Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
How A Group Of Small-Town Locals In Colorado Banded Together To Successfully Fight High Premiums
Colorado Sun: How Summit County Residents, Fed Up With High Health Care Prices, Banded Together And Negotiated A Better Deal
Monthly health insurance premiums in Summit County were higher than mortgage payments. Residents were toughing out illnesses and injuries at home rather than going to the doctor. Families were packing up and moving to find more affordable coverage. But now, [Tamara Drangstveit] and other Summit County leaders have led a first-of-its-kind effort in Colorado that is poised to lower health insurance prices for many in the county — and could become a model for communities across the state to gain leverage over a health care system that often feels suffocating. (Ingold, 6/4)
Modern Healthcare: Automation To Disproportionately Affect Women In Healthcare
An emergency department in 2030 is poised to look much different as automation takes hold, and those changes are likely to disproportionately affect women in healthcare, according to a new report. Automation will displace as many as 1 in 4 female workers across all sectors, or 160 million women, but that will be offset by an increase in demand and productivity, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute. That does not account for "frontier" jobs that one could not even imagine today, said Kweilin Ellingrud, a senior partner at McKinsey and co-author of the report. (Kacik, 6/4)
And Kaiser Health News has formed a new partnership with a podcast that looks at the people affected by the country's high health care costs —
Kaiser Health News: Dropped From Health Insurance Without Warning: Was It Legal?
Caitlin and Corey Gaffer know they made a mistake. Anyone could have done the same thing, the Minneapolis couple says. Still, they can’t believe it cost them their health insurance coverage just as Caitlin was in the middle of pregnancy with their first child. “I was like ‘What?’ There’s no way that’s possible,” said Caitlin, 31, of her reaction to the letter she opened in early October telling them the coverage they had for nearly two years had been canceled. It cited nonpayment of their premium as the reason. (Appleby, 6/5)
Kaiser Health News: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: They Thought They Had ‘Adulted’ Properly
Find out what happened to the Minneapolis couple in the first episode of “An Arm and a Leg” Season 2, a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions. (Weissmann, 6/4)
