Gov. Gavin Newsom has earmarked nearly $600 million in his 2020-21 state budget plan to provide intensive care management to high-needs, high-risk patients around the state. The programs are similar to an initiative in Camden, New Jersey, that was called into question by a recent study finding hospital readmissions dropped, but at only about the same rate as patients who didn’t receive the same kind of intensive services.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg uses health care as a key message in his Democratic presidential primary run.
Democratic presidential candidates also returned to now-familiar themes in debating the differences between “Medicare for All” and more incremental reforms.
Calculations are complicated, but correct.
A new state law limits what consumers owe if they’re transported by an air ambulance that’s not part of their insurance network to the amount that they’d be charged if they used an in-network provider. But the law won’t protect millions of consumers whose health plans aren’t regulated by the state.
The impact of the Trump administration’s health policies is not as clear-cut as the president’s reelection campaign suggests.
Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don’t have to.
Small hospitals and patients in rural areas have been hit hard by the boom in high-deductible health plans. Often when a patient arrives at a rural hospital needing critical care, the person is stabilized and transferred to a larger facility. But bills from the first site of care generally get applied to the patient’s deductible. When patients can’t afford their deductible, the smaller hospital winds up eating the costs.
Cathryn Jakobson Ramin, author of the book “Crooked,” says chronic low back pain is not a medical condition. Nonetheless, that complaint sends millions of Americans down a path of expensive imaging tests, ongoing therapies and invasive surgery — all with limited effectiveness for many patients. In a conversation with “An Arm and a Leg” podcast host Dan Weissmann, Ramin shares her journey of back pain and recovery.
Nearly a decade ago, Dr. Jeffrey Brenner and his Camden Coalition appeared to have an answer to remake American health care: Treat the sickest and most expensive patients. But a rigorous study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the approach doesn’t save money. “We built a brilliant intervention to navigate people to nowhere,” Brenner tells the “Tradeoffs” podcast.
