Open enrollment season in the government's health insurance program has begun--6.4 million people have signed up on healthcare.gov for health insurance that goes into effect Jan. 1. The administration called it "an encouraging start" but said there is still a lot of work to be done before the enrollment period ends on Feb. 15. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a press conference Tuesday that of those who signed up, 1.9 million were new customers, and 4.5 million renewed existing coverage. She estimated between 30-40% of customers came back and re-enrolled, but cautioned that number is not final. The numbers for state exchanges will be released next week.
This time last year, federal officials were scrambling to get as many people enrolled in health insurance through HealthCare.gov as they could before the start of the program on Jan. 1. Now, with the technical problems mostly fixed, they're facing a different problem: the possibility that the Supreme Court might rule that the subsidies that help people afford coverage are illegal in the 37 states where the federal government is running the program. At a news conference Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell mostly focused on the good news, and tried to brush off the potential problem.
A little over a year ago, things weren't going very well for the Affordable Care Act. For some Mainers, "hellish" might have been the right word. The website for the federal insurance marketplace kept failing. Phone lines jammed for the popular new health insurance co-op in Lewiston. Overall, it took people longer to sign up for health insurance than it did to fly cross-country, and the process was about as frustrating. And those were the lucky ones. Many very poor Mainers couldn't get insurance, period. All from healthcare reform that no one completely understood. Since then, a lot has changed. And a lot has stayed the same.
A growing number of high-level Silicon Valley executives from the "sandwich generation" - those who are simultaneously caring for children and parents - have left their jobs to launch mobile and digital health startups. In interviews with Reuters, many say they have been prompted by their experience of helping aging parents with one or more chronic conditions, and the discovery of how the U.S. healthcare system fails to serve them. Some say they are finding both customers and partners in the large technology employers where they once worked.
Some of the largest health care systems in America do not have any nurses serving on their boards of directors. That is a huge oversight, especially in a time of rapid change in health care delivery, when consumers and providers would benefit from having nurses' frontline perspective present in boardrooms as healthcare policy decisions are made. Last month, nurse leaders from 21 national nursing and other health-related organizations came together to change that. The nursing leaders launched the national Nurses on Boards Coalition, which has a goal to put 10,000 nurses on boards of corporate and nonprofit health care organizations by 2020.
Next year will be big for healthcare. We felt small tremors in 2014 of the seismic changes underway. In 2015, I predict five changes to the core of the U.S. healthcare system: insurance, pharmaceuticals, supplies, medical services and payments. Let's take a look at each of these trends, what they mean for the healthcare sector, and what they mean for you. Predictions include Walmart becoming a healthcare insurer, startups selling into big pharma (with a profit, no less), Amazon undercutting the medical supply chain, and more.