Health Care
Health Care
Unbalanced Billing In California Hospitals: Is This A Problem the State Can Solve By Getting Out of the Way?
Imagine if you bought an airline ticket to fly from San Francisco to Chicago and after the flight you received an extra bill from the co-pilot for what he claims is a fair price for his services. He is unsatisfied with the airline’s pay, and would like you and your ...
Commentary
Wonder why Universal Health Care is Nothing but Smoke and Mirrors?
American Alliance Training Network Corp., July 27, 2008 MASSACHUSETTS’S UNIVERSAL health care law turned one in April. To survive, its guardians have had to make many changes, each of which has increased current and future government spending, increased the government’s role in regulating the healthcare market, decreased individual responsibility to ...
Commentary
Letters: Hospital Charges for Uninsured Patients
To the Editor: Readers Jerry Jung and Mary Nelson propose solutions to American hospitals’ strange practice of charging uninsured patients drastically higher prices than insured patients. Their solutions demand more government action, but government is a major cause of this madness. Nobody really understands Medicare’s payment regulations, but experts agree ...
Health Care
Private hospitals join S.F. health care plan
San Francisco Chronicle, July 11, 2008 San Francisco’s ambitious universal health care program took a step forward Thursday, when private hospitals agreed to begin treating participants rather than leaving their care entirely up to the city’s strained public health system. The 25,000 people who have enrolled in Healthy San Francisco ...
Commentary
Private Hospitals Join S.F. Universal Health Access Effort
On Thursday, a number of private, not-for-profit hospitals signed on to treat uninsured people enrolled in San Francisco’s universal health care access program, expanding the effort beyond the city’s public health system, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Healthy San Francisco intends to provide care for all of the city’s 73,000 ...
California
Healthy San Francisco Plan Finally Signs Up Some Hospitals
San Francisco’s tax-hiking and opaque pay-or-play business tax to fund its public health bureaucracy claims to have finally overcome one of the major criticisms that I had made of it. Namely, that it did nothing to improve the quality or delivery of health care to (previously) uninsured San Franciscans, because ...
Commentary
The Doubt of the Benefit: Why State Benefit Mandates are a Poor Prescription for Health Insurance
A benefit mandate is a state law that commands a health plan to pay for, or at least offer, a specified treatment or type of provider, removing the benefit from negotiation between beneficiaries and health plans. For example, a mandate may require a health plan to cover treatment of alcoholism, ...
California
California’s Health Insurance Rescissions: Hospitals Get Their Pound of Flesh
Yesterday, I asked the quasi-rhetorical question: “Why did California’s campaign against Anthem Blue Cross collapse?”, addressing state regulators’ failure to collect a $1 million fine for Anthem Blue Cross’ allegedly illegal rescission of individuals’ policies. Well, it looks like it didn’t collapse: the hospitals have just wrangled over $11 million ...
California
Why Did California’s Campaign Against Anthem Blue Cross Collapse?
I have written a series of blog entries about California’s health care regulators attacking health plans for “rescission,” which the regulators have equated with “post-claims underwriting.” The former consists of revoking a policy because the beneficiary made a material misrepresentation about his health status on his application. The latter consists ...
Commentary
Hidden provision could endanger economy, civil liberties
As the Senate prepares to vote on the current housing legislation, I would like to bring to your attention a dangerous hidden provision that will burden several innovative Bay Area companies and threaten the civil liberties of all Americans. Senators Christopher Dodd and Richard Shelby quietly attached to H.R. 3221 ...
Unbalanced Billing In California Hospitals: Is This A Problem the State Can Solve By Getting Out of the Way?
Imagine if you bought an airline ticket to fly from San Francisco to Chicago and after the flight you received an extra bill from the co-pilot for what he claims is a fair price for his services. He is unsatisfied with the airline’s pay, and would like you and your ...
Wonder why Universal Health Care is Nothing but Smoke and Mirrors?
American Alliance Training Network Corp., July 27, 2008 MASSACHUSETTS’S UNIVERSAL health care law turned one in April. To survive, its guardians have had to make many changes, each of which has increased current and future government spending, increased the government’s role in regulating the healthcare market, decreased individual responsibility to ...
Letters: Hospital Charges for Uninsured Patients
To the Editor: Readers Jerry Jung and Mary Nelson propose solutions to American hospitals’ strange practice of charging uninsured patients drastically higher prices than insured patients. Their solutions demand more government action, but government is a major cause of this madness. Nobody really understands Medicare’s payment regulations, but experts agree ...
Private hospitals join S.F. health care plan
San Francisco Chronicle, July 11, 2008 San Francisco’s ambitious universal health care program took a step forward Thursday, when private hospitals agreed to begin treating participants rather than leaving their care entirely up to the city’s strained public health system. The 25,000 people who have enrolled in Healthy San Francisco ...
Private Hospitals Join S.F. Universal Health Access Effort
On Thursday, a number of private, not-for-profit hospitals signed on to treat uninsured people enrolled in San Francisco’s universal health care access program, expanding the effort beyond the city’s public health system, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Healthy San Francisco intends to provide care for all of the city’s 73,000 ...
Healthy San Francisco Plan Finally Signs Up Some Hospitals
San Francisco’s tax-hiking and opaque pay-or-play business tax to fund its public health bureaucracy claims to have finally overcome one of the major criticisms that I had made of it. Namely, that it did nothing to improve the quality or delivery of health care to (previously) uninsured San Franciscans, because ...
The Doubt of the Benefit: Why State Benefit Mandates are a Poor Prescription for Health Insurance
A benefit mandate is a state law that commands a health plan to pay for, or at least offer, a specified treatment or type of provider, removing the benefit from negotiation between beneficiaries and health plans. For example, a mandate may require a health plan to cover treatment of alcoholism, ...
California’s Health Insurance Rescissions: Hospitals Get Their Pound of Flesh
Yesterday, I asked the quasi-rhetorical question: “Why did California’s campaign against Anthem Blue Cross collapse?”, addressing state regulators’ failure to collect a $1 million fine for Anthem Blue Cross’ allegedly illegal rescission of individuals’ policies. Well, it looks like it didn’t collapse: the hospitals have just wrangled over $11 million ...
Why Did California’s Campaign Against Anthem Blue Cross Collapse?
I have written a series of blog entries about California’s health care regulators attacking health plans for “rescission,” which the regulators have equated with “post-claims underwriting.” The former consists of revoking a policy because the beneficiary made a material misrepresentation about his health status on his application. The latter consists ...
Hidden provision could endanger economy, civil liberties
As the Senate prepares to vote on the current housing legislation, I would like to bring to your attention a dangerous hidden provision that will burden several innovative Bay Area companies and threaten the civil liberties of all Americans. Senators Christopher Dodd and Richard Shelby quietly attached to H.R. 3221 ...
