small group...
January 5, 2009 in Brian Klepper, David Kibbe, Health 2.0, Obama administration, Policy, Policy/Politics, reform, The Industry, Transparency, User Generated Content, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (7)

Is Massachusetts a model for national reform?

By Charlie Baker I get asked this question a lot these days, which shouldn’t be that surprising. Harvard Pilgrim is headquartered in Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts health care reform plan is already a couple of years old. More importantly, it...
December 30, 2008 in Charlie Baker, medicare, Obama administration, reform | Permalink | Comments (18)

The Inevitability of Health Care Reform: This Time, the Politics Have Changed

By Michael Millenson Rummaging through my extensive files (i.e., drawers of paper), I came across this January/February 2001 issue of Healthplan, the magazine of the old American Association of Health Plans before it gobbled up the Health Insurance Association of...
December 17, 2008 in Obama administration, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (8)

On Health Care Reform Stimulating the Economy: The Massachusetts Example

By Maggie Mahar Recently, a somewhat starry-eyed op-ed in the New York Times suggested that a $100 billion annual investment in universal health care is just the medicine that our economy needs. The goal, declared Jonathan Gruber, a professor of...
December 14, 2008 in Economics, Maggie Mahar, Obama administration, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (11)

Slicing the health reform pie

By Robert Laszewski I doubt anyone would disagree with the statement that America’s health care costs are too high, continue to grow at an unsustainable rate, and reform is critical to control costs, get everyone covered, and improve quality. In...
December 12, 2008 in Economics, Medicare Advantage, Obama administration, Policy/Politics, reform, Robert Laszewski | Permalink | Comments (15)

Who Will Speak for Independent Physicians at the Reform Table?

By Richard Reece Talk to the chief executives of American’s prominent health –care institutions, and you might be surprised what you hear: When it comes to medical care, the United States isn’t getting its money’s worth…A high-performance 21st century health...
December 4, 2008 in Physicians, reform | Permalink | Comments (15)

Nudging the value glacier

By Sarah Arnquist In just two years, seniors will spend a quarter of their monthly Social Security checks on Medicare out-of-pocket expenses, including premiums, co-payments and deductibles. Meanwhile, Medicare bookkeepers predict total health spending in the U.S. to increase from...
December 4, 2008 in Conferences, Economics, evidenced-based medicine, Medical Devices, Policy/Politics, Quality, reform, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (2)

After 12 months of recession, whither health reform?

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn We're in a recession; actually, we've been in one for the past year, but no official agency decided to tell us. Perhaps "they" wanted to wait until after the November '08 Presidential election? The declaration of recession...
December 3, 2008 in Economics, Election 08, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (1)

More on the 5 myths of U.S. health care

By Charlie Baker A good friend sent me a recent op-ed from the Washington Post that discussed the 5 myths of health care reform by Shannon Brownlee and Ezekiel Emanuel. I’ve written about both of them before (here & here)....
December 2, 2008 in Charlie Baker, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (1)

Open Wide: Here comes the change you thought would never happen

By Jeff Goldsmith The morning after the election, I posted a speculative blog in Health Affairs on three possible scenarios for President-elect Obama’s implementing health reform: folding it into a bold, ambitious emergency legislative package (Complete the New Deal), carving...
November 25, 2008 in Economics, Election 08, Jeff Goldsmith, Marketplace, Obama, Obama administration, Policy, Policy/Politics, reform, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (22)

Fostering an adult conversation about health reform

By Robert Laszewski Zeke Emanuel and Shannon Brownlee have an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post that should be required reading for anyone interested in health care reform. The title is, “5 Myths About Our Ailing Health Care System.” They suggest...
November 24, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform, Robert Laszewski | Permalink | Comments (7)

Could a larger investment in primary care cure the health care system?

By Deron Schriver I'm going to go out on a big ol' limb here by saying that 90 percent of our health care problems could be solved by rebuilding and refocusing our primary care delivery system. It's the issue most...
November 21, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (19)

This isn't the early 1990s

By Sarah Arnquist Several stories in today's papers make it clear that the atmosphere for health reform today truly is different than when the Clinton Administration took over in the 1990s. Here's the bullet points in support of that thesis:...
November 20, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (10)

Daschle Tapped for HHS Secretary

By Brian Klepper The Caucus, the New York Times Political Blog, reports that senior Obama aides have said that Mr. Obama offered the nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services to Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Democratic...
November 19, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (7)

The Changes We Need

By Brian Klepper These are, as the Chinese curse reputedly called them, interesting times. If the burst of new Democratic health care reform proposals is any indication, a fresh breeze of the Obama campaign's "Yes We Can" optimism is blowing...
November 18, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Marketplace, reform, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (15)

Moody's predicts winners & losers in Obama health reform

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Moody's, the credit rating agency, offers their post-election impressions in their special comment, "U.S. Healthcare Industry: Credit Implications of the U.S. Election." Barack Obama's campaign roughed out principles for health reform across three issue areas: Access and...
November 18, 2008 in Economics, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, reform | Permalink | Comments (0)

Baucus' proposal proves no consensus on key reform issues

By Bob Laszewski Max Baucus will be a key player in the health care debate the next two years. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee he has jurisdiction on many of the key issues including Medicare and provider payment...
November 17, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (19)

“Spread the Wealth” Controversy Hits Doctors

By Maggie Mahar & Niko Karvounis By now you know that Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has offered a “Call to Arms” for health care reform by way of a 98-page policy document. There is much to think about in Baucus’...
November 17, 2008 in Maggie Mahar, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (4)

Maxing out on health reform

By Sarah Arnquist Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' unveiling of a health reform proposal yesterday fed speculation about the possibility of Democrats tackling health reform from the get-go of the new Administration. The Montana Democrat's proposal is detailed in...
November 13, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (12)

Baucus to unveil reform proposal with individual mandate

By Sarah Arnquist The Wall Street Journal reports that the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) will unveil today his plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system. Laura Meckler, of The Journal, reports the plan is very similar...
November 12, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (6)

CAP's Blueprint for reform

By Joshua Seidman The Center for American Progress (CAP) released a new “Blueprint for Reform” that focuses on how to fix the delivery system. This well-constructed document and provocative forum was spearheaded by CAP CEO John Podesta (former Clinton White...
November 11, 2008 in Joshua Seidman, Policy/Politics, Quality, reform | Permalink | Comments (2)

Proposal for a THCB Healthcare Reform Effort

By Deron Schriver THCB regular reader Deron Schriver wants THCB readers to suggest plans to reform the health care system. Here's his appeal: I enjoy many of the discussions on THCB. Intelligent people from all vantage points of the health...
November 10, 2008 in Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (22)

Despite Democratic control, major health reform still unlikely

By Robert Laszewski With 258 House and 57 Senate Democrats, it's almost certain that major health reform will be passed, right? Actually, that was the number of Democrats Bill Clinton started off with in 1993 and we know what happened...
November 8, 2008 in Obama administration, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (19)

Social solidarity is key to meaningful health reform

By Maggie Mahar On HealthBeat, I have talked about social solidarity as the key to meaningful health care reform. In his victory speech, President-elect Obama sounded that theme repeatedly, reminding his audience that he had been elected “by young and...
November 7, 2008 in Maggie Mahar, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (5)

Now, a real bipartisan opportunity in health care exists

By Robert Laszewski President-Elect Obama, and about every candidate for Congress, has said he wants to change the partisan tone in Washington. Obama, the Democratic Congressional leadership, and the Republicans have a terrific opportunity to do just that on health...
November 6, 2008 in Election 08, Obama administration, Policy, reform | Permalink | Comments (2)

The next president's health agenda

By Merrill Goozner Note: This post first appeared at Goozner's blog, Gooznews. A year ago, health care held a solid lead in the polls as the number one concern of the American people. But by the time the Iowa caucuses...
November 6, 2008 in Election 08, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (4)

Is Joe the Plumber responsible for our health care mess?

By Sarah Arnquist The financial collapse in the United States and the long, deep recession the nation will likely endure may be the calamitous event needed to finally tip the country toward adopting a universal health insurance, according to Uwe...
November 2, 2008 in Economics, Policy/Politics, reform, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (9)

McCain's health plan likely going down with him

By Robert Laszewski John McCain would reform the American health care system by providing big tax incentives for it to transition from being employer-based to one built on a system of individual responsibility. He would do this by eliminating the...
October 29, 2008 in Election 08, McCain, Policy/Politics, reform, Robert Laszewski | Permalink | Comments (7)

The inconvenient truth

By Sarah Arnquist The Los Angeles Times ran a great series last week called "Shedding Risk" in which it detailed through compelling human stories the erosion of the health insurance market. It's definitely worth finding the time to read. Matthew...
October 29, 2008 in Health Plans, Marketplace, Policy, reform | Permalink | Comments (12)

Be careful what you wish for

By Charlie Baker Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. This post first appeared on his blog, Lets Talk Health Care. The show is pretty much the same - every time. Public sector entity gets...
October 28, 2008 in Charlie Baker, Policy, reform | Permalink | Comments (15)

Will a $5,000-tax credit be the silver bullet to solve health care?

By Shuka Kalantari If Senator John McCain becomes U.S. president he plans to give each American family $5,000 to pay for health insurance premium costs in the individual market. Individuals would get $2,500 for the same use. How does McCain...
October 28, 2008 in Election 08, McCain, Policy/Politics, reform | Permalink | Comments (7)