CHANGE HEALTH TODAY

Review: "Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Insurance" – The New York Times

When you have a person in the interview say, "I feel like it's better just to die," then Houston, we have a problem. This was from an article by Abby Goodnough published by The New York Times yesterday. It's an interesting read and I encourage you to make it. Here are Just a couple things from my perspective. How is it easier to have a slew of metrics to calculate what you're making and what percentage of what could exempt you than to have a provider with a set fee schedule t

Q: What about contraceptives and family planning?

"What about contraceptives and family planning?" This question was being debated on the Diane Rehm show yesterday, and I thought I'd throw in my two cents about how contraceptives and family planning work under the P.S.Y.C.H. plan. Currently, because contraceptives and family planning are being covered by the third party insurance model, every person in the "risk pool" that pays into the system has a "right" to voice their opinion about what their risk pool covers. This leads

Review: "The Experts Were Wrong About the Best Places for Better and Cheaper Health Care"

This was an illustrated article posted by Kevin Quealy and Margo Sanger-Katz for the New York Times today. I find stories about economics and behavior to be fascinating. I've been in practice for four-and-a-half years, and I've incorporated more and more behavioral principles into what I do. I noticed that in creating the ACA, they too put in behavioral hurdles to incentivize people to buy health care. But this article proves what I suspected all along: the health care indust

Review: "Many Flexible Health Plans Come with a Costly Trap" – NPR

This is an article written by Julie Appleby on NPR. In the world of health insurance companies, there are lots of ways to ensnare providers while squeezing every bit of profit out of consumers as possible. The whole idea of "HMO" and "PPO" falls right in line with this. Interestingly enough, now that people are "forced" to buy insurance, and the government tells the insurance companies that they cannot deny enrolling everyone that asks due to preexisting conditions, the insur

Review: "As Exchanges Open Enrollment Season, Consumers Ask More Insurance Questions" – NP

This article was written by NPR's Michelle Andrews last week. Imagine that you were required to be in a room full of doughnuts displayed on various stations. Imagine that each station was sponsored by a well-known doughnut maker – Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts, Shipley (the best!), etc. Imagine that before pushing you into that room full of doughnuts, you were given a nice app on your phone to sift through the different stations and doughnuts to find the one you liked. You cou

Review: "Confusion And High Costs Still Hamper Obamacare Enrollment" – NPR

This story came from NPR's Fred Mogul. As much as I love the President (and I do; I'm an unabashed Obama-loving Texan), putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse was an awful idea. I partly blame myself. When the ACA was being built, I hadn't yet quit my job, and I was placidly working for my salary, grinding myself into a pulp, and wishing some governmental agency would swoop in, fix the "system" and allow me to see my patients with less drama. As a result, I didn't bother

Review: "Obamacare Deploys New Apps, Allies to Persuade the Uninsured" – NPR

This interview was posted on NPR's Morning Edition by Alison Kodjak. The push to obtain insurance is a red herring because insurance does not guarantee access to health care. So for the government to spend millions of dollar to market apps and run a Web page – well, it all seems incredibly wasteful. "[HHS] plans to use email, text messages, Facebook and online ads to convince the holdouts to get insurance." Doesn't this all seem a bit of a government overreach for an outcome

Review: "Many Low-Income Workers Say 'No' to Health Insurance" – New York Times

The article was written by Stacy Cowley and published on the NYTimes app today. The thumbnail says, "The Affordable Care Act requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer insurance, but many find few low-income employees will buy it." This is New York Times reporting at its best. They do a really good job of talking with real people and getting a real perspective. In this case, it's from the viewpoint of a boss who is offering benefits (which I just did in m

Review: "A New Attack on Health Care Reform" – The New York Times

Within all the rigmarole of the Affordable Care Act, with it's thousand different plans and thousand different requirements and thousand different micro-incentives, I totally forgot that there are nonprofit and co-op insurance plans/enclaves out there. In this article from The New York Times, the Editorial Board criticizes Republicans for being overly-critical of the failure of those unique plans and says they were bound to fail since Republicans did everything in their power

Q: Uh, who's running this show?

"So if the government isn't running health care, who is?" This question was submitted by a health policy expert. I laugh when people separate the "government" from it's citizens because, essentially, we are the government. Every person elected and appointed in our government system went through a growing-up process similar to everyone else and ate McDonalds, and dated, and got pissed at standing in a post office line. Granted, most politicians grew up richer than us, but that

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