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Tag: Cost of Affordable Healthcare

Cost-effective Services in Recent Peer-Reviewed Health Care Literature

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GAO reported on preventive health services that were found to be cost-effective and/or cost saving in meta-analyses or comparative studies published in peer-reviewed journals from January 2007 to April 2014. GAO categorized each service identified in the review into a preventive health type (e.g., clinical intervention, screening, or vaccination), and provided information on the target population, whether a service was cost saving, and whether a service had been recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force or the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

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Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey

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This annual survey of employers provides a detailed look at trends in employer-sponsored health coverage, including premiums, employee contributions, cost-sharing provisions, and other relevant information. The 2013 survey included almost three thousand interviews with non-federal public and private firms.

Annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $16,351 this year, up 4 percent from last year, with workers on average paying $4,565 towards the cost of their coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey.

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Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

Why More, Not Fewer, People Might Start Getting Health Insurance Through Work

In an earnings call last week, Walmart announced that its workers were signing up for health insurance en masse. The news was bad for the company’s shareholders, since the added $500 million it will cost to cover them will eat into expected profits. But it also means that many more low-income families have health insurance now than did last year.

The change didn’t come because of a more generous company policy. Walmart has long offered health insurance to its full-time workers for relatively low premiums — about $18 every two weeks for its lowest-paid workers. It came because many more workers decided to take advantage of the offer.

It’s early yet to be sure of a strong trend, but the Walmart experience mirrors evidence from early polls and the historical experience of Massachusetts, which enacted a law similar to the Affordable Care Act in 2006. More people may be signing up for employer-based coverage than did before.

When we talk about the effect of the Affordable Care Act on health insurance, we often focus on people who were shut out of the market before, either because a prior illness made insurance inaccessible to them or because a high premium put coverage out of their financial reach. What Walmart’s experience reminds us is that there were also uninsured people who simply chose not to buy coverage before there was a law requiring them to do so. Now they may be changing their minds.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

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Here’s What’s Going On With Obamacare Premium Increases

Health insurance premiums are going to skyrocket under Obamacare next year, maybe even double! No, wait — they’re only increasing a little, and less than before Obamacare! No, wait — they’re … decreasing in some places?

The crucial question about the second year of enrollment on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges is: How much will coverage cost? Actual prices won’t be available in most states until the exchanges open Nov. 15, or shortly before that, so consumers are left to sort through political spin and preliminary reports that don’t make things any clearer.

So what’s going on? First, most people will pay more for health insurance next year. That’s true whether you get coverage from a job, on your own through an exchange or directly from an insurer, or from Medicare. Health insurance prices tend to go up. It’s their nature, and it’s closely tied to how much the cost of medical care rises.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

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