"The report — released Thursday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, ahead of a hearing focused on drug prices — found that companies that signed drug pricing deals with Trump have raised the cost of hundreds of medications and launched new ones at an average price of $353,000 a year."
#healthcare #PrescriptionDrugs #DrugPrices #CostsOfCare #UScongress #USpol
"The CEO of the Philadelphia-based nonprofit hospital system Jefferson said his organization now spends more on prescription drug coverage — fueled by the soaring use of weight loss medications like Wegovy and Zepbound — than it does on inpatient care."
"But because states have passed laws exempting farm bureau health plans from health insurance requirements, they don’t offer many of the coverage protections provided by insurance. That means their benefits and coverage rules may be less generous or predictable than Obamacare plans."
Fourteen states now allow health coverage through state farm bureaus. Though they generally share many features of Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, they aren’t insurance. Neither are they typically subject to federal or state health insurance requirements, and the benefits may be less generous or predictable than those of Obamacare plans.
New case study from the center left think tank #thirdway about #maine #hospital consolidation and how it's "ripping off patients"
As a Maine doc, the only omission I see is that they fail to discuss Maine's #certificateofneed law which allows hospitals here to block lower cost competitors. That's part of why we send some patients out of state for lower cost tests and surgeries.
https://www.thirdway.org/report/fixing-maines-broken-hospitals-a-case-study
#Capitation involves a lot more than paying #primarycare a monthly fee. It creates perverse incentives for #familymedicine docs and other PCPs to ration care.
#directprimarycare #costsofcare #healthreform
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/compensation-pay-primary-care-shortage-solution/
@petersuber
Much of this is due to #feeforservice billing paradigm and prepaying for routine care via #healthinsurance
For #primarycare, it's simpler to dump both. That makes primary care efficient enough that we can provide it (and free phone calls and messages) for $44 to $99/month when the hospital clinic down the street is charging $173 to $351 per visit.
Save the insurance for big , expensive problems.
All those false positives ("indidentalomas") from full body #MRI will get expensive workups and then follow up studies that will be paid by the rest of us via higher insurance premiums and taxes.
Get some data first please. Failing that, add a special tax on these to cover the extra workups upfront instead of socializing their false positive costs to everyone.
#medmastodon #costsofcare #radiology #evidencebasedmedicine #ebm #sbm #sciencebasedmedicine
4. #maine is one of many states that still have Certificate of Need laws that had the goal of reducing oversupply/use of services but now protect hospital networks (mostly regional monopolies) from lower priced competitors.
It's not rare for me to send patients out of state for cheaper studies, procedures, etc. The price savings are often big enough to make the trips worthwhile for them. The shorter wait for consults are a bonus.
Bich Nguyen
Brian Pierce MD
