Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Few Things So Starkly Set America's Health System Apart As How Much Patients Have To Pay Out Of Pocket
Los Angeles Times: Americans' Struggles With Medical Bills Are A Foreign Concept In Other Countries
In France, a visit to the doctor typically costs the equivalent of $1.12. A night in a German hospital costs a patient roughly $11. And in the Netherlands — one of the few wealthy nations other than the U.S. where patients face a deductible — insurers usually must cover all medical care after the first 385 euros, roughly $431. (Levey, 9/12)
ABC News: Why The US Spends More On Health Care Than Other Countries, But Doesn't Fare Better: Study
Americans pay more for health care and get fewer results, according to a new analysis. The U.S. spends more money than any other country on health care, yet life expectancy is shorter, obesity is higher, and the rate of maternal and infant death is higher as well. The study published in JAMA on Tuesday takes a closer look at how health dollars are spent, and some of the findings might be surprising. (Florimon, 9/12)
ProPublica: Thousands Of Poor Patients Face Lawsuits From Nonprofit Hospitals That Trap Them In Debt
Over the past few months, several hospitals have announced major changes to their financial assistance policies, including curtailing the number of lawsuits they file against low-income patients unable to pay their medical bills. Investigative reports have spurred the moves, and they prompted criticism from a top federal official. “We are learning the lengths to which certain not-for-profit hospitals go to collect the full list price from uninsured patients,” Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told board members of the American Hospital Association on Tuesday, according to published remarks. (Miller and Raghavendran, 9/13)
Read KHN's coverage about hospital lawsuits: ‘UVA Has Ruined Us’: Health System Sues Thousands Of Patients, Seizing Paychecks And Claiming Homes
Modern Healthcare: Employer-Based Health Insurance Costs Will Grow 6.5% In 2020
High-cost specialty drugs, increases in care costs and declining care utilization will spark a 6.5% hike in employer-sponsored health benefits costs in 2020, according to a new report Thursday. Consulting firm Aon said non-communicable diseases are driving healthcare costs across the world. Musculoskeletal, cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and high blood pressure were the most common health problems in the U.S. (Brady, 9/12)
Modern Healthcare: Price Hikes, Upcoding Drive Massachusetts Inpatient Spending
Commercial inpatient healthcare spending has increased in Massachusetts despite declining volumes, reinforcing other analyses that determined price increases are driving spending growth, a new report from the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission found. Commercial inpatient spending across the commonwealth grew 10.7% from 2013 to 2018, while volume decreased by 12.8%, according to the commission. That was primarily due to higher prices and patient acuity, although the HPC revealed that patients may have not actually been sicker. (Kacik, 9/12)
PolitiFact: The Latest On US Health Insurance Coverage, Income And Poverty
The 2017 and 2018 figures are not directly comparable with previous years due to changes in how the data is calculated. But a different data set showed that the small rises in the uninsured rate for 2017 and 2018 marked a change for a number that had improved every year since its peak in 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was passed. The law created a national marketplace for individual insurance and allowed states to expand Medicaid to more people. (Jacobson, 9/11)
Sacramento Bee: Census: California’s Uninsured Rate Stalls At 7.2 Percent
California has seen its rate of uninsured residents drop every year since the state’s affordable care marketplace, Covered California, began offering insurance policies, but 2018 was the exception. The rate stalled last year at 7.2 percent, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, despite the fact that taxpayers were still subject to the individual mandate penalty on their tax returns. Nationally, the rate of uninsured rose to 8.5 percent from 7.9 percent. (Anderson, 9/12)
Boston Globe: Premiums For Mass. Health Connector To Rise 4 Percent In 2020
Health insurance premiums for hundreds of thousands of residents buying coverage through the Massachusetts Health Connector will rise 4 percent on average next year, officials said Thursday. The increases will vary across plans, with some premiums dipping slightly and others rising nearly 10 percent. Most people covered on the state health insurance marketplace receive subsidies to offset those increases. (Dayal McCluskey, 9/12)
Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Despite Booming Economy, Uninsured Rate Ticks Up
The annual report from the Census Bureau, released this week, found that 27.5 million Americans were without health insurance last year, an increase of nearly 2 million from 2017. The 0.5 percentage point increase in the uninsured rate — to 8.5% — was the first in a decade and came as unemployment and other economic indicators have been good. Meanwhile, the Trump administration signaled that it is moving to ban flavored vaping liquid used in e-cigarettes. Companies making the products have been accused of marketing to underage users with flavors like mango and bubble gum. (9/12)
