Employers and private insurers paid hospitals, on average, 247% of what Medicare paid for the same services in 2018, per a new RAND study. This study used data from 49 states and the District of Columbia. The sample includes data from 3,112 hospitals. Over the 2016 to 2018 period, the claims data used for this study…
The latest Medicare projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt Medicare’s financial outlook, and foreshadow the tough choices facing the next President and Congress. According to CBO’s estimates, Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will have insufficient funds to cover all benefit costs beginning in 2024…
The number of Americans who worry about bankruptcy if they have a serious health issue has spiked over the last year and a half — particularly among men, people of color and young adults, according to a new survey from West Health and Gallup. Concerns about medical bankruptcy have increased 12 and 9 percentage points,…
Hospitals owned by private equity firms rake in almost 30% more income than hospitals that aren’t, according to new research published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine. Private equity is gobbling up more and more of the health care industry. Investors are buying up physicians’ practices, hospitals and the firms that negotiate prices with insurers. Their ownership of ambulance operations and…
1 There Is a Major Nursing Shortage According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we are expecting a shortage of about 800,000 nurses by 2020. The population of the world is living much longer and will need to have more medical care. So, hospitals and medical facilities are always looking for nurses. Some places of…
The U.S. economy shrank at an annualized 32.9% rate in the second quarter — the worst-ever contraction on records that date back to 1947. The staggering contraction beats the last record set in 1958 when GDP shrank at an annualized 10% rate. Any way you slice it, it’s an ugly, historic economic contraction. Widespread lockdowns…
Despite the crisis that the pandemic has created, drug companies have conducted business as usual hiking prices of 245 drugs since the start of the year, on par with prior years. More than 75% of the 245 price increases are related to COVID-19. The pandemic has put people with chronic diseases and acute health conditions…
Because of the coronavirus job losses between February and May of this year, over 5.4 million laid-off workers became uninsured. These recent increases in the number of uninsured adults are 39% higher than any annual increase ever recorded. “We knew these numbers would be big,’’ said Stan Dorn, who directs the group’s National Center for…
