Jeanne Pinder
A primary-care doc-blogger writes: “EMR’s have gone over to the dark side. “I wrote about it in an earlier post, about how hard I had to work to figure out my EMR system. Well, I never really figured that EMR out, so am in the midst of deciding where to go next. The problem […]
Jeanne Pinder
Commissions are big money for brokers. And how do we know? That’s the primary pay structure for many brokers — the service they provide, in navigating customers to a policy they want, and navigating insurers to customers they want, results in a commission. It’s not always clear who the winner or the loser is, […]
Jeanne Pinder
“It is my belief that we are headed towards a health system that reimburses based on global capitation,” writes Randy Wexler, M.D., M.P.H. , on virtualmentor.org, a site of the American Medical Association. “Such a change allows the government and others to better estimate expenditures and places responsibility (risk) for cost on providers; the primary […]
Lisa Riordan Seville
The costs of health care are going up–steeply. We look at several recent reports to get the details.
Juliet Linderman
There’s no question about it: IUD’s are making a comeback in a big way. Though roughly 5.5 per cent of women using contraception choose the IUD as opposed to 28 percent using birth control pills, IUD’s — intrauterine devices — are on the rise. Unlike birth control pills, which you must remember to take every […]
Jeanne Pinder
It’s an inspiring story: She has cancer. She was denied coverage for treatment by her insurance company, and she fought the decision — and won. One of our readers, Mary Schnack, told us her story about pain and triumph in the health-care system. She’s our heroine! “I have had endometrial stromal sarcoma (ESS) eight times […]
Jeanne Pinder
Massachusetts has been in the forefront of health reform. So it was dispiriting to learn in a Massachusetts health reform report issued June 22 that the state’s test of one of the most-hoped-for reforms changes has failed to cut costs. In fact, most of the news in the report was relatively gloomy: it suggested that […]
Jeanne Pinder
It’s an article of faith that one of the biggest sources of health-care cost abuses is Medicare. The government pays bills for the elderly under this system, and it’s widely regarded as fraud-ridden and inefficient. So it was no particular surprise to read the other day that Medicare recovery audit contractors have returned $237.8 million […]
Jeanne Pinder
Comparative effectiveness research would help find the most effective medical treatments at the lowest prices, but not everyone thinks that’s a good idea. The Value of Comparison. The New York Times. Significant concerns about the security of electronic patient health information are raised in two reviews from the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of […]
Lisa Riordan Seville
I’m new here to ClearHealthCosts, and jumping right into the pharmacy beat. I’m looking forward to it–even for those of us who rarely darken the door of a local hospital may have longtime prescriptions that need to be filled. And like nearly everything in the health care world, figuring out how to get the most […]
