Is Crowdfunding The Grim Future of Health Insurance?
A growing number of people, mostly Americans, is forced to use crowdfunding sites to ask for money to cover medical expenses. While in many cases, the option is a potential source of hope binding people together for a good cause that would otherwise be lost due to financial reasons, the phenomenon also shows the desperate state of a healthcare system where victims of terrible illnesses have to “commodify” themselves on online donation forums. Should it stay that way? Should we fear for a dark future of health insurance in some parts of the world?
The patchwork called crowdfunding
Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo, Crowd...
Source: The Medical Futurist - October 13, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Health Insurance Healthcare Design Social media in Healthcare crowdfunding digital health digital health insurance ethics future health data medical medical expenses Source Type: blogs
How to Build an Effective Rural Virtual Care and Telehealth Strategy
The following is a guest blog post by Lee Horner, CEO of Synzi.
Rural healthcare organizations are increasingly interested in implementing virtual care and telehealth solutions in order to better meet the needs of their facilities, staff, and patient population. In danger of closing their doors, rural hospitals are struggling to survive and thrive in a healthcare environment with razor-thin margins.
iVantage’s 2017 Rural Relevance Study reports that 41 percent of rural hospitals operate at a negative margin. Poor financial performance is impacting these hospitals’ ability to keep their doors open and serve rural commu...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - October 10, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Blogger Tags: Health Care Healthcare HealthCare IT Telemedicine Lee Horner Rural Virtual Care Synzi Telehealth Source Type: blogs
Baldwin Resolution Would Expose Sick Patients to Higher Premiums, Cancelled Coverage, Denied Care
The Senate appears poised to vote soon on a Congressional Review Actresolution sponsored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) that would rescind the Trump administration ’s final rule on “short-term limited duration insurance.” Nearly every Senate Democrat has cosponsored the Baldwin resolution because they believe it would protect consumers. It would do exactly the opposite. The Baldwin resolution ……would increase the number of uninsured. Various scholars haveestimated that by making health insurance more affordable, the Trump short-term plans rule would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by up to 2 million. The ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 9, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs
‘ Fear, paranoia, and pressure ’ : Challenges to Accessing Medication-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Addiction
Barriers to access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) threaten addiction recovery and complicate the safety of clinicians’ jobs, thereby hindering the national response to the opioid epidemic.
MAT is a treatment approach that combines medications with counseling and behavioral therapies to treat substance use disorders. Medications used in MAT are FDA-approved and clinically-driven; however, several MAT access issues create obstacles to achieving its full success in mitigating the opioid epidemic. Insurance access and coverage, geography/location, treatment cost, and drug policy emerge as the most formidable pain po...
Source: World of Psychology - September 19, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Marina Shayevich Tags: Addiction Policy and Advocacy Psychology Psychotherapy Recovery Research Substance Abuse Treatment medication-assisted treatment opioid addiction opioid crisis Prescription Drug Addiction Source Type: blogs
What's new in midwifery - 12th September 2018
Some recent things you might need to know about.StatisticsStatistics on Women ' s Smoking Status at Time of Delivery, England - Quarter 1, 2018-19ResearchNew England Journal of MedicinePerspective: Protecting mothers and babies – a delicate balancing act.Pregnant women are often not included in clinical trials and this affects the amount of data available about prescribing some medications in pregnancy.BMJIntramuscular versus intravenous oxytocin to prevent postpartum haemorrhage at vaginal delivery: randomised controlled trialNewsMen get postnatal depression, tooAgency for Healthcare Research and Quality (USA)Complicati...
Source: Browsing - September 12, 2018 Category: Databases & Libraries Tags: midwifery Source Type: blogs
The Skinny on The Narrow Bank
Dedicated readers may recall my havingreported here several years ago the suit filed by Colorado ’s Four Corner’s Credit Union against the Kansas City Fed — after the Fed refused it a Master Account on the grounds that it planned to cater to Colorado’s marijuana-related businesses. Until then the episode was almost unique, for the Fed had scarcely ever refused a Master Account to any pr operly licensed depository institution. Eventually the Fed and Four Corners reached a compromise, of sorts, with the Fed agreeing to grant the credit union an account so long as it promised not to do business with the very firms it ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 10, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Is Universal Health Care Socialism?
By ETIENNE DEFFARGES
The November midterms elections are approaching, and one of the major topics is health care. Democrats are campaigning on retaining Obamacare, in many cases advocating that we move towards universal health care.
That would be pure socialism, retort Republicans, who would rather repeal the Affordable Care Act as they attempted in 2017, even if this leads to 20 million Americans losing coverage.
Is Universal Health Care Socialism?
Only if we believe that every other developed market-based economy in the world is socialist since the U.S. is the only one without universal coverage. We spend almost $10,...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 5, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Economics Socialism Universal Health Care UntanglingtheUSA Source Type: blogs
Rauner Veto Preserves Consumer Protections in Short-Term Plans, Improves ObamaCare's Risk Pools
Hours ago, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R)vetoedlegislation that would have subjected enrollees in short-term health insurance plans to higher deductibles, higher administrative costs, higher premiums, and lost coverage. The vetoed bill would have blocked the consumer protections made available in that market bya final rule issued earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and would have (further) jeopardized ObamaCare ’s risk pools by forcing even more sick patients into those pools.Short-term plans are exempt from federal health insurance regulations, and as a result offerbroader access to...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 27, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs
Do uninsured patients receive more unnecessary care?
American physicians dole out lots of unnecessary medical care to their patients. They prescribe things like antibiotics for people with viral infections, order expensive CT scans for patients with transitory back pain, and obtain screening EKGs for people with no signs or symptoms of heart disease. Some critics even accuse physicians of ordering such services to bolster their revenue.
So what happens when uninsured patients make it to the doctor’s office with coughs, low back pain, or other problems? Do physicians stop ordering all these unnecessary tests and services, out of recognition that most of these patients won...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 17, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/peter-ubel" rel="tag" > Peter Ubel, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Medicare Public Health & Source Type: blogs
Cats & Dogs: Can We Find Unity on Health Care IT Change?
By MATTHEW HOLT
Today we have a humming economy and insane politics. In early 2009 we were in economic meltdown and were about one week into the sanest, soberist Administration and even Congress over many recent decades. In February 2009 They passed a stimulus bill that had a huge impact on the health IT market (and still does). At that time there was much debate on THCB about what the future of health IT policy should look like and how the stimulus “Meaningful Use” money should be spent. My January 2009 summary of that whole debate introduced the notion of “Cats and Dogs in health IT”. They’...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 15, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Matthew Holt 2008 Election EHR Health 2.0 Policy Policy/Politics RHIOs Startups Source Type: blogs
As I ’ve always suspected, Health Care = Communism + Frappuccinos
By MATTHEW HOLT
Happy 15th birthday THCB! Yes, 15 years ago today this little blog opened for business and changed my life (and at least impacted a few others). Later this week we are going to celebrate and tell you a bit more about what the next 15 years (really?) of THCB might look like. But for now, I’m rerunning a few of my favorite pieces from the mid-2000s, the golden age of blogging. Today I present “Health Care = Communism + Frappuccinos”, one of my favorites about the relationship between government and private sector originally published here on Jan7, 2005. And like the Medicare one from last we...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 12, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Matthew Holt OP-ED 15th Birthday Celebration Commumism Frappuchinos Source Type: blogs
How our health care system traumatizes patients
The health care system has never been so complex as it is today. As doctors, we’ve seen the struggles that happen just trying to help patients get the medical care they need. Patients are now ladened with high deductibles and often are the victims of baseless denied coverage for diagnostic tests and medication.
Insurance companies insist that they are not practicing medicine, merely making coverage determinations and that the patient is free to follow their doctor’s advice, paying out-of-pocket, of course. Realistically, if all patients have thousands of dollars to pay for their medical care, would we even need health ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 9, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/linda-girgis" rel="tag" > Linda Girgis, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Public Health & Source Type: blogs
A Libertarian ’ s Case Against Free Markets in Healthcare
By ROMAN ZAMISHKA
In the final act of Shakespeare’s Richard III the eponymous villain king arrives on the battlefield to fight against Richmond, who will soon become Henry VII. During the battle Richard is dismounted as his horse is killed and in a mad frenzy wades through the battlefield screaming “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Richard shows us how market value can change drastically depending on the circumstances, or your mental state, and even the most absurd exchange rate can become reasonable in a moment of crisis.
This presumably arbitrary nature of prices should be the first thing a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 2, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Economics Source Type: blogs
A Libertarian ’ s Case Against Free Markets in Health Care
By ROMAN ZAMISHKA
In the final act of Shakespeare’s Richard III, the eponymous villain king arrives on the battlefield to fight against Richmond, who will soon become Henry VII. During the battle, Richard is dismounted as his horse is killed and in a mad frenzy wades through the battlefield screaming “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Richard shows us how market value can change drastically depending on the circumstances, or your mental state, and even the most absurd exchange rate can become reasonable in a moment of crisis.
This presumably arbitrary nature of prices should be the first thing...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 2, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Economics Free Market health economics Libertarian Source Type: blogs
The misguided expectation of eliminating pain
I am against all forms of bodily pain, both foreign and domestic. I wish the world were pain-free. When I am suffering from even a routine headache, I want immediate relief just like everyone else. The medical approach to pain control has changed dramatically even during my own career. When I started practicing a few decades ago, the strategy was pain reduction. We gave narcotics for very few indications such as kidney stones, heart attacks and severe abdominal pain after a surgeon evaluated the patient. (The reason for this was so the surgeon could obtain an accurate assessment of the patient’s belly before pain medicin...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 31, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/michael-kirsch" rel="tag" > Michael Kirsch, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Medications Pain Management Source Type: blogs
