Daily Policy Digest
Health Issues
| Widowhood Leads to Higher Out-Of-Pocket Medical Expenses Upon widowhood, average monthly out-of-pocket medical spending rises by $34.25 and out-of-pocket nursing home expenditures increase by $24.11 per month... |
| Health Exchanges Could Lack Competition The American Medical Association estimates that a single insurance company held 50 percent or more of the market in nearly 70 percent of local markets nationwide, meaning many state insurance exchanges will lack competition... |
| Six Reasons to Oppose ObamaCare A loophole in the wording of ObamaCare means that states that refuse to create a health insurance exchange could protect the state's businesses from a $2,000 per employee fine... |
| Medical Loss Ratio Requirement Could Raise Insurer Profits The Medical Loss Ratio formula calculates the amount leftover for administrative costs and profits as a percentage of the total premium, not medical costs, meaning that higher premiums mean a higher overall premium take from which to calculate profits from... |
| Medicaid: Broken, In Need of Reform Today there are essentially 50 different Medicaid programs whose total spending accounts for 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, or $400 billion a year... |
| Insurance Tax Could Cost States Billions The ObamaCare tax on insurance plans could cost the states as much as $15 billion... |
| Budget Proposal Seeks Home Health Care Copay The problem with the assumption that many people are using home health care that could instead seek outpatient care is that home health care prevents a lot of inpatient hospital stays... |
| No Relationship between Patient Satisfaction and Surgical Quality The results of a new study show that there is little relationship between a hospital's patient satisfaction scores and quality ratings... |
| Hospitals Profit When Surgeries Go Awry Hospitals earned 330 percent higher profit margins on surgeries with one or more complications when they were paid for by private insurers... |
| ObamaCare Rule Creates Health Care Disparities among States The policy for determining federal subsidies for the essential health benefits package penalizes states that previously tried to keep health costs more affordable while rewarding states that previously had more generous plans... |
