Tag Archives: Healthcare

Introduction: “new analysis finds that that MSSP, the oldest and largest Medicare accountable care organization (ACO) program, has lost money for individuals it covers and overall for Medicare it saves just 75¢ per $1000.” AB: Not much of gain there. What does it do for other programs? “Largest ACO Program Saves Piddling Amounts for Medicare,” PNHP. As taken from “Estimated Savings From the Medicare Shared Savings Program,” JAMA Network,...

I pay to be able to talk to Merrill. What is fun is when Andrew Sprung shows up. And I am recognized for the words I write on healthcare. Been in enough hospitals to be treated for a blood disorder, I know the routine. The first hospital put me on death row. A woman stopped by and asked me if I knew where I was in the hospital. Of course, I said no. She told me, I was on death-row and they did not expect me to live. My platelets were very low and...

Charles Gaba was to become known to me because of Maggie Mahar who was featured at Angry Bear in the past. Another resident of Michigan like I was, one county and a few communities away from my own home. Thoroughly ACA knowledgeable and ACA competent. You can trust his words. I featured this commentary by Charles because it has some important dates and information. Charles is an excellent source of information on the ACA. Read him . . . The...

Each day, I get an array of emails in my In-Box offering up articles, what they think can be interesting reads, or junk. Some are hawking subscriptions too. I like to subscribe to news letters and magazines. The problem being, I never get a chance to finish reading them all. SCOTUS Billionaire Gifts to Thomas: Generosity or Taxable Income? levernews.com, Freddy Brewster, Lucy Dean Stockton, Katya Swank. If billionaires’ largesse was designed to...

Fixing a Critical Safety Net Program: 340B, Third Way, Darbin Wofford and David Kendall – Part 2 The Solution: A Patient-Centered 340B Program The 340B program is an essential tool for uninsured and vulnerable patients to access lifesaving medicines. But program discounts should improve patient access and lower costs—not pad hospital profits and incentivize further consolidation in the health care system. To address these issues,...

Angry Bear has posted about the 340B Drug Pricing program several times now. What is key to this program is it making available medicines which are out of reach for those who are lower income and uninsured patients. However, the program is being used to divert funding to other hospital facilities. Some are going as far as closing portions of a facility, moving the care to other facilities, and maintaining the original facility so as to be eligible...

Evey day, I get an array of emails in my In-Box offering up articles or what they think can be interesting reads. Some are hawking subscriptions too. I like to subscribe to news letters and magazines. The problem being, I never get a chance to finish them all. Law Why the Supreme Court rejected a case about LGBTQ+ conversion therapy bans, slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick and Joseph Stern. SCOTUS refused to take up Tingley v. Ferguson, a First...

In “2022 Overpayment to Medicare Advantage? Somewhere between 22% and 35%,” Angry Bear, we featured Kip Sullivan’s article, “Medicare Advantage is a money grab by big insurers,” Minnesota Reformer. Besides his own words on the topic, he also used data from MA Overpayment Report, Physicians for a National Health Plan report. Joel led me to this article which I am going to tackle again MA Overpayment Report (pnhp.org) in greater detail and brokn...

After doing some quick scanning of articles on the topic of Medicare Advantage plan disenrollment, I found many leave Medicare Advantage because of complex healthcare conditions. Either a change in health leading to such or an inability to get the care they need. Medicare Advantage plans notoriously deny care as a method to delay care and gain greater profitability. There is more to my explanation than what I have said. Medicare Advantage...

Eugenics is the practice of arranging reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Setting aside who gets to decide which human traits are desirable and undesirable, we simply don’t know enough about the genetic basis for things like industriousness, fidelity, thrift, honesty and countless other human behaviors to pursue a selective breeding program to enhance the frequency of...