Tag Archives: GoozNews

by Merrill Goozner GoozNews Hospitals are pushing back on an experiment that would put providers on budgets. CMS should ignore their lobbyists and consultants playing games with numbers. Changing the way hospitals and doctors get paid is central to reforming our dysfunctional health care system. Payment reform can achieve better health outcomes, improve the patient experience and help keep overall health care costs in check, the three goals...

by Merrill Goozner GoozNews How high-deductible health insurance plans, touted by free marketeers, caused the medical debt crisis and degraded public health. ~~~~~~~~ The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, best known for its senior citizen drug plans, also encouraged the rapid expansion of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs). It allowed people, mostly well-off, to put pre-tax earnings into health savings accounts (HSAs) – the equivalent of...

A comprehensive All-Payer Claims Databases would help the health care system become more effective and efficient. The Department of Labor could do something about that, but hasn’t. Merrill at GoozNews is depicting why providers and software vendors closely guard patient information, maintaining exclusivity so as patients have to rely on them. Insurance companies follow suit so as to maintain the frequency and particularity of care for disease,...

Good commentary by Merrill Goozner. I subscribe to his site. He, I and other have gotten together and talked. I did ask the Lown Institute if I can publish their top ten examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care. This group make my spidery senses tingle. Rather ask than get a reprimand. Got that one time and I knew who did it. It backfired on them and they were dropped by their host. Good writer and I was posting their commentaries...

I had read the JAMA Network version of this report although I could not get into the Full Text version. You can find a more open version by using a New in Private Window. Cliff notes . . . the polluting company paid for moving the people. In which, the health of the people, the children improved. The options are move the company or move the people. The findings from articles? “Children whose families participated in a program that helped them move...

And undermine public health in the process I ran across Merrill at the Washington Monthly writing about Healthcare. This particular article is on the mark in terms of what is occurring in pharmaceutical healthcare today. Kip, Merrill, and I are all hitting similar notes with regard to healthcare and other issues impacting it. Some such as Kip and Merrill more so on the details than I. The costs and prices of Pharma are overstated by the industry....

This is another extension of what happens when private equity gets involved in business. Hospitals are more important as it has an impact on the neighborhoods around them. If one dies, the local neighborhood is stranded. Good article on just that topic. Private Equity and Its Hospitals, Washington Monthly, Merrill Goozner “Safety net hospitals” serve communities like those in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Finance companies serve themselves....