The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, an outgrowth of Oregon's 2008 lottery to allocate Medicaid slots to eligible residents, has released their
second year of results (Previous discussions on the
lottery and the
experiment). The gist of the results are that they found statisitically significant reductions in catastrophic health care expenditures, improvements in the incidences of depression, and increased use of health care services. They found minimal (and not statistically significant) improvements in the rates of physical health indicators (diabetes and hypertension) they tracked. Because of ethical concerns, there are no other randomized controlled tests on this scale that study the effects of Medicaid and few on the effects of health insurance in general (the only significant one being a
RAND study released 30 years ago). Because of the small amount of information available on the topic and the impending Medicaid expansion offered by Affordable Care Act, this study has drawn a lot of attention from political commentators. This will presumably be the last year these results will be published, as the state of Oregon was able to find
extra money in 2010 in order cover the rest of its Medicaid-eligible population.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot
on May 3, 2013 -
20 comments
Obamacare: One Less Reason to Get Married. Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel writes:
Insurance Marriages had become to the 21st century what shotgun weddings were to jokes about hillbillies. Back in 2004, the LA Times wrote about couples that married for insurance, couples who for varying reasons had not wanted to marry, but who had been driven to marriage by financial necessity. ABC News posted its own roundup of With This Policy, I Thee Wed-style couples in 2008, as did the New York Times. In 2008, 7% of couples who married reported doing so primarily for the insurance benefits. [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead
on Jun 30, 2012 -
61 comments
Since she is not truly an emergency patient, she is triaged to the back of the line, and other folks, those in immediate distress, get in for treatment ahead of her. She waits on a gurney in a cavernous green hallway.
The “chief complaint” on her chart at Grady Memorial Hospital, in Downtown Atlanta, might have set off a wave of nausea in a hospital at a white suburb or almost any place in the civilized world. It reads, “
My breast has fallen off. Can you reattach it?” (via
Boing Boing)
[more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia
on Apr 24, 2012 -
103 comments
Effective January 1, 2013, United States insurers will now be required to make
a variety of medical procedures and medications available without copay as part of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. Although the availability of prescribed birth control without copay is likely to have the widest effect, the plan also includes breast pumps for nursing mothers, an annual well-woman examination, and testing for gestational diabetes and the virus that causes cervical cancer, as well as other services related to women's health.
[more inside]
posted by catlet
on Aug 1, 2011 -
110 comments
Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes of as much as 59% for individuals. 'Insurer says the increases result from fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws. The move comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39%.''Nearly 1 in 4 of the affected customers will see cumulative increases of more than 50% over five months.''Michael Fraser, a Blue Shield policyholder from San Diego, learned recently that his monthly bill would climb 59%, to $431 from $271.''Anthem's attempt to raise rates by up to 39% led to national outrage and helped President Obama marshal support for his healthcare overhaul. The insurer was ultimately forced to back down, accepting maximum rate hikes of 20%.'
[more inside]
posted by VikingSword
on Jan 6, 2011 -
108 comments
"In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college,
he had purchased his own health insurance. Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis [now
Assurant Health], revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that."
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Mar 17, 2010 -
139 comments
Two years since Massachusetts instituted major statewide
healthcare reform, the
statistics are coming in.
340,000 residents, roughly half the state's previously uninsured, are now insured. The state says that
95% of its population is now covered, based on Department of Revenue estimates. However, a large portion of them are enrolled through state-subsidized insurance programs, and those program's rate of enrollment have far
outpaced estimates. This has led lawmakers to forsee a budget
shortfall. Premiums and co-pays are going
up, cigarette taxes have
increased, and a
cost control proposal is making its way through the legislature. Assessments
have been all over the map.
posted by Weebot
on Jul 2, 2008 -
79 comments
The state of Oregon is holding a
health insurance lottery where 91,000 hopeful enrollees will be competing for a couple thousand spots under the Oregon Health Plan, the state's Medicaid program. OHP was created to cover those who made too much to enroll in traditional Medicaid but too little to afford market healthcare, and this development comes as a result of budget cuts and a subsequent enrollment closure in July of 2004. It's a far cry from the universal health care coverage that the plan was suppose to lead to, and marks a
dramatic turn for the state's once-ambitious health care reforms.
(Previously in dystopic health care developments)
posted by Weebot
on Mar 30, 2008 -
64 comments
The ultimate in outsourcing. Welcome to
India, where you can visit the Taj Mahal and get a new knee, all for under $10,000, airfare included. Of course, it's not just for Canadians whose health care system, while free, sometimes necessitates lengthy waits for important surgical procedures.
The uninsured in the US and other nations are a potential market as well. And there's potential for medical tourism destinations
in the US as well.
posted by greatgefilte
on Jun 17, 2006 -
38 comments
