- Health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates and school closures.
- The 42% of adults who are obese costs the US health system 173 billion dollars a year, including cardiovascular disease, cancers, depression, breathing issues, and skeletal issues. Despite this, 98 percent of Americans do not receive treatment for their obesity.
- Greg Mankiw: “The Biden administration faces a trilemma: They would like to (1) increase spending on programs they consider important, (2) not raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 a year, and (3) put fiscal policy on a sustainable path. But the stark reality is that they can have only 2 out of the 3.”
- A defense of Vinyl chloride. (despite the dead fish)
- IRS: 42K federal workers are cheating on their taxes.
Category: Health Insurance
Hospitals Ignoring Price Transparency Rule; CMS Ignoring Hospitals’ Noncompliance
Prices in health care are often difficult to obtain and meaningless when you obtain them. There is not one price but dozens of prices depending on who the payer is. There are different prices for Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealth. There is the pricemaster (list) price that almost nobody pays. The chargemaster price is often the official cash price if you lack insurance coverage and don’t inquire prior to care. Then there is the cash price if you negotiate in advance of care, which is often lower than the list price. If you were to inquire about the price, assuming you were told a price at all, you would likely be given the pricemaster charge for a specific billing code without information about which billing codes belong together. You see, a knee surgery isn’t one code, it’s numerous codes so hospitals can bill for numerous services.
How Much Do Health Insurers Make?
Kaiser: Health insurers’ margins were more than double in Medicare Advantage than in other markets in 2021. Gross margins in the Medicare Advantage market averaged $1,730 per enrollee in 2021, compared with $768 in the Medicaid managed care market, $745 in the individual market and $689 in the fully insured group market.
Saturday Links
- The (health ) case against homelessness.
- Lead poisoning is a worldwide problem.
- The negative relationship between obesity and income is almost entirely driven by women. The relationship between income and weight is flat for men.
- Finally the press gets its comeuppance in the Columbia Journalism Review for promoting the Trump-Russia hoax.
- JAMA study: Medicare Advantage plans have higher quality and lower cost than traditional Medicare.