The Obama administration's effort to end one political crisis during the 2014 Obamacare rollout may have sown the seeds of another controversy: potential double-digit rate hikes in 2015. If insurers have their way, some residents in politically key states like Florida, North Carolina and Iowa would face hikes of 11 percent to nearly 18 percent — far beyond the average 7.5 percent increase in proposed rates for much of the country. Major carriers there in part blame such increases on the administration's response to the furor that erupted when millions of Americans received notice last fall that their health policies would be canceled because they fell short of Obamacare requirements.
Nearly one company in six in a new survey from a major employer group plans to offer health coverage that doesn't meet the Affordable Care Act's requirements for value and affordability. Many thought such low-benefit "skinny plans" would be history once the health law was fully implemented this year. Instead, 16 percent of large employers in a survey released Wednesday by the National Business Group on Health said they will offer in 2015 lower-benefit coverage along with at least one health plan that does qualify under ACA standards. The results weren't unexpected by benefits pros, who realized last year that ACA regulations would allow skinny plans and even make them attractive for some employers.
More than 110,000 Hoosiers are at risk of losing federal subsidies used to purchase private health insurance after a federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Republican Gov. Mike Pence and Attorney General Greg Zoeller seeking to prohibit that assistance. Judge William Lawrence ruled late Tuesday the state can proceed to trial on its claim that Hoosiers are not entitled to insurance subsidies, because Indiana did not establish a state-run health marketplace, called an exchange. Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, states like Indiana that did not create their own exchanges had their exchanges run for them by the federal government.
Here's a deal you might be interested in. You get $10 billion a year of taxpayers' money to do something you may well have done anyway. You don't need to say what you spend it on, or why. You can use it wisely or wastefully; the money keeps coming regardless. That's the nice arrangement the federal government grants U.S. hospitals when it comes to training doctors. The system for producing a physician works as follows: After four years of medical school, a new doctor gets a residency, almost always at a hospital. This lasts from three to seven years, depending on the specialty, and involves working with patients under the supervision and instruction of more senior doctors.
In recent years, standardized patients have played a larger role in the training of health professionals, expanding into fields such as dentistry, pharmacy and physical therapy. "At a minimum, it gives students more confidence" after working with standardized patients, said Karen Lewis, president of the Association of Standardized Patient Educators. "When they walk into an exam room for the first time with a (real) patient, they're not nervous or worried about what to say. They already know that." But the ability of doctors to communicate with patients and be able to elicit the information they need for a proper diagnosis can save lives. "All mistakes, when you really drill down to what caused them, it's a communications problem," Lewis said.
How to protect patients while doctors learn is a conundrum faced in all areas of medicine. For example, studies have shown that surgeons' outcomes improve up to four years after their first hospital appointment. Some have argued that neophyte surgeons during this period should take on only the most straightforward cases. Yet every doctor eventually has to perform a procedure for the first time. It isn't only doctors who face this quandary. Hospitals too have their own learning curves. Medical teams work better together with practice. The first few cases of a new procedure frequently have subpar results.