Archive for the ‘health care reform’ Category

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No Health Insurance Exchange in SoDak this Year

January 19th, 2012 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in health care reform, health insurance

South Dakota governor Dennis Daugaard has stated that legislation to establish a health insurance exchange will not be on the table in this year’s session.

In a news release, the governor said that conditions were too unstable to recommend creating the kind of exchange stipulated by President Obama’s health care overhaul. That law intended individual states to set up their own exchanges, meant to assist people who purchase personal insurance plans.

But Governor Daugaard feels that the U.S. Supreme Court might strike down the health care reform law, or that it might be repealed by Congress, though he’s hoping for the former outcome. Despite this, he said, his state will apply for a federal grant to help create such an exchange if South Dakota is eventually required to do so.

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Friday Filmstrip: French Health Care

October 7th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in alternative health plans, friday filmstrips, health care reform, health insurance, insurance news, insurance specialists

As health care remains a hot-button issue in our government and with our current crop of political candidates, it’s interesting to look at health care around the world. Here’s a video – admittedly three years old – which looks at the French health care system, which is often considered the best in the world.

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Insurance Increases 10% in Last Year, but NOT Because of Obama Administration

October 4th, 2011 by Iris | 1 Comment | Filed in health care reform, health insurance

A study released last Tuesday revealed that company-provided health care coverage, one of the largest costs of both businesses and households in the US, increased by nine percent over the last year, even with a slow economy. More specifically, the average cost for employer-provided family health insurance is now $15,073 a year, which cost has more and more businesses dropping coverage for employees.

The study, an annual report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that only one or two of those nine percentage points can be pinned on the 2010 health care reform act which allowed families to keep grown children on their policies until the age of twenty-six and increased coverage for preventive medical services.

Moreover, the study reveals that over the last ten years the cost of employer-provided health insurance has increased by 113%, while the average increase in wages over the same period of time was only 34%, and inflation only increased by 27%. According to the study, the employer contribution to those insurance costs is still more than double the employee share, but worker contributions increased by a whopping 131 percent over the last decade.

Kaiser’s study also revealed that a greater number of companies and workers were agreeing to pay higher deductibles (the portion the insured parties pay out-of-pocket when obtaining medical treatment, before insurance kicks in) in order to cap increases in premiums.

While 99% of companies with more than 200 employees continue to provide health benefits, in 2011 only 59 percent of smaller companies offered health benefits to their workers, as opposed to 67% of small companies in 2001.

Speaking to the press, Drew Altman, chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation explained, “Critics of the national health reform law passed in 2010 like to blame everything but the weather on ‘Obamacare,’ but… regardless of how you feel about the Affordable Care Act, its effect on premiums this year is modest.”

Altman added, “While the conventional wisdom is that private insurance does a better job of controlling costs, the opposite is true.”

White House deputy chief of staff Nancy-Ann DeParle also weighed in on the Kaiser report, calling it “a look backwards,” and stating that the increase in premiums would slow significantly over the next year. In a post on the White House blog, she said that the increase was based on assumptions made by insurers in 2009, that medical care costs would spike upward and that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act would add to insurer costs.

“In the end,” she wrote, “both assumptions were wrong — but insurance companies still charged high premiums and earned impressive profits.” She also wrote that, “Key Affordable Care Act policies are starting to take effect that make insurance more affordable.”

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Hospital Prices Rising

August 19th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in health care reform, health insurance

Here’s a set of numbers that could eventually affect your health insurance cost:

For the second month in a row, the cost of hospital services rose by 0.5% last month, according to newly released data from the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, as compared with July 2010, which saw a 0.3% decline in the prices consumers paid for hospital care.

At the same time, over the twelve-month period that ended in July, the growth-rate for hospital consumer prices remained steady at 7%, which is the same as the 2010 rate.

Specifically, the cost for inpatient hospital care increased by 0.5% last month, while outpatient costs had a slightly smaller increase of only 0.4%. The trend of inpatient prices increasing more than outpatient costs has gone on for the last year, with the total increases equaling 7.5% and 5.9%, respectively.

The figures also show that the prices of physician serves also increased a bit last month – going up by 0.1%, as opposed to July, 2010 which saw an 0.4% increase in the same costs.

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Judge Says Indiana CANNOT Defund Planned Parenthood

June 29th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in health care reform, health insurance, women and insurance

Last Friday, June 24th, a federal judge ruled that the state of Indiana may not block state and federal public funding of Planned Parenthood only because the medical organization provides abortions. The ruling also granted Planned Parenthood an injunction on the state’s attempt at defunding.

The decision, made by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, in Indianapolis, agreed with the federal viewpoint that individual states may not disqualify Medicaid providers just because they also happen to be abortion providers, nor may the states do anything to restrict the freedom of Medicaid patients to select their own health care providers.

Bryan Corbin, the spokesperson for the Indiana attorney general’s office, said that the state will probably appeal this ruling.

The law, which went into effect last month, made Indiana the first state in the country to refuse to disburse Medicaid funds meant to be used for breast exams and Pap smears to Planned Parenthood. The organization, which provides health care to about 9.300 Indiana clients who receive state-federal health insurance for low-income and disabled Medicaid recipients, lost about $1.4 million because of that legislation.

The state’s argument was that federal law disallows Medicaid-covered abortions in most circumstances, and that such procedures are indirectly funded because financial statements from Planned Parenthood show that Medicaid funds are comingled with revenue from other sources. The state believes that this means the state-federal health insurance plan for low-income and disabled people might therefore be subsidizing some of the overhead costs for space where abortions are performed.

Pratt’s ruling said that Planned Parenthood would feel “dire financial effects” because of the law, and that the defunding meant basic health care would be denied to Medicaid patients who use the facility.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana has actually been running without Medicaid funding since Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed the law into force on May 10th, but wasn’t forced to stop seeing Medicaid patients until last week, when the donations from private sources, used to cover those patients’ bills, ran out.

Nationally, less than 3% of the medical services Planned Parenthood provides are abortions, or abortion-related.

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More People Praying About Their Health

June 3rd, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in alternative health plans, health care reform, health insurance, women and insurance

Maybe it’s a sign of troubling times in general, or maybe it’s a direct response to the way health insurance costs have risen over the past several years, but apparently the number of American adults who are praying about their health issues rose 36 percent from 199 to 2007.

This information comes from a study recently published by the American Psychological Association. The researchers involved looked at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ National Health Interview surveys for the years 1999, 2002, and 2007, and focused mainly on comparing the results of the latter two surveys which included responses from 30,080 adults from 44,540 households in 2002 and 23,393 adults from 40,377 households in 2007.

According to the study’s lead author, Amy Wachholtz, PhD, from the University of Massachusetts medical School, “The United States did have an increase in worship attendance across multiple religious faiths immediately after the 9/11 attack, but that has not stayed elevated. However, people continued to use informal and private spiritual practices such as prayer. There is also a greater public awareness of Buddhist-based mindfulness practices that can include prayerful meditation, which individuals may also be using to address a variety of health concerns.”

Increased prayer was noted in people whose health dramatically declined as well as those whose health significantly improved, suggesting that it was a method of coping with the changing circumstances of their health, according to the study.

A greater amount of prayer was noted in most demographic groups, though those with higher incomes were less likely to pray about their health than those with lower incomes. The most likely people to pray about health conditions were the well-educated, women, and African-Americans.

However, while prayer was used by people with good incomes and decent medical insurance, Wachholtz pointed out that, “People are not exchanging health insurance for prayer.”

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North Carolina Still Lacks Employee Health Plan Decision

April 26th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in health care reform, health insurance

The state legislature in North Carolina went home for the weekend last Thursday without coming to an agreement on the cost of health insurance for state employees, teachers, or retired persons. At that point they were already outside the deadline that had been given.

Earlier last week, Governor Beverly Perdue vetoed a proposal that would require all active employees to pay a monthly premium for their own health insurance for the first time in state history. As a result, a new insurance bill is required.

Last Wednesday, the North Carolina House approved a measure to retain an insurance option for those workers that did not include a monthly premium, but Republicans in the state Senate didn’t like the fact that it would cost roughly $16 million in state funding over two years. The vetoed plan had been designed to close a $515 million likely shortfall between expenses and revenues through mid-2013.

Speaking about the issue, Senator Tom Apodaca (R-Henderson) said, “It just wasn’t acceptable to our caucus at this point, so there’s no reason to stay around.” Apocada was the chief sponsor of the bill that Governor Perdue vetoed.
Apocada added that there have been several new options presented, including one that gives retirees also covered by Medicare an option without premiums, but that there hadn’t been enough time to negotiate with the House.

Jack Walker, Executive Administrator of the North Carolina State Health Plan told legislative leaders that he would be moving ahead with July 1 enrollment plans based on the cost of premiums as of last Thursday afternoon. House Speaker Thom Tillis (R – Mecklenburg) explained that the delay will probably mean a second enrollment period once new premiums have been determined.

Last week, Governor Perdue explained that the biggest factor that went into her decision to veto the bill was that teachers – and specifically the North Carolina Association of Educators – were not involved in the original negotiations.

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