Sanofi sponsors the Managed Care Digest Series and just released the 2012-13 edition, which contains a plethora of data on HMOs, PPOs and their use and management of prescription drugs.
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Allow drug spending growth has slowed, it is still a significant category of cost and adding drug benefits to Medicare and Medicaid has caused concern about how those drugs are…
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The Center for Health Affairs releases a report regarding opportunities for patient navigation tools and services to improve health care quality and potentially impact spending.
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Now that it looks like the health reform law will be fully implemented, agencies are cranking out bushels of regulations. A Kaiser Family Foundation brief summarizes the provisions of three…
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The Employee Benefits Research Institute publishes its findings from the annual Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey, finding that enrollment in high-deductible plans continues to grow and that there are…
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Everyone is kind of on tiptoes, waiting to see if medical cost growth is going to stay relatively stable as it has for the last few years, or begin to…
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In the past few years the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has published several reviews on the evidence for effectiveness of various forms of quality improvement initiatives. Now the…
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One of the things the new reform law does is limit the ability to adjust health insurance premiums on the basis of age. A study from Oliver Wyman examines the…
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A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine looks at the association between various physician characteristics and acquiescence to patient drug requests, finding some interesting correlations.
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An article in Health Affairs summarizes the latest from the Office of the Actuary on national health spending in 2011, demonstrating that while spending growth remained relatively quiescent, it appears…
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How much can you trust research? Not a lot sometimes, as an article in Health Affairs demonstrates, using the issue of salt reduction as an example. It turns out that…
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Many states and local governments have enacted prohibitions on smoking in certain public places, including restaurants and bars. These bans are founded on public health concerns due to inhalation of…
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One of the biggest problems with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' hospital readmissions program is that it likely unfairly and disproportionately hurts hospitals which treat larger numbers of…
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A study published in Health Affairs examined consumers' awareness of preventive care benefits in their high-deductible insurance plans, finding that many were unaware that these services were available without charge.
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A new paper from the National Bureau of Health Economics suggests that not allowing insurers to vary rates based on health status reduces incentives to be healthy, leading to an…
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