12 Steps Every Employer With A Health Plan Should Do Now To Manage 2012-14 Health Plan Risks & Liabilities.
Author: Cynthia Marcotte Stamer
NIH “Weight of the Nation” and Other NIH Resources To Help Employees, Families Fight Obesity
While tight budgets may require employers, families and communities to cut back on a broad range of expenditures, limited budge Employers, communities and families struggling to find affordable resources to promote and manage obesity and other wellness […]
Effective Wellness Programs Possible Despite Tight Budgets
While tight budgets preventing many businesses from investing in wellness consulting resources, a tight budget doesn’t mean your company, church, or other group can’t have a thriving wellness program. Wellness is a culture. While the resources and advice of consultants and bells and whistles can be helpful sometimes, the inability to afford them doesn’t mean that your organization or group can’t have a healthy and effective wellness program.
Surgeon General Launches Program To Fight Youth Smoking Health Risks
Administration launches new campaign to fight health risks from youth smoking.
Controlling Costs Through Rationing End of Life Care
In the struggle to control health care costs, reported expenditures end of life expenditures often are a prime target for cost containment and cost cutting. While health care expenditures tend to significantly increase with age, American […]
US Health Care Spending Growth Slows As Private Insurance Coverage Continues To Shrink Amid 2010’s Slow Economy
U.S. health care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2010 to $2.6 trillion or $8,402 per person according to the Annual Report of National Health Expenditures (NHE). The Report notes that since 2007, the economic recession and legislative changes led to a noticeable change in the shares of health care spending financed by businesses, households, and governments. Declining enrollment in private insurance resulted in continuing growth in government financing of this care. The federal government financed 29 percent of the nation’s health care spending in 2010, an increase of six percentage points from its share in 2007 of 23 percent, and reached $742.7 billion. Part of that increase came from enhanced Federal matching funds for State Medicaid programs under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act which expired in 2011. Review the details of the Report here.
Transportation Barriers Challenge Health Care
Resolving transportation barriers to accessing care for patients remains challenging and not just for helicopter transport. Poor and other transportation impaired patients often can’t access or are delayed in accessing care because of diffculties in getting […]
Maintaining Jobs Key To Keeping Americans Covered
A new study documents that job loss from a stale economy is key driver in increase in the uninsured.
Senator Hatch Attacks Proposed ACA Premium Tax Credit Regulations
U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, says the premium subsidy provisions of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care act (Affordable Care Act) does not authorize the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to allow individuals purchasing coverage through a federal health insurance exchange to receive the tax credits and subsidies authorized under new Internal Revenue Code § 36B to offset the cost of being mandated to buy health insurance created under Affordable Care Act Section 1311.
CMS Celebrates 1st Anniversary of Strategic Framework on Multiple Chronic Conditions
December 14, 2011 marked the one-year anniversary of the release of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Strategic Framework on Multiple Chronic Conditions (Plan), a plan aimed at improving the overall health status of individuals with multiple chronic conditions. CMS is marking the anniversary by touting what it sees as early successes.