John R. Graham
Commentary
Two New Ventures Simplify Consumer-Driven Health Care
A friend of mine who made a lot of money use to tease me when I (constantly) expressed shock at how simple so many successful business ideas are. All great businesses are simple, he said. Here are two in the healthcare space: Bloom Health and ZocDoc. Although disrupting different parts ...
Government Spending
Rick Perry’s Texas: It’s Better to Create More Jobs Than More Medicaid Dependents
Key Points: Texas has a significantly higher rate of uninsured residents, and a somewhat less expensive Medicaid program, than the national average. These conditions have not resulted in poor outcomes: In both health-system outputs and causes of mortality, Texas generally performs as well as other states. Therefore, throwing more money ...
Commentary
What Should Rick Perry Say About Gardasil?
The Republican presidential primaries have been temporarily hijacked by a single incident in Rick Perrys decade-plus tenure as governor of Texas. Despite Michele Bachmanns ludicrous claim that Gardasil causes mental retardation, lets recall that not one single schoolgirl was vaccinated by the offensive executive order: The legislature overturned it long ...
Commentary
Health insurers in states’ cross hairs
The new health care law encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health insurance premiums, an underreported aspect of Obamacare with consequences for patients and health plans alike. Obamacare distributes federal grants that encourage states’ insurance departments to increase their power to dictate insurance premiums. States are responding by ...
Commentary
Political control unhelpful
Faced with spiraling statewide health costs, Massachusetts passed a law in 2008 mandating the states attorney general to issue annual reports with recommendations on how to keep a lid on spending. On June 22, Martha Coakley released her latest report, which recommended that the state impose price controls on medical ...
Commentary
Why Don’t Health Insurance Exchanges Work?
A previous entry reported and discussed the lackluster basically non-existent results of the Utah Health Exchange, and promised to explain why unsubsidized exchanges are unlikely to attract significant numbers of beneficiaries from the small-group market. The answer, I believe, is pretty straightforward: The administrative costs of operating an ...
Health Care
Why Health Exchanges Don’t Work
Key Points: The Utah Health Exchange is failing to meet its goals. It is almost certainly true that the administrative costs of operating an exchange are greater than the administrative costs of the traditional small-group market. Any exchange that offers unsubsidized, voluntary coverage will likely have the same poor results ...
Commentary
How ObamaCare Threatens Solvency Of Health Insurers
One of the most remarkable outcomes of ObamaCare is how the stock market has treated commercial health plans, which have rallied significantly. In the two years between the 2008 and 2010 elections, the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors’ Index rallied 26% (annualized), vs. only 9% for the S&P 500. Outperformance increased ...
Commentary
Obamacare threatens solvency of Colorado health plans
Obamacare encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health-insurance premiums. In 2008 Colorado passed a law giving the Division of Insurance the power to deny premium hikes. To enhance this power, known as “prior approval,” Obamacare gave Colorado a $1 million grant last year to hire more insurance analysts ...
Health Care
Why the Utah Health Exchange is No Model for Health Reform
The Utah Health Exchange is the model some conservatives believe can be used to push back against Obamacare. Witness the Wall Street Journal (July 16) soundly rejecting regulatory guidance on what the Administration is now calling Affordable Insurance Exchanges, but encouraging governors to get on the exchange bandwagon, in the ...
Two New Ventures Simplify Consumer-Driven Health Care
A friend of mine who made a lot of money use to tease me when I (constantly) expressed shock at how simple so many successful business ideas are. All great businesses are simple, he said. Here are two in the healthcare space: Bloom Health and ZocDoc. Although disrupting different parts ...
Rick Perry’s Texas: It’s Better to Create More Jobs Than More Medicaid Dependents
Key Points: Texas has a significantly higher rate of uninsured residents, and a somewhat less expensive Medicaid program, than the national average. These conditions have not resulted in poor outcomes: In both health-system outputs and causes of mortality, Texas generally performs as well as other states. Therefore, throwing more money ...
What Should Rick Perry Say About Gardasil?
The Republican presidential primaries have been temporarily hijacked by a single incident in Rick Perrys decade-plus tenure as governor of Texas. Despite Michele Bachmanns ludicrous claim that Gardasil causes mental retardation, lets recall that not one single schoolgirl was vaccinated by the offensive executive order: The legislature overturned it long ...
Health insurers in states’ cross hairs
The new health care law encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health insurance premiums, an underreported aspect of Obamacare with consequences for patients and health plans alike. Obamacare distributes federal grants that encourage states’ insurance departments to increase their power to dictate insurance premiums. States are responding by ...
Political control unhelpful
Faced with spiraling statewide health costs, Massachusetts passed a law in 2008 mandating the states attorney general to issue annual reports with recommendations on how to keep a lid on spending. On June 22, Martha Coakley released her latest report, which recommended that the state impose price controls on medical ...
Why Don’t Health Insurance Exchanges Work?
A previous entry reported and discussed the lackluster basically non-existent results of the Utah Health Exchange, and promised to explain why unsubsidized exchanges are unlikely to attract significant numbers of beneficiaries from the small-group market. The answer, I believe, is pretty straightforward: The administrative costs of operating an ...
Why Health Exchanges Don’t Work
Key Points: The Utah Health Exchange is failing to meet its goals. It is almost certainly true that the administrative costs of operating an exchange are greater than the administrative costs of the traditional small-group market. Any exchange that offers unsubsidized, voluntary coverage will likely have the same poor results ...
How ObamaCare Threatens Solvency Of Health Insurers
One of the most remarkable outcomes of ObamaCare is how the stock market has treated commercial health plans, which have rallied significantly. In the two years between the 2008 and 2010 elections, the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors’ Index rallied 26% (annualized), vs. only 9% for the S&P 500. Outperformance increased ...
Obamacare threatens solvency of Colorado health plans
Obamacare encourages state politicians to increase their interference with health-insurance premiums. In 2008 Colorado passed a law giving the Division of Insurance the power to deny premium hikes. To enhance this power, known as “prior approval,” Obamacare gave Colorado a $1 million grant last year to hire more insurance analysts ...
Why the Utah Health Exchange is No Model for Health Reform
The Utah Health Exchange is the model some conservatives believe can be used to push back against Obamacare. Witness the Wall Street Journal (July 16) soundly rejecting regulatory guidance on what the Administration is now calling Affordable Insurance Exchanges, but encouraging governors to get on the exchange bandwagon, in the ...
