No sorting this edition of the Health Wonk Review into categories. They cover the range: insurance, HIT, report cards, LGBT health and cancer. Along with this collection of health policy blog posts, we offer a little color from the former home of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona.
Find a Twitter list of contributors here.
At Workers’ Comp Insider, Tom Lynch talks about Oklahoma, fracking, earthquakes and Obamacare: In Oklahoma, The Times, They Are A’Changin’.
Are Bronze level plans on the chopping block? InsureBlog’s Henry Stern offers evidence that this may soon be the case.
Brookings & Ponemon on Privacy & Security: Meet the Experts: David Harlow shares some highlights from two recent research reports on the state of health data privacy and security, one qualitative and the other quantitative. In all, about 200 covered entities and business associates were surveyed, and with the promise of anonymity offered some candid observations, suggestions and rants.
From Charles Gaba at ACA Signups: Presenting the ACA Signups 2017 Requested Rate Hike Challenge. Last year I spent gobs of time tracking down the requested 2016 individual market rate hike requests and compiling them into statewide and nationwide weighted averages…This year I’m doing it again, but with some crowdsourcing added.
Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal asks: Who Benefits? – Hospital Profits and Quality May Fall, But Hospital Executives’ Compensation Keeps Rising Here is the latest roundup of cases in which non-profit hospitals’ top executives compensation continued to rise despite their institutions’ financial or clinical setbacks. As usual, the executives, their boards of trustees, and/or their hired spokespeople defended their ever increasing riches with familiar talking points.
From Brad Flansbaum of The Hospital Leader: Why he punts on hospital report cards.
Peggy Salvatore at Health System Ed offers: Prompted by an excellent blog last time by Anthony Wright at Health Access on the political realities of implementing single payer, we had a little bit of a discussion last week on the HWR podcast. This week an article by some Harvard physicians keeps the topic alive.
In a post entitled Obamacare’s anti-discrimination protections fortified, Amy Lynn Smith at healthinsurance.org explains how the HHS-issued final rule on Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act has removed one more roadblock to full healthcare equity for the LGBT community.
Is High Prescription Drug Spending Becoming Our New Normal? On Health Affairs Blog, Leigh Purvis and Crystal Kuntz examine the rise of specialty drugs, the lack of meaningful price competition for biologics, and the current research pipeline and market and suggest next steps for addressing these trends.
David Williams at the Health Business Blog offers: Due diligence in middle market healthcare investing I share my perspective on the special case of commercial due diligence of mid-sized healthcare firms, where the issues can be complex and information is hard to come by.
Jason Shafrin at The Healthcare Economist provides an overview of 5 different approaches for designing a cancer value framework in the latest issue of JAMA.
Colorado Health Insurance Insider offers: Simple Choice plans in the federally facilitated exchange. Louise Norris wonders about the “Simple choice plans” from a CMS blog post and how they differ from what has been finalized about Standardized plans in February in the 2017 Benefit and Payment Parameters.
Joe Paduda offers a quick review of Sec. Clinton’s proposed health care reforms = Medicare for some, consumer cost caps, and more Medicaid.
Finally, while still blogging here, find my most recent work at Health Leaders Media, where I write a weekly column on quality of care.
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