Another report that looks at specialty drug spending is issued by the Center for Studying Health System Change. Due to different characteristics of this category, the authors are pessimistic about near-term opportunities to limit spending growth.
I will be traveling the next two weeks so our posts will be less frequent. Todays focuses on workers’ compensation and reviews an annual report put out by the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute, which summarizes its general role, as well as the specific research conducted in the last year.
Milliman tracks the average cost of health care for a family and issues an annual report. The 2012 version is out, showing that average family costs are over $20,000 for the first time. That reform law sure is working well to hold down costs.
Among government health care programs, the Part D prescription drug benefit in Medicare has been extremely successful, costing less than projected. Beneficiaries also are satisfied with the program, which consists of all private plans. A Kaiser report examines Part D spending trends.
The Government Accounting Office reports on initial results from the Medicare competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment, finding that it appeared to have succeeded in reducing spending, while not unduly affecting beneficiary access.
This week’s Potpourri contains tasty morsels of health care nutrition, including geographic variation in cardiac procedures, barriers to shared decision-making, issues in the credibility of survey-based research, the value of a diabetes disease management program, and differences in hospital costs.
The Commonwealth Fund puts out yet another report decrying the sorry American health system, which has by far the highest per capita costs and supposedly no better outcomes. It is unclear, however, that Americans don’t actually by and large get more total value for their dollars and the higher spending is largely due to unit prices.
Our final post on the EMD Serono Specialty Digest, with reference to specialty pharmacy provider trends, oncology and outcomes and comparative effectiveness research.
A continuation of information from the EMD Serono Specialty Digest, with a focus on trends in spending and utilization management.
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 [email protected].
© 2024 Healthy Skeptic.
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