Medco's acquisition of DNA Direct, a genetic testing management company, may be a reaction to an earlier CVS Caremark transaction, but is also a recognition of the looming flood of…
Read More
The Office of Actuary at CMS provides its estimate of 2009 health spending and projections for future years. Partly due to the recession, health spending grew rapidly as a per…
Read More
Right now the prospects for passage of comprehensive health reform appear dim. If nothing is passed, what are the implications for various participants in the health system? Is it more…
Read More
The current issue of Health Affairs has several articles focusing on the use of telemedicine and HIT to solve health problems in the developing world. The articles describe some success…
Read More
Yet another sampling of health care items, relating to personalized medicine, telemedicine, wellness, disease management and using health data for comparative effectiveness research.
Read More
New research published in Health Affairs finds that geographic variation in Medicare spending is not strongly driven by price variation. Utilization differences appear to be the major cause of that…
Read More
Value-based insurance design attempts to use cost-sharing to maximize use of health services that lead to good health outcomes. Two recent analyses demonstrate that cost-sharing features of health care coverage…
Read More
Many states have created workers' compensation fee schedules based on Medicare reimbursement for physicians. Doing so can create traps if the frequent changes in the Medicare payment mechanisms are not…
Read More
CBO analyzes a Republican proposal on federal spending, finding that the health care-related provisions would significantly reduce federal spending and national health expenditures, while increasing covered persons by an unspecified…
Read More
The Massachusetts Attorney General investigates and discovers that hospitals and some physicians have market power and consequently are able to demand high payments and those payments are the main cause…
Read More
Four times a year public companies regale us with their (usually optimistic) views of the firm's past performance, future prospects and market environment. Interesting information can occasionally be found by…
Read More
Rhode Island released a report on payments to hospitals from various sources and looked at factors accounting for significant differences in payment levels. The variation is likely entirely due to…
Read More
The recommended schedule for mammography screenings to detect breast cancer is examined in a Cochrane report, which finds that the current recommendation probably leads to overdiagnosis and treatment and the…
Read More
While employees over 65 are a very small part of the work force, their numbers are growing and the recession likely will keep people working longer. These employees have some…
Read More
Pharmaceutical manufacturers have spent massive amounts of money on sending sales reps to visit individual physicians and on direct-to-consumer advertising, to the point that this spending is often larger than…
Read More
About this Blog
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Overcast
PocketCasts
Radio Public
Stitcher
Anchor
RSS - Posts