HealthFitness (OTC BB: HFIT) added more than 25 new clients in 2007, growing its workplace population health programs with a vision for a healthier, more productive workforce. HealthFitness is a leading provider of employee health management programs. Managing more than 400 fitness centers globally, the company also offers a suite of health management services on-site, Web-based and telephonically.
The lion?s share of new contracts in 2007 was in the company?s health management division. HealthFitness championed a new emphasis on 21st century health benefit design that takes a holistic approach to designing benefits for the entire employee population?from fitness programs for those who are well, to health management programs for those who are at low to high risk for chronic disease. New clients included health plans and universities in addition to employers in the manufacturing, high tech and health provider sectors.
?The vision for 21st century health benefit design provides tools so employers can support a workplace culture of health,? said Gregg O. Lehman, Ph.D., president and CEO of HealthFitness. ?The traditional focus on providing services only for those who are ill ignores the poor health habits that put workers at risk for chronic disease. By providing tools to address preventable behaviors such as poor diet, physical inactivity and tobacco use early, employers can help employees lead healthier, more productive lives.?
Employers who embrace Lehman?s vision of 21st century benefit design can expect to see improvements in the bottom line. A study released in late 2007 by the National Business Group on Health and Watson Wyatt Worldwide reported that companies with highly effective health and productivity programs are 3.5 times as likely to report lower medical costs; are more likely to report declines in incidental sick pay, short- and long-term disability costs; and are much more likely to have lower incidences of paid and unpaid leave.
In 2007, more than 150,000 employees nationwide participated in health risk assessments (HRAs) administered by HealthFitness and nearly half a million participants are currently eligible to take a HealthFitness HRA. Some 77,000 participated in company health screenings conducted by HealthFitness across nearly 1,200 locations. After receiving their confidential HRA results from HealthFitness, participants are prompted to take part in health management programs designed to reduce their individual health risks.
?Steady growth in the health management division is a signal that employers and health plans recognize the benefits of addressing health needs before they become acute,? Lehman said. ?HealthFitness is responsive to the needs of this market for health risk prevention programs as more studies underscore the connection between chronic illness and productivity.?
For further reading see issue briefs, ?Applying 21st Century Benefit Design: A Culture of Health in Action,?
And
?Out with the Old, In with the New: A Vision for 21st Century Health Benefit Design,?
Go to: http://www.hfit.com/briefs.cfm
About HealthFitness
HealthFitness is a leading provider of employee health improvement services to Fortune 500 companies, the health care industry and individual consumers. Serving clients for more than 30 years, HealthFitness partners with employers to effectively manage their health care and productivity costs by improving individual health and well-being. HealthFitness serves more than 300 clients globally via on-site management and remotely via Web and telephonic services. HealthFitness provides a complete portfolio of health and fitness management solutions including a proprietary health risk assessment platform, screenings, EMPOWERED? Health Coaching and delivery of health improvement programs. HealthFitness employs more than 3,000 health and fitness professionals in national and international locations who are committed to the company?s mission of ?improving the health and well-being of the people we serve.? For more information on HealthFitness, visit http://www.hfit.com.
This press release was distributed through eMediawire by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: http://www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company listed above.
The Republicans have not put together any plans to get people health insurance in the country. If they do repeal the bill then many middle class families will suffer because their consumer protections will be gone. Republicans are only against these protections because they hate the Affordable Care Act.
The big problem is that the new coverage changes became implemented on Thursday and the benefits are extremely popular with voters. A Republican push to repeal the bill spells big trouble for candidates in 2012. Voters feel taken advantage of by health insurance companies and if Republicans are successful then even more people will become uninsured.
The Republicans did not have one member vote for the passage of the health care reform bill. They want to block the bill’s funding and might be successful if they pick up enough seats during the 2010 elections in November. President Obama would likely veto the health care reform bill’s repeal so any measure to repeal would have to wait until 2012 at least to be implemented.
Republicans need to think hard about shifting the health care issue onto themselves. If they can repeal the bill then voters will blame them for the consequences that follow. Health care spending increased by more than one trillion dollars in the last year; action needs to be taken to stop this. Repealing health care reform would increase health care spending. This would add to the federal deficit and raise taxes which are two things that many Republicans say that they are against.
Health care should be a moral issue; the number of uninsured increased by twelve million people which was more than a thirty percent increase. Currently more than fifty one people in the United States lack health insurance coverage. Insuring people and helping to make the system fairer should be an issue that republicans and democrats can agree on.
Middle class families will suffer a lot financially if they do not have the benefits of the health care bill. Currently, people spend more than thirteen thousand dollars per year on their health insurance premiums. If there were no reforms in place then consumers would spend more than twenty four thousand dollars per year on their premiums. For many people, this huge premium increase would cause them to drop their health insurance coverage.
Republicans should try to negotiate with Democrats so that the provisions in the health care reform bill are more likeable to everyone involved. No matter what, the members of the Senate and Congress will always be insured by the federal government. This means that they cannot really empathize with the situation that many middle and lower class families face on a daily basis.
The health care reform bill is very popular with voters; the only part that is not liked is the individual mandate and the fines that would follow for non-compliance. The public deserves to have its health care system repaired. People cannot afford the expensive health care premiums any more. The economy cannot sustain these increases and wages have not increased in the last few years. Employers are passing on more of the premium expenses to their employees so the problem needs to be rectified so that more people can stay insured for the long term.
The number of uninsured hospital admissions in Hamilton County more than doubled between 2004 and 2008, leaving local hospitals with barely three in 10 patients who have private insurance to pay for their care, according to a new report on health in the Chattanooga region.
The loss of commercially insured patients, whose insurance payments are significantly higher than those of government-sponsored insurance for the same services and treatments, has contributed to hospitals’ staggering losses to charity care.
In Hamilton County, hospital charity care losses totaled nearly million in 2008, compared to million in 2004.
More than million of the losses that year were absorbed by Erlanger Health System, Chattanooga’s safety net hospital.
Hospitals have felt the pain of providing more and more uncompensated care, said Craig Becker, president of the Tennessee Hospital Association.
But the pain doesn’t stop there. Employers and individual consumers are feeling it in the wallet, too.
As providers are forced to cost-shift their losses from uninsured patients to commercially insured patients, private insurers have raised their monthly rates to customers, contributing to more employers and individuals being unable to afford private insurance, Becker said.
“The big problem we’ve seen is nobody wants to pay for health insurance,” he said. “It’s kind of a death spiral of, the more people dropped (from insurance), the higher the commercial rates go, the more people dropped.”
Even as total hospital admissions declined by a few percentage points, uninsured admissions grew 123 percent between 2004 and 2008, driven by both cuts to TennCare and recent losses in employer-sponsored health care due to the economic recession, according to the report compiled by the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies and released today.
The annual Ochs report focuses on health in the six-county metro region including Hamilton, Marion and Sequatchie counties in Tennessee, and Catoosa, Dade and Walker counties in Georgia.
The 2010 report provides a sobering overview of local health statistics, from high smoking and obesity rates, to an age-adjusted death rate that exceeds the national average, and one of the state’s highest infant mortality rates, in Hamilton County.
“We tend to focus on those areas where it appears Chattanooga and Hamilton County lag, because from our perspective that means there’s an opportunity” for improvement, said David Eichenthal, president and CEO of the Ochs Center.
The report gives a detailed picture of the local health care system on the eve of the implementation of federal reforms, and on the heels of a severe economic downturn. A breakdown of who is paying for hospital patients’ care shows patients’ heavy reliance on government-funded health insurance.
Nearly two-thirds of 2008 hospital admissions were covered by government-sponsored health care: either TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program; Medicare, the federal program for the elderly; or Cover Tennessee, the report said.
Across the six-county metro region, 16.3 percent of people were enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program. One in four people in Sequatchie County get their health care through TennCare.
Emergency rooms locally also are experiencing a shift as the number of uninsured emergency department visits rose from 24,797 in 2004, to 40,140 in 2008, an increase of 61 percent. Visits from those with private coverage dropped from 70,534 to 67,605 in the same period.
Local emergency physician David Seaberg pointed out that total emergency room visits increased by 7.8 percent in that time period. However, the disproportionate rise in uninsured ER visitors could indicate that more uninsured people are skipping routine care and allowing illnesses to worsen into true emergencies, he said.
“You’re seeing the uninsured are often probably sicker when they go in, because they don’t have insurance and they do wait” to see a doctor, said Seaberg, who is dean of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga.
The hospital industry supported the health care legislation passed into law in March, which is expected to bring millions of people into the private or public insurance marketplace, Becker said. But even if more people get covered, hospitals are still worried about low reimbursement rates from public programs like TennCare, which already play a major role in community hospitals’ budgets, he said. Today TennCare only pays 64 percent of a hospitals’ costs to provide care, he said.
“While it’s coverage, it’s problematic in terms of we still would have to do cost shifting,” he said.
Many of the major killers in the county are related to lifestyle factors, such as smoking and maintaining an unhealthy body-mass index. Of the 3,239 Hamilton County residents who died in 2008, the leading causes of death were heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, much like the national trends, the report said.
Obesity is a risk factor for almost all of those conditions.
In Hamilton County, half of people ages 18 to 34 were obese or overweight, compared to 74 percent of people 55 to 64. Sixty-three percent of people with a high school education or less were overweight, compared with 60 percent of college graduates. And 70 percent of people earning more than ,000 were overweight or obese, compared to 65 percent of those earning less than ,000.
Statistics notwithstanding, local residents have an optimistic view of their health, according to the report. Nearly two-thirds of Hamilton County residents reported that they are in excellent or very good health.
But black residents of Hamilton County were one-third less likely than whites to report being in excellent or very good health, and more than one-quarter reported they were in poor health.
Responses also varied by income level: 75 percent of people earning more than ,000 reported they were in excellent or very good health, compared to just 53 percent of those earning under ,000.
Racial disparities persisted in the report, as deaths from diabetes were 2.5 times higher among blacks than whites in Hamilton County, and heart disease-related deaths were 61 percent higher among blacks.
Other disparities were worrisome, and confusing, to researchers: Although cancer mortality rates were almost equivalent to the national rates, the Alzheimer’s death rate in Hamilton County was almost double the national rate.
Mortality from Alzheimer’s locally is also 31.4 percent higher than the statewide rate, and the reasons are unclear.
That disparity has been persistent since the Ochs Center first reported it in 2006, and warrants serious investigation, Eichenthal said.
“The reason we keep highlighting it is that it’s either a really interesting reporting issue, or a really serious health issue,” he said.
More elderly people moving to the area, as well as local doctors that are more attuned to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, are the likely reason for the statistic, said Dr. John Standridge, director of the geriatric medicine fellowship at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga.
“Instead of a disease cluster in the area, I think doctors are just better at listing it” on death certificates, he said. “For a while, doctors wouldn’t even diagnose Alzheimer’s because they thought there wasn’t that much they could do about it, so they kind of brushed it under the carpet.”
The health of babies born in Hamilton County is not equal across racial lines: Nearly 20 percent of babies born to black mothers weighed under 5.5 pounds, compared to about 7 percent for whites and Latinos.
Babies born underweight, typically those born premature, are at high risk for complications that can result in disabilities or death.
Single motherhood is also on the rise in Hamilton County. In 2008, 45.4 percent of Hamilton County births were to single mothers, compared with 39 percent in 2001. Nearly 82 percent of black mothers who gave birth in 2008 were unmarried.cq
On a national level, most of those single moms aren’t teens, said Julie Baumgardner, of First Things First, a nonprofit focused on strengthening families in Hamilton County. Unwed mothers tend to be women between the ages of 19 and 29, she said.
(In Hamilton County, births to teens between the ages of 10 and 19 declined from 14.8 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent in 2008, following a steady increase in the earlier part of the decade.)
Much of the increase in unwed motherhood has to do with a growing cultural acceptance of the practice, Baumgardner said.
“People are definitely choosing to live together and have children together,” she said.
However, many are living in poverty without the help of the baby’s father, she said. All babies born to unwed mothers face greater risk for a slew of dangers: the risk for being abused, living in poverty, becoming an abuser or ending up in jail, she said.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as the health reform bill will impact almost every American. One of the most important ways it will affect individual health insurance is that insurance companies will not be permitted to deny insurance to those with preexisting illnesses. Another important affect is that all Americans will be required to hold insurance. Insurance companies will be prohibited from placing annual and lifetime limits on coverage. Group health exchanges may also help to reduce the cost of insurance plans, giving individuals the buying power of large companies. You will be able to purchase insurance through a state exchange from 2014. The exchanges have yet to be formed, but the intended goal is to provide more affordable and subsidized individual plans. The Obama effects on individual health insurance addresses the biggest weaknesses in the individual health insurance market. Easy To Insure Me
As the reform bill was passed policy rates were climbing. A report revealed that members of the middle class were losing health insurance faster than any other income group. Those who missed the Government provided safety net because of their income were thrown on the mercies of the individual market. Here, insurers have been denied coverage based on preexisting conditions and are vulnerable to charges of high and ever increasing premiums.
The limits insurers placed on who gets coverage is one of the three major problems that needed to be addressed in the individual market. The other two are the affordability and whether the policy would pay for what is needed when the insured gets sick. A study found that excluded conditions varied by insurer. In a 2001 study by the Georgetown Health Policy Institute, researchers 37 percent of applications were rejected. There were insurers who would turn you down if you had hay fever. The public thus was a victim of a roulette insurance market. How easy is it for individuals to wade their way through the market to insurers who would cover them is a question. Although federal law requires insurers to sell policies to certain people who lose group coverage, including those who lost their jobs due to lay offs; but places no limits on what an insurer can charge. In February 2010, Connecticut announced that health premiums for individual medical plans rose in price by 20 percent over in 2009. In this void have stepped some states in varying degrees. Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont required insurers to sell individual policies to everyone, irrespective of their health. Washington state required insurers to take individuals with some health problems. While, Iowa required insurers to cover preexisting conditions in new applicants, if they had insurance previously for those conditions and did not let the insurance lapse.
Of those who do buy their own insurance the health insurance market works well for some; but, not for others. In the individual market prior to the reform bill, in order to lower their risks insurers preferred the healthiest applicants. In most states, insurers may consider the health history of the applicant in deciding coverage and its cost. Unlike group plans offered by employers which provide coverage to everyone, there is no guarantee in most states individuals can obtain insurance. It has been realized that solving problems in the individual market would improve the health care crisis. In California, Connecticut and several other states regulators have taken actions against insurers who revoked individual coverage after policyholders fell ill. Before the President won the election Senators Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Bob Bennett, a Republican from Utah were supporting a bill that would shift workers getting coverage through employers to purchase their own insurance. The intention of their proposal was to break the link between employment and insurance. The two supporters of the bill believed this would let people keep their coverage even when they lost or switched their job. The proposal would have required everyone to have coverage and insurers to sell insurance to all applicants. The health reform bill has addressed these failings. Both presidential candidates had expressed the desire to improve options for people who buy their own coverage. Candidate Obama wanted to allow individuals and small firms to have the bargaining leverage and purchasing power of latge firms by creating ways for individuals to buy insurance in groups. Advisors to candidate McCain had acknowledged the current system was broken. Douglas Holtz Eakin, who was a senior policy adviser noted that he did not want to give the impression the individual or small group market is a good place to be, as it was not
The public hospitals have been at the vanguard of the victims of inadequate and absent coverage. They have provided for the uninsured and those under insured by Medicaid, that reimburses them at below cost. They are also unable to compete with private and nonprofit hospitals for patents with private health insurance coverage. Yet, the cost of providing care to the uninsured and under insured has climbed and taxpayer support remained static.
Currently employers are looking to shift more burdens to their employees due to rise in the cost of health insurance. A Reuters research team in analyzing claim data has discovered that smaller employers saw costs rise the most. According to a report released in March 2010, the cost for an employer to offer individual plans to workers increased by 43 percent over a eight-year period. The amount employees paid for the single plans increased over 64 percent.
Large corporate employees have enjoyed the most secure and highest quality coverage in the nation during their employment. They have not been victimized during their employment with revocation or denial due to preexisting conditions. Nevertheless, a recently released annual survey by the National Business Group on Health has indicated that the impact of rising costs means this island of safety is about to be buffeted. This surveyed large employers indicated they were considering shifting more of the cost on their employees.
Harvard researchers looking into what portion of bankruptcy filers filed for medical reasons found some enlightening information. They found that illness caused the majority of filings. The study looked at a year that preceded the housing bust; but reveals what is the general scenario absenting this reason. The larger segment of filers were covered by insurance they lost or proved to be inadequate. Majority of these were middle class homeowners who had college degrees. The study revealed the vulnerability of Americans who were literally one major illness from bankruptcy. There are big Obama effects on individual health insurance coverage. Certainly there are due to be major Obama effects on individual health insurance.
FROM THE UPCOMING ALBUM DISCO2. OUT :: JUNE 22 :: NORTH AMERICA via Lovepump United :: JULY 6 :: EUROPE AND UK via City Slang. THIS SONG DOES NOT SAMPLE ‘COCKNEY VIOLIN’.
The success of a fitness training counts on how devoted is an individual to accomplish the target. Through detailed projecting, flexibility and progressive involvement, a person will decidedly accumulate the chances of acquiring the wanted results.
Commitment can be ascertained in contrasting ways, yet for several people it signifies willingness to introduce oneself to a responsibility. In short, dedication involves persistency, decision and will power. This article will permit anybody ascertain more clues on how to improve dedication to an advantageous .
.1 Set Up goals from the beginning – To get lasting effects from fitness workouts require consistency. Accumulating muscle mass and cutting down fat takes place over the time. The physical structure is very soft in doing adjustments and that is why long term flexibility is important. Complying a fitness training program intensifies workout consistency and intensifies the probabilities of acquiring the wanted effects. By involving real targets into the plan, a person lets himself or herself to have real expectations on what is to attain. Failure to obtain loyalty normally goes with lack of interest and false intentions. Loyalty is a mental task. It’s important to proceed prompting about the aims and create natural action properly and outcomes will come after.
2. Obtain a training pal – The challenging portion of complying a training system is maintaining to the workout schedule. It is very simple to come with alibis to jump the everyday routine. By building up an exact exercise sidekick, similar to can impress individuals in different ways. This form of fitness training program can assist a person envision what it’s like to be a devoted individual. This is essential because it will equally affect in gaining the aims. When training with this sidekick, one will not see the full routine as something that sustains through him or herself. Rather, an individual will exactly admire every part of the training if it’s like committing pleasurable moment together with a friend. Keep in mind, when one feels senseless, this Controlled Fatigue Training program will affect to become dedicated and to work harder.
3. Preserve the fitness training program in spite of disappointments – Awaiting to find out quick effects from any workout plan is natural yet likewise false. Failure to gain an objective over a particular time is a sure motivation killer. This usually takes place because of faulty training strategies or poor choices of foods. There is always space from improvement and experiencing dashing hopes should not be the ground to quit. The end aim is long-term outcomes, which will be accompanied through a long-term flexibility and time.
Keep in mind, letting go of the insignificant bumps and focusing on the huge impression will not simply aid an individual reach the targets, yet it will likewise make the journey more exciting.
The Control Fatigue Training goes beyond anything you’ve read before, including the basic edition of CFT, and outlines even more training and nutritional strategies in order to skyrocket your results! This information is red-hot and has never been revealed until now!
The health-care law of 2010 is, as Vice President Biden put it, a “big [expletive] deal.” It sets us on the road to universal health insurance. It is a favorite target for Republicans gunning to take over Congress. Lawmakers who supported it could lose their jobs. And it will remain a central focus after the midterms, as Democrats defend it against legal and political challenges through 2014, when it takes full effect. Easy To Insure ME
But the Democrats’ effort to sell the law to the public may be undermined by what even some ardent supporters consider its biggest shortfall. The overhaul left virtually untouched one big element of our health-care dilemma: the price problem. Simply put, Americans pay much more for each bit of care — tests, procedures, hospital stays, drugs, devices — than people in other rich nations.
Health-care providers in the United States have tremendous power to set prices. There is no government “single payer” on the other side of the table, and consolidation by hospitals and doctors has left insurers and employers in weak negotiating positions.
“We spend fewer per capita days in the hospital compared with other advanced countries, we see the doctor less frequently, and we swallow fewer pills,” said Jon Kingsdale, who oversaw the implementation of Massachusetts’s 2006 health-care law. “We just pay a lot more for each of those units than other countries.”
The 2010 law does little to address this. Its many cost-control provisions are geared toward reducing the amount of care we consume, not the price we pay. The law encourages doctors and hospitals to join “accountable care organizations” that have financial incentives to limit unnecessary care; it beefs up “comparative effectiveness research” to weed out inefficient treatments; and it will eventually tax the most expensive insurance plans to restrain consumers’ superfluous use of health care.
Such measures could reduce redundant tests, emergency room visits and hospital readmissions, which would help control the costs of Medicare, where the government sets rates. But they are less likely to lower prices outside Medicare and stem the growth of private insurance rates.
The main reason for this is politics. Remember how drawn-out the health-care battle was? It started in the spring of 2009 and was waged for a full year. The bill’s proponents in the White House and in Congress had some inkling of how tough the fight with the insurance companies would be. Taking on hospitals, doctors, and drug and device manufacturers as well — the people you’d face in a showdown over prices — might have been fatal.
So there was no price fight. The law will go on to face a likely post-midterm Republican onslaught — and dismantling it may be easier if Americans think it does little to restrain costs. It is one of those fine political ironies: The law derided as socialism may have had an easier time winning favor from a skeptical public if it was, well, a little more socialist.
It’s pretty far from socialist as it stands. The administration decided not to seek lower drug rates for Medicare, and it didn’t press for a “public option,” a government-run insurance plan that people under 65 could buy into. While supporters of the public option sold it as a way to compete with insurers, the real target was hospitals and doctors. A public option would have created a nationwide purchaser of health care that could have exerted leverage on providers to cut prices. This would have lowered the law’s costs by reducing the subsidies needed to make insurance affordable.
To avoid the wrath of hospitals and doctors, proponents of the bill rarely emphasized this cost-control argument. Nonetheless, when conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats weakened the public option in committee, they cited opposition from providers. And when the bill’s supporters floated a close alternative to the public option — letting people over 55 buy into Medicare — the reaction from Sen. Olympia Snowe, the moderate Maine Republican, said it all: “I am talking to a lot of my providers . . . and I know they are mighty unhappy.” Snowe exposed where the lobbying strength lay: No senator ever spoke of listening to “my insurers.”
“The public hates the insurance industry and trusts doctors and hospitals,” said Richard Kirsch, head of the liberal coalition Health Care for America Now. “But what killed the public option was the hospitals, not the insurance industry.”
Politicians wanted to avoid a confrontation over providers’ prices. So a different policy argument took hold: The real reason everything cost so much was the overuse of health care, not the actual prices of treatment. This argument came primarily from Dartmouth College researchers who had amassed data showing wide disparities in Medicare spending among different regions. Hospitals in the lower-spending areas, mostly in the Upper Midwest and the Northwest, seized on the study to argue that the key to controlling costs was to reward providers like them. The case was popularized by Atul Gawande’s widely read New Yorker article in June 2009 focusing on McAllen, Tex., one of the highest spenders in the Dartmouth rankings. If health-care delivery in places such as McAllen could be brought in line with lower-spending places such as the Mayo Clinic’s home town, Rochester, Minn. — through the formation of integrated networks of salaried doctors — costs could be reined in.
The theory caught fire at the White House. It gave President Obama and his then-budget guru Peter Orszag a way to talk about costs without taking on doctors and hospitals; instead, the White House could simply differentiate between providers that offer “value” and those that don’t.
But the Dartmouth rankings, and the concept they supported, did a “disservice” to the debate, said Robert Berenson of the Urban Institute. For one thing, he and others say, the figures overstate regional differences in Medicare spending, which shrink when socioeconomic factors are taken into account. Second, rates of Medicare spending are not necessarily representative of health-care spending for people under 65. Some of the places that do well in the Dartmouth rankings charge high prices for non-Medicare patients — and were, not surprisingly, among those pushing hardest against a public option.
More broadly, the skeptics argue that merely providing care in smaller quantities will not sufficiently lower costs. They note that Americans already have shorter hospital stays and fewer doctors’ visits than people in other advanced countries. What sets us apart is our high prices for these health-care “units” — a finding trumpeted in a landmark 2003 paper by Princeton’s Uwe Reinhardt and others titled “It’s the Prices, Stupid.” The price problem is only getting worse, researchers and antitrust investigators have found, because of consolidation among providers, and it could be exacerbated by goading them to form even bigger networks.
But the notion that we pay more, despite using health care less, never caught on during the long march to reform. The main culprits driving our health-care costs were deemed to be inefficient doctors in a few corners of the country and demanding consumers — say, people seeking unnecessary surgery or patients with unhealthy habits and chronic conditions.
The camp that believes volume is the main problem disputes the idea that bigger networks of hospitals and doctors would make the price problem worse. “The more we’re able to encourage integrated systems of care, the better,” the new Medicare director, Donald Berwick, a Dartmouth data champion, told me before his nomination by Obama.
Berwick and his allies say they never meant for overuse of care to become the sole focus. Elliott Fisher, the lead Dartmouth researcher, said he did not intend for his data to be “interpreted as letting off the hook” those providers that kept overuse in check but charged high prices. “We clearly need to do both” prices and volume, he said.
But we didn’t do both in the health-care law, which raises the question of what will happen once the overhaul proves inadequate to the price problem. Perhaps the public option will be reconsidered, as many liberals hope. Perhaps there will be a new push for lower drug prices. Or maybe there will be a return to the rate-setting that prevailed decades ago, when hospitals, insurers and state officials worked together to agree on prices. Maryland is the only state that still does this, and data suggests that it has kept its cost growth lower than average. Massachusetts is considering a similar approach.
Would such measures have a chance? Perhaps. For one thing, as skeptical as insurers are of government intervention, they are glad to discuss reform that aggressively goes after providers. “We have a major cost problem, and we have to get on with the job of attacking it — with every stakeholder who is responsible for that,” said Karen Ignagni, the insurance industry’s chief lobbyist.
And the public? The Brookings Institution’s Henry Aaron predicts that there may be support for tougher action on high prices once the principle of universal health coverage is established, since taxpayers will be on the hook for more of the cost of insurance. “If we attacked costs right at the front end, [the legislation] would have died,” he said. “Now, we’ll have a mechanism that will force us to address it. There are only so many fronts you can fight a war on at the same time.”
That’s assuming, of course, that the law survives long enough to enjoy any embellishment.
If you’re a business owner, you may want to consider a health savings account because it can save you money. Whether you provide health insurance benefits to your employees or you are the only employee, when you combine the health insurance benefit with the benefit of a health savings account, you and the business come out winners. The first benefit is that you can typically get lower rates on a group plan than you can on an individual plan. Couple this with the fact that group plans tend to have better coverage, and you’re already a couple steps ahead. Add in the health savings account to the mix, and now you have an opportunity for each employee to reduce their annual income tax obligation too. Easy To Insure ME
Businesses, too, benefit from the use of these types of special savings accounts that coordinate with the group health plan. The primary benefit is it gives employers or business owners the opportunity to put health care control in the hands of the employees. In essence, this lifts the burden from the shoulders of the business owners or managers. This equates to less paperwork for the business to manage, adds privacy for the employees, and decreases overhead expenses to the business.
In order to reap the benefits of a health savings account, employees do have to take the step to start up the health savings account. The high deductible health insurance provider typically recommends an institution, such as a bank, but the employee can choose their own institution that offers health savings accounts. The money employees deposit into this account is tax deductible so it reduces the tax obligations of the employee at the end of the year.
The bottom line is that to maximize the tax benefits of health savings accounts, employees have to contribute as much to the account as possible. The maximize amount of contributions allowed depends on the age of the employee and whether the coverage is for a family or an individual. Investing in a health savings account allows employees and self-employed individuals to kill three birds with one stone; it provides health care coverage at an affordable rate, allows them to put away money tax free to cover medical and health expenses not covered by the policy, and reduces tax liabilities. In the end, this is a cost saving account for the individual employees and for the businesses that have handed over control to the employees themselves.
This is a short video about Mental Health and it’s statistics. Once I know whether or not this Video has made the impact I want to have on People I will consider making a better Video.
After months of hearing forecasts of big hikes in group health insurance rates, Keri Jenkins got a pleasant surprise. Easy To Insure ME has the answers.
Coverage costs for her company, the Norfolk-based ship agent and broker T. Parker Host, would increase by just 7.9 percent, despite new requirements under the national health care overhaul.
It was the company’s smallest rate bump since 2005.
“We were very pleased,” said Jenkins, who is T. Parker Host’s senior vice president for administration.
Many employers, like Jenkins, anticipated big changes as they developed insurance plans for the first time since the passage of the new health law.
For 2011, the law requires coverage for more people and, in many cases, mandates preventive services without extra charge to individuals – benefits that come with a price tag.
However, South Hampton Roads insurers, consultants and employers said the overhaul won’t increase rates more than 4 percent next year, largely because many plans already came close to meeting the requirements.
Overall, including other climbing expenses, local group health insurance costs are rising between 6 and 12 percent – a range comparable to recent years, they said.
For employees, that means more of the same.
“What we’ve seen is a trend where employers continue to offer less benefits and pass on more of the cost to the employees,” said John DeGruttola, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Optima Health, the insurance arm of Sentara Healthcare. “It’s really just in response to the double-digit medical inflation that occurs and continues to occur.”
Several provisions of the health care law take effect for plans renewed after Sept. 23, six months after the legislation was passed.
For many people insured through their employers, these changes will begin in next year’s coverage, which workers are now selecting during an open enrollment period.
Under the law, all plans must cover dependents up to age 26. Children up to 19 can’t be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition.
Insurers also can’t establish limits on how much they will pay for covered benefits during the entire time an individual is enrolled in a plan. Plans can no longer terminate coverage retroactively due to honest mistakes on applications.
Other rules are contingent on how much employers change their health plans. Among them is a requirement for plans to cover certain preventive services, such as flu shots and some cancer screenings, without charging copays or co-insurance.
Companies can avoid that and some other mandates by basically freezing their plans as of March. To receive “grandfathered” status, a plan cannot significantly raise employees’ responsibility for health costs or substantially reduce benefits. Insurers found that few companies chose this option, though.
Dennis Wance was considering it for his Norfolk-based law firm, Vandeventer Black.
Because of some serious illnesses, health insurance costs would spike next year if his firm chose to grandfather its current plan, he said. However, a new plan probably would mean employees pay a larger portion of their medical bills and receive slightly reduced benefits, he said.
The choice promised to be difficult for a company that prides itself on generous health coverage for its 170 employees.
“These benefits are important,” said Wance, the firm’s executive director. “That’s why we’re reluctant to do some of the more draconian things with medical premiums to get the cost down.”
In some cases, the new law caused barely a ripple in a company’s coverage, especially if its plan already came close to meeting the provisions or if few people qualified for the new coverage.
At T. Parker Host, for example, none of the 56 employees added a new adult dependent, Jenkins said.
Other employers still wrestled with steep increases.
At Hampton-based Old Point National Bank, monthly health premiums rose more than in recent years – between 10 and 20 percent, said Joseph Witt, executive vice president and human resources director.
For his company and its 340 employees, high-deductible plans with health savings accounts have proved a good way to manage costs, he said. Those plans have lower premiums and higher deductibles than traditional plans, and allow employees to save money for medical costs in a tax-advantaged account.
“We’re hoping to one day have all of our employees say, ‘Wow, these high-deductible plans are so great, there’s no reason to be in a traditional plan anymore,’ ” Witt said. “Because the traditional plans are real dogs.”
Insurers said high-deductible plans gained popularity for 2011 because the plans allow employers to pay lower premiums and possibly invest in other benefits, such as matching funds for employee health savings accounts.
Employers also showed more interest in steering employees to wellness programs as a long-term strategy to reduce costs. Programs with incentives, such as gift cards and deposits into the health accounts, tend to work best, said Jeff Ricketts, regional vice president of sales for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Virginia. “Cash is king, we’ve found,” he said.
Looking ahead, employers are nervous about future demands of the health care overhaul – even as they wait to see whether it will withstand political assaults.
“I can’t say that the health care reform act has presented, in and of itself for 2011, that significant a challenge for us,” Wance said. “I think those challenges are yet to come.”
