Daily Policy Digest
Health Issues
| Treasury May Scrap "Use It or Lose It" Rule on Flexible Spending Accounts Eighty-five percent of large employers offer flexible spending accounts, but only 22 percent of employees participated in 2011, according to Mercer Health & Benefits... |
| Accountable Care Organizations: Panacea or Train Wreck? Accountable Care Organizations could soak up health care dollars without improving patient outcomes or reducing overall health care costs, says Roberta Herzberg, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Ambiguity in Health Law Could Make Family Coverage Too Costly for Many Under rules proposed by the Internal Revenue Service, some working-class families would be unable to afford family coverage offered by their employers, and yet they would not qualify for subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act... |
| RomneyCare 2.0 Health costs -- Medicaid, subsidies, public-employee compensation -- will consume some 54 percent of Massachusetts' budget in 2012, up from about 24 percent in 2001... |
| Nearly a Third of Doctors Won't See New Medicaid Patients About 69 percent of doctors nationally accept new Medicaid patients, but the rate varies widely across the country... |
| Ten Ways the Affordable Care Act Limits Patient Choice The Affordable Care Act limits patient choice either directly or indirectly in a variety of ways... |
| Employers Expect 7 Percent Growth in Cost of Health Benefits Forty-three percent of respondents to a survey by the National Business Group on Health said consumer-directed plans are the most effective means employers can use to control health care cost growth... |
| Care Quality for Medicare Enrollees at Safety-Net and Non-Safety-Net Hospitals Is Almost Equal Findings in a new Health Affairs study suggest that safety-net hospitals are performing better than many would have expected... |
| Turning Medicare into True Social Insurance In 1970, 20.4 million Americans were enrolled in the Medicare program and the cost was $7.5 billion per year; by 2011, enrollment was close to 49 million with an annual cost of $549 billion... |
| Access to New Oncology Drugs in Canada Compared with the United States and Europe The review process for oncology drugs in Canada is much more stringent and time-consuming than in other industrialized nations... |
