Everyone probably knows what brown bagging is. That’s when you pack a sandwich in a brown paper bag and take it to work rather than joining your spendthrift colleagues, when they go out for lunch or order takeout. Sometimes it saves you the time of going out to eat but mostly it saves you the expense of a meal prepared by a restaurant. A sandwich, an apple and a container of yogurt that costs you less than $2 to pack at home substitutes for a $12 takeout meal. In the hospital industry the practice of brown bagging is called white bagging. That is when your insurance company refuses to pay the hospital’s 600% markup for costly oncology drugs and has them delivered to the hospital for patients’ infusions (or patient picks them up at the specialty pharmacy)
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
How Medicare Advantage Plans Cover Drugs
Average annual deductibles in independent prescription drug plans (PDPs) are roughly four times higher than those in Medicare Advantage plans (MA-PDs) ($398 versus $90). Average monthly premiums for PDPs are also roughly 3.5 times higher than in MA-PDPs ($40 versus $11). Similarly, MA-PDP formularies cover a higher share of potentially coverable Part D drugs than PDPs (89 percent compared to 83 percent). At the same time, MA-PDPs impose utilization management requirements (such as prior authorization and quantity limits) on formulary covered drugs at a lower rate, relative to PDPs.
Source: Benedic N. Ippolito and Boris Vabson, The Impact Of Medicare Advantage Growth On Part D Competition, Costs, and Coverage. (AEI)
Wednesday Links
- Judge: the federal government cannot conspire with social media to limit free speech.
- Expanded Child tax credit: Neither labor force participation nor total hours worked changed significantly during the months when benefits were increased and work requirements were removed.
- Study: Medicare enrollment improves financial health.
- About 39 percent of US workers are engaged in nontraditional work (freelancing, contracting, gig, and self-employment).
Should Doctors Tell You You’re Fat and What to Eat?
I’ve heard people criticize doctors for not counseling their patients more about the benefits of diet and exercise. Yet, I’m not convinced most patients don’t already know they’re out of shape. After all, the patients in question are the ones who buy their clothing and perhaps comprehend their clothing sizes are double-digit numbers. I’ve asked a doctor I know if he ever has to just be blunt with a patient. He said yes, belatedly telling one patient, “you didn’t get this way overnight.”