I’m the family health insurance guy as I’ve worked in the industry long enough to ocassionally have a clue. Thanksgiving is my peak family question time of the year as quite a few group insurance plans are in their open enrollment slots right now, so Sister #1 wants to know if she do an HSA …
Anderson On Health Insurance
Who files their taxes on February 7th?
I do my family’s federal taxes by Valentine’s Day as we have two kids in daycare, and the refund is a nice means of forced savings that pays for a couple of months of day care with psychologically bucketed “Extra” money. People who are anal retentive or OCD(ish) tend to file early as well as …
Not all dollars are equal
I saw this article in the Politico: key player in the Obamacare website’s creation acknowledged Tuesday that up to 40 percent of IT systems supporting the exchange still need to be built. “It’s not that it’s not working,” Chao told lawmakers at an Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing. “It’s still being developed …
Individual Medical Loss Ratios and luck
The Medical Loss Ratio is the percentage of total premium revenue that an insurance company spends on medical care (and a few other minor things) for its members. PPACA requires a large group insurance premium pools to have an MLR of 85% and small group or individual premium pools to have an 80% MLR. The …
Improvements and payment models
From one of my favorite new blogs, Not Running a Hospital on a staffing change in a hospital in Toronto that has shown significant clinical and cost improvements: While I had heard about the concept of a patient navigator before today, including at my own former hospital, the navigator service was usually designed to help …
We get what we paid for
Back when I was young and idealistic, I worked for several years at an entity that managed mental health case and care coordination. I never provided front line service, that is not what I do, but I routinely saw reimbursement fee schedules for mental health providers. They were absysmal. A master’s level provider could expect …
November enrollment pace
The LA Times has some really good news on Obamacare enrollment pace: A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials…. California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month …