Part 1: Even a Blind Pig Finds an Occasional Truffle I’ve made no secret of my disdain for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the new health reform law. It is a bad bill that focuses the wrong “solutions” on the wrong problems and promises to visit...
How They Can Survive and Thrive For America’s community hospitals, using the traditional cost-shifting revenue model is the maddening equivalent of simultaneously playing rugby, Australian-rules football, major-league baseball, and cricket—dictated by the rules of...
Employers to the Rescue? In Part 1, I explained how the only way hospitals have been able to survive their money-losing Medicare and Medicaid patients has been to charge higher rates to private payers. That’s why private insurance now costs $1,788 more per family than...
A couple of weeks ago I sent a letter with supporting documentation to the publisher of a local (and mercifully low-circulation) tabloid, the Colorado Springs Business Journal, pointing out material errors in its reporting on my views and activities when I served on a...
MEDICAID, MEDICARE, AND THE INSURANCE EXCHANGES The new health reform law’s central message to America’s hospitals is a classic good news/bad news story. First, the good news. Hospital exposure to 46 million uninsured Americans showing up in their ERs is about...
