Tag Archives: Healthcare

It is a given, Trump’s new executive order  is calling for “market-based” pricing or whatever the market will bear pricing to replace Medicare set pricing. Trump sees a conflict between Medicare and the market. Well he is right; but, his solution ll only aggravate the problem of costs.  It will drive up costs for everyone in Medicare, destroy traditional Medicare as healthcare for the elderly, steer more people into costly commercial healthcare, reduce...

“Trump’s Executive Order is Backdoor Privatization of Medicare,” Social Security Works, Nancy Altman, October 3, 2019 Thursday and I had to search around for someone who is an expert on Medicare Advantage Plans and Original Medicare. Nancy is one of those experts. Friday and Andrew Sprung has his commentary Trump’s Bid To Destroy Medicare up on xpostfactoid blog. Commercial Healthcare Insurance has been become more and more expensive over the years with...

The argument has been, if people like their private and company sponsored insurance plans they can keep them; but can they afford to do so? In a recent LA Times and KFF survey, 40 percent of respondents said they had difficulty affording health insurance or health care or had problems paying medical bills. An approximate one-half of respondents said they or a family member skipped or postponed getting health care or prescriptions in the past twelve months...

The House Democrats just released their drug pricing plan (summary) on the 19th. I read through it rather quickly and I found it to be interesting and having targets which could work. Rather than jump right into this, let’s talk about purchasing a bit and then what I believe would be better. In a purchasing negotiation there are two typical ways used to negotiate a price to your company. The first strategy is to tell a supplier you have done a market...

Eighty year old retired salesman John Garver the morning of March 28, 1979 remembers the acrid odor permeating Harrisburg as he walked out of a restaurant in Pennsylvania’s capital city. “We had this smell in the air, wondering what it was. Well it didn’t take us long to find out … that the accident started.” Fourteen miles away, the “accident” was unfolding in Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, triggering panic, confusion, and within...

About the time I finished up my post on Biden, I get this article from Dan discussing how Biden is kissing the butts of drug companies to more-than-likely get campaign donations. Everyone else has been concentrating on individual (you know people of lesser means) donations and many candidates have refused to take corporate donations. Biden is not ashamed to take money from corporations. Gee, whata surprise! Candidate Joe Biden: “By the way, great drug...

Joe knows the answer to this question and he is baiting the other candidates. Joe has a history of supporting big business interests as witnessed by his aggressive support of the banking industry with bankruptcy laws favoring banking against the needs of citizens and with a special intended harshness when it comes to student loans. Joe has sponsored or cosponsored every bankruptcy bill since 1997. With his question and his healthcare bill, I believe Joe ...

Ms. Seema Verma is the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. She is the over seer of Trump’s attempts to repeal the ACA. She is smiling now as there has been a reduction in the numbers of people enrolled in public healthcare such as Medicaid and CHIPS. Why did this occur? States having work requirements for Medicaid, adding more red tape to the application process, cutbacks in in outreach and enrollment funds by the...

“Cigna gets major boost from Express Scripts in Q2,” Robert King, FierceHealthcare, August 1, 2019 And some claim PBMs do not matter in the cost of healthcare? Cigna healthcare insurance generated ~ $38 billion in revenue the second quarter 2019 and a major increase due mostly to a merger with pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) Express Scripts. According to company financial results released Thursday, Cigna’s pharmacy services business generated $23.5...

Just revealed: The opioid/OxyContin maker Purdue and members of the billionaire Sackler family owning the company have offered to settle thousands of lawsuits against the company for $10 to $12 billion. according to people briefed on the offer. More than 2,000 states, cities, and counties across America are pursuing the OxyContin maker over the large bills for cleaning up the opioid crisis — and are deciding whether to accept the offer by Friday. The...