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Interpretations of our latest study
Our recent report comparing off-exchange premiums vs. on-exchange premiums continues to receive attention. The report examined the lowest premiums for four major off-exchange insurance companies in 39...
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Vision, Dental, and Hearing Benefits in Medicare Advantage Plans
HealthPocket’s new Infostat examined the prevalence of additional vision, dental, and hearing benefits in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. We found that 97% of MA plans offered at least one vision,...
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Medicare Advantage and Our Health Reform War
Medicare Advantage has re-emerged as a battleground in America’s ongoing political conflict over health reform. Republicans condemn the Affordable Care Act’s proposed reductions in Medicare Advantage...
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Why the Enrollment Story Hasn’t Ended
Along with the rest of America, I would like end of the ACA’s Open Enrollment Period to turn our collective attention to matters other than the endless political fighting over healthcare reform....
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Medicare Advantage, Medigap, or Original Medicare
HealthPocket released our latest InfoStat this morning. The topic was a comparison of the annual premium and out-of-pocket costs for the three main insurance coverage options facing people who become...
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Differences in Premium Costs after Subsidies for Young Adults in Eight Cities
HealthPocket’s recent research focused on the income range at which young adults can qualify for premium subsidies in eight cities. Maximum incomes that qualified for premium subsidies differed by...
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Obamacare Approaching a Finish Line
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is approaching the finish line in the form of the Open Enrollment Period‘s conclusion. While various aspects of Obamacare were implemented before this...
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Re-Inventing The Health Insurance Company
In today’s highly politicized discussions of health insurance costs, the degree to which inefficient insurance company operations contribute to higher costs is often overlooked. High start-up expenses...
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Taking Enrollment Numbers with a Grain of Salt
Health & Human Services released the latest enrollment numbers for January. There were 1,146,071 enrollments. In a press release from HHS, Kathleen Sebelius made the following comment about the...
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“Assuming the employer mandate for 2015 is not delayed…”
In my earlier blog post “Welcome to 2013…I Mean 2014” I wrote “Assuming the employer mandate for 2015 is not delayed, we should be able to analyze its initial effect (or lack thereof) on business...
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Fifth Floor
I have family as well as friends who work in healthcare. Whenever possible, I try to ask these people about their experiences in order to gain some additional context for the larger data trends I...
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Cost-sharing Ranges in Metal Plans
HealthPocket released a new InfoStat study this morning, “Consumers Risk Higher Healthcare Costs When Using Shortcuts in Health Plan Shopping.” The study examined the lowest to highest deductibles as...
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Welcome to 2013…I mean 2014
The year has changed but the battle lines in health reform have not. I expect 2014 to be 2013 redux. The enrollment volume for federal and state exchanges will continue to fund considerable blindness...
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Healthcare Use, Age, & the Cheapest Insurance Plan
HealthPocket released a new InfoStat study this morning, “Healthcare Usage & Choosing the Least Expensive Affordable Care Act Plan.” The study used different scenarios of medical services usage as...
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Who’s Covered On January 1, 2014?
Last week the administration announced measures intended to address health insurance coverage lapses resulting from enrollment problems. Consumers will be able to sign-up for January 1st coverage...
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Out-of-Pocket Costs
The Wall Street Journal cited some of our research in their recent article “High Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock.” The larger study from which the data was derived was released...
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Some Astonishingly High Out-of-Pocket Costs in Medicare Part D
With the annual enrollment period for Medicare’s drug plans coming to a close, I decided to examine the drug plans’ coverage of the top 10 drugs in the U.S. (as ranked by dollar sales in Q3 2013)....
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Happy Thanksgiving from HealthPocket
With Thanksgiving approaching, I thought I’d share a few things in the healthcare market for which I am thankful: Every year more healthcare data is made public and this liberation of data, in turn,...
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What’s the Next Big Story in Health Reform?
News on the Affordable Care Act often exhibits cycles where a particular topic will dominate top-tier journalists for a few weeks and then recede from discussion. I suppose that is true for all news....
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Retail Health Clinics
A recent study from the Center for Studying Health System Change reported that 1% of U.S. families reported using a retail health clinic in the previous year in 2007 and by 2010 that usage had...
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