Medical Debt Is Pervasive – and More Often Than Not, Underestimated.
“Diagnosis: Debt” is an ongoing reporting partnership between KHN and NPR. It explores the scale, impact, and causes of medical debt in America. It draws on a study, “KFF Health Care Debt Survey” released in late June that pulls information from a Kaiser News poll, and couples it with data from the Urban Institute and […]
Lowering Medical Cost – Sleep Apnea – There’s an App for That!
ResApp gets 510(k) clearance for mobile sleep apnea test SleepCheck Why it’s important: It involves a lot of people – an estimated 20 million! It rises with age and obesity, both of which are increasing in the U.S., and it impacts life expectancy. It’s also associated with costly chronic conditions like high blood pressure, heart […]
July May Be a Watershed Month for Medical Cost Control
July may become a milestone month for controlling medical costs. It has taken over a decade since it was first envisioned in the ACA, but finally rules are coalescing to compel transparency across industry. That is significant because the medical industry has grown uniquely and increasingly opaque since the middle of the last century. On […]
Long Covid: Human Capital Destruction at Scale, Consequences & Actions to Take
Large scale events have long tails, never return to “normal” quickly, and are never predictable! Covid has already destroyed human capital on a global scale. With over 6 million deaths and 460 million reported cases, its scale equates to major wars and famines. That may just be the beginning. Research early in the pandemic indicated […]
The Hidden CU Advantage in the Small Business Market
Economies and Diseconomies of Scale Economies of scale are baked into the DNA of larger companies. It is true for financial services firms, health services, manufacturing firms – in fact for all organizations. Try as they may, large banks will always have difficulty making small loans. They need high volumes to move the bottom line […]
The Caring Company Revisited
In January 2019 the Harvard Business School produced a study, “The Caring Company”. That study delved into how employers can help employees manage their caregiving responsibilities — while reducing costs and increasing productivity. Obviously, with Covid things needed to accelerate, and they did! The study covers a plethora of caregiver costs due to turnover and […]
2022 Brings Cost Increases in Health Insurance of All Types
In the case of Medicare, a 15% increase in the Part B premium is large by any measure. For lower income brackets, this can wipe out the 5.9% COLA increase in any Social Security payments. For people in those brackets, it makes inflation from all other sources more painful. It is deducted from their payments […]