The Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General found that many state Medicaid programs are not taking full advantage of provisions that could lower their drug spending.
Proponents of health care coverage for years have suggested that people literally died without it. New research in regard to the Oregon Medicaid lottery suggests that is highly unlikely to be true and that insurance coverage has little to do with real health outcomes.
Medicaid costs are driving states crazy and although the federal government is picking up most of the expansion spending, states continue to be at budgetary risk and are exploring methods of controlling spending. A brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation looks at beneficiary cost-sharing as one such method.
Actuarial firm Oliver Wyman issues a report on Accountable Care Organizations, using questionable math to create the headline-grabbing number of 10% of Americans being covered by ACOs. The report basically continues the unwarranted hype surrounding ACOs as a savior for our health spending issues.
Our first Potpourri in a while is as diverse and flamboyant as the fall colors, including items on the effectiveness of telemonitoring, the history of health “reform” in the United States, mortality and Medicaid eligibility expansions, continued issues with cost affecting access in Massachusetts and methods to help control imaging use.