Health Care
California
Healthy San Francisco Plan Finally Signs Up Some Hospitals
San Francisco’s tax-hiking and opaque pay-or-play business tax to fund its public health bureaucracy claims to have finally overcome one of the major criticisms that I had made of it. Namely, that it did nothing to improve the quality or delivery of health care to (previously) uninsured San Franciscans, because ...
Commentary
The Doubt of the Benefit: Why State Benefit Mandates are a Poor Prescription for Health Insurance
A benefit mandate is a state law that commands a health plan to pay for, or at least offer, a specified treatment or type of provider, removing the benefit from negotiation between beneficiaries and health plans. For example, a mandate may require a health plan to cover treatment of alcoholism, ...
California
California’s Health Insurance Rescissions: Hospitals Get Their Pound of Flesh
Yesterday, I asked the quasi-rhetorical question: “Why did California’s campaign against Anthem Blue Cross collapse?”, addressing state regulators’ failure to collect a $1 million fine for Anthem Blue Cross’ allegedly illegal rescission of individuals’ policies. Well, it looks like it didn’t collapse: the hospitals have just wrangled over $11 million ...
California
Why Did California’s Campaign Against Anthem Blue Cross Collapse?
I have written a series of blog entries about California’s health care regulators attacking health plans for “rescission,” which the regulators have equated with “post-claims underwriting.” The former consists of revoking a policy because the beneficiary made a material misrepresentation about his health status on his application. The latter consists ...
Commentary
Hidden provision could endanger economy, civil liberties
As the Senate prepares to vote on the current housing legislation, I would like to bring to your attention a dangerous hidden provision that will burden several innovative Bay Area companies and threaten the civil liberties of all Americans. Senators Christopher Dodd and Richard Shelby quietly attached to H.R. 3221 ...
Commentary
You’ve Done A Great Job – Don’t Bother Coming Back Tomorrow
OK, let me get this straight: We’ve been critically following the passage of the autism mandate in Pennsylvania for almost a year now. It stalled in the state Senate despite advocates’ citing a study from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) that showed relatively low costs of the ...
Commentary
Unbalanced Medical Billing in California: The (Wrong?) Regulator Attacks
If the media want to mock an enterprise that cannot manage the pace of change, they describe its alleged similarities to buggy-whip manufacturers after the dawn of the automobile age. But what happens to the government agency that regulates the buggy-whip manufacturers? Obviously, the forces of innovation and competition cannot ...
Commentary
MD Examining Citizens’ Income Tax Records For Uninsured
Unfree State, July 2, 2008 Health and privacy experts call Maryland’s Big Brother plan to scour citizens’ state income tax records for uninsured children as a waste of resources and an invasion of privacy. Comptroller Peter Franchot is undertaking the expensive task starting this month as a result of a ...
Health Care
State Health Benefit Mandates Increase the Number of Uninsured
San Francisco, July 1, 2008 – The Pacific Research Institute today released the findings of a new report reviewing the impact of state benefit mandates on the uninsured. According to From Heart Transplants to Hairpieces: The Questionable Benefits of State Benefit Mandates for Health Insurance, benefit mandates increase health insurance ...
Commentary
Tennessee, AT&T Partner to Develop E-Health Info System
The state of Tennessee is partnering with AT&T to develop the first statewide electronic health information system in the United States. The system will enable Tennessee-based medical professionals to share patient records and information through a secure network extending across the entire state. The system will also link to the ...
Healthy San Francisco Plan Finally Signs Up Some Hospitals
San Francisco’s tax-hiking and opaque pay-or-play business tax to fund its public health bureaucracy claims to have finally overcome one of the major criticisms that I had made of it. Namely, that it did nothing to improve the quality or delivery of health care to (previously) uninsured San Franciscans, because ...
The Doubt of the Benefit: Why State Benefit Mandates are a Poor Prescription for Health Insurance
A benefit mandate is a state law that commands a health plan to pay for, or at least offer, a specified treatment or type of provider, removing the benefit from negotiation between beneficiaries and health plans. For example, a mandate may require a health plan to cover treatment of alcoholism, ...
California’s Health Insurance Rescissions: Hospitals Get Their Pound of Flesh
Yesterday, I asked the quasi-rhetorical question: “Why did California’s campaign against Anthem Blue Cross collapse?”, addressing state regulators’ failure to collect a $1 million fine for Anthem Blue Cross’ allegedly illegal rescission of individuals’ policies. Well, it looks like it didn’t collapse: the hospitals have just wrangled over $11 million ...
Why Did California’s Campaign Against Anthem Blue Cross Collapse?
I have written a series of blog entries about California’s health care regulators attacking health plans for “rescission,” which the regulators have equated with “post-claims underwriting.” The former consists of revoking a policy because the beneficiary made a material misrepresentation about his health status on his application. The latter consists ...
Hidden provision could endanger economy, civil liberties
As the Senate prepares to vote on the current housing legislation, I would like to bring to your attention a dangerous hidden provision that will burden several innovative Bay Area companies and threaten the civil liberties of all Americans. Senators Christopher Dodd and Richard Shelby quietly attached to H.R. 3221 ...
You’ve Done A Great Job – Don’t Bother Coming Back Tomorrow
OK, let me get this straight: We’ve been critically following the passage of the autism mandate in Pennsylvania for almost a year now. It stalled in the state Senate despite advocates’ citing a study from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) that showed relatively low costs of the ...
Unbalanced Medical Billing in California: The (Wrong?) Regulator Attacks
If the media want to mock an enterprise that cannot manage the pace of change, they describe its alleged similarities to buggy-whip manufacturers after the dawn of the automobile age. But what happens to the government agency that regulates the buggy-whip manufacturers? Obviously, the forces of innovation and competition cannot ...
MD Examining Citizens’ Income Tax Records For Uninsured
Unfree State, July 2, 2008 Health and privacy experts call Maryland’s Big Brother plan to scour citizens’ state income tax records for uninsured children as a waste of resources and an invasion of privacy. Comptroller Peter Franchot is undertaking the expensive task starting this month as a result of a ...
State Health Benefit Mandates Increase the Number of Uninsured
San Francisco, July 1, 2008 – The Pacific Research Institute today released the findings of a new report reviewing the impact of state benefit mandates on the uninsured. According to From Heart Transplants to Hairpieces: The Questionable Benefits of State Benefit Mandates for Health Insurance, benefit mandates increase health insurance ...
Tennessee, AT&T Partner to Develop E-Health Info System
The state of Tennessee is partnering with AT&T to develop the first statewide electronic health information system in the United States. The system will enable Tennessee-based medical professionals to share patient records and information through a secure network extending across the entire state. The system will also link to the ...
