Tag: insurers

Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the insurers: Big insurance companies report big profits, benefiting from the pandemic, The New York Times

Filed Under: Costs, Health plans, Patients

Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the insurers: Big insurance companies report big profits, benefiting from the pandemic, The New York Times

“The nation’s leading health insurers are experiencing an embarrassment of profits,” Reed Abelson writes over at The New York Times. “Some of the largest companies, including Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, are reporting second-quarter earnings that are double what they were a year ago. And while insurance profits are capped under the Affordable Care Act, […]

Aetna Anthem coronavirus COVID-19 CVS

Coronavirus (Covid-19) and telemedicine: Who’s paying what for a virtual visit?

Filed Under: Costs, Providers

Coronavirus (Covid-19) and telemedicine: Who’s paying what for a virtual visit?

By JEANNE PINDER and BEN GLICKMAN Telemedicine has boomed during the Covid-19 as an alternative to in-person visits. Doctors and patients alike are finding that the virtual visit — previously often described as a pale imitation of the actual in-person office visit — is a fine way to do health care in the middle of […]

coronavirus COVID-19 insurers payers telehealth

Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the data guy: Demystifying trends and seeing into the future

Filed Under: Costs, Health plans, Health reform

Coronavirus (Covid-19) and the data guy: Demystifying trends and seeing into the future

Continuing with our series of interviews of people involved in health care in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, I caught up with Niall Brennan, C.E.O. of the Health Care Cost Institute research group, former chief data officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a former analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. […]

coronavirus COVID-19 data doctors George Floyd

Top secret no longer: What insurers pay, and what it means for you

Filed Under: Costs, Health plans, Patients

Top secret no longer: What insurers pay, and what it means for you

One of the biggest secrets in health care is the rates that insurance companies pay providers. One insurer might pay one provider $2,400 for an MRI and a different provider $400 — in the same locale and for the same MRI. But we rarely see documentation of that, because the rates are kept secret. So […]

contract rates Cracking the Code insurers MRI prices negotiated rates

Insurers actually are making a mint from Obamacare: The L.A. Times

Filed Under: Costs, Health plans, Health reform

Summary: “For months now, headlines about the Affordable Care Act have focused on complaints from big insurers that they haven’t been making money from individual insurance plans mandated by the act,” Michael Hiltzik writes in The Los Angeles Times.  “The big insurer UnitedHealth Group has even whined about losing so many millions it’s thinking about withdrawing from […]

insurers Michael Hiltzik

A peek inside insurer negotiations: MedScape reports

Filed Under: Costs, Health plans, Providers

Summary: Health insurers beat down physicians in contract negotiations with fuzzy numbers, run-arounds, and other ruses associated with used-car lots, practice consultant Ron Howrigon told attendees here at the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) 2015 Annual Conference,” writes Robert Lowes over at Medscape. “Howrigon should know. For 18 years, he worked in the managed care […]

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