by Tom Barrett | Jun 10, 2016 | Health Policy, Healthcare Issues, Healthcare Reform, Medicare Medicaid, National News, News and Events
………Like Medicare or Other Employer-Sponsored Coverage. Yesterday the Obama Administration and HHS announced they were significantly curtailing the availability and use of short-term health insurance. Their reasons? Not exactly sure. Maybe it’s due to the myriad of...
by Tom Barrett | Apr 8, 2016 | Employer Issues, General Health, General Insurance Issues, Health Policy, Healthcare Issues, Healthcare Reform, Managed Care - Group Health, Medicare Medicaid, National News, News and Events, Pharmacy Costs, Pharmacy, PBMs and Pharma Costs, Providers, Uncategorized
This post follows up on last week’s primer on how abuse of prescription pain medications has led to what’s now recognized as a true national crisis. The new podcast Embedded provides a riveting inside look at how the use of one particularly powerful prescription...
by Tom Barrett | Apr 1, 2016 | Employer Issues, General Health, General Insurance Issues, Health Policy, Healthcare Issues, Healthcare Reform, Managed Care - Group Health, National News, News and Events, Pharmacy Costs, Pharmacy, PBMs and Pharma Costs, Providers, Uncategorized
There’s a lot in the news these days about what’s referred to as the opioid crisis or epidemic. Just yesterday for instance — highly respected healthcare consultant (and close friend) Joe Paduda, fresh off of speaking at a national drug summit in Atlanta, wrote...
by Mike Barrett | Mar 7, 2016 | Employer Issues, General Health, General Insurance Issues, Health Policy, Healthcare Issues, Healthcare Reform, Managed Care - Group Health, National News, Uncategorized
This is hot off the presses. The most important announcement this past week is that HHS published the increased out-of-pocket regulations for 2017. Originally, the ACA was to cap deductibles at $2,000. That seems like a long time ago and was never really followed. In...
by Tom Barrett | Dec 18, 2015 | Employer Issues, General Health, General Insurance Issues, Health Policy, Healthcare Issues, Healthcare Reform, Managed Care - Group Health, National News
I doubt I’m going out on a limb by saying that the “kid in the candy store” perspective that insurance companies may have had about the Affordable Care Act has all but vanished. A new Standard & Poor’s report released this week supports that the “candy...
by Tom Barrett | Nov 20, 2015 | Health Policy, Healthcare Issues, Healthcare Reform, National News
Sure As Heck Looks Like It. What we’ve been sensing lately here in the Florida healthcare trenches, is now being amplified in the national press — newspapers, trade publications and leading industry blogs. First, before talking about today’s headlines, here are...