A membership-based primary care model, known as “direct primary care,” provides patients with a set number of health care services in exchange for a flat monthly fee. For example, Epiphany Health in North Port, Florida charges $65 per month for an adult membership and $25 for one child. In exchange for that fee, they offer physical exams, EKG testing, strep and urine testing, blood-thinner monitoring, minor surgical procedures, joint injections, and much more. Patients don’t pay a single penny more for these services beyond the cost of their membership fee. When patients need additional tests and services, such as a CT or MRI scan, Epiphany Health has discovered ways to provide these tests at affordable rates, too, by cutting out health insurance companies with third-party partners in the area.
Spending on prescription drugs was nearly flat during President Trump’s first year in office, according to the latest report from nonpartisan government actuaries.
In 2017, drug spending rose by 0.4 percent to $333.4 billion, the Office of the Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported Thursday. That was the lowest rate of growth in prescription drug spending since 2012, when it was 0.2 percent.
The slowdown in drug spending had begun in 2016, during former President Barack Obama’s final year, after rapid growth during the two previous years.
The Trump administration has a backup plan if a judge strikes down all or parts of Obamacare, a top federal healthcare official said Tuesday.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma told reporters that “we do have contingency plans” if the healthcare law is struck down — specifically the provision aimed at ensuring people with pre-existing conditions, such as cancer or diabetes, have access to coverage.
Late last week, President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced a plan to deal with the high cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. relative to the price of the same drugs in other developed countries. The reason for this disparity is well-known: Other countries impose socialized medicine price controls on prescription medicines, while here in the U.S. the price charged is closer to the true market price of the product.
The battle over coverage for pre-existing conditions has become a central front in the 2018 midterm elections, but however heated their rhetoric and whatever their positions have been in the past, there is operatively no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the issue.
What I mean by that is no matter who controls Congress at the end of this process, Obamacare’s ban on allowing insurers to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions is going to remain intact.
Ever since efforts to legislatively repeal Obamacare ended ignominiously with a “thumbs down” from the late Sen. John McCain on the Senate floor, the Trump administration has been hard at work doing what they can to give families more and better healthcare choices than what Obamacare saddled them with. In so doing, they have created several welcome escape hatches from Obamacare, or what Phil Kerpen from American Commitment calls “Making Obamacare Optional.”
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma on Wednesday cited reduced Obamacare premiums and expanded choices as evidence that the Trump administration has not “sabotaged” the healthcare law, as charged by Democrats.
“For the very first time, rates have [been] going down… I think we have been successful in that area,” Verma said at an event hosted by the Economist Group in D.C.
Former President Barack Obama promised the Affordable Care Act would bend “the cost curve and [start] to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government.” But his pledge has gone unfulfilled – patients and taxpayers are spending record amounts on healthcare.
This year, total healthcare spending will increase 5.3 percent, according to a recent estimate from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That’s after spending rose by 4.6 percent last year to total $3.5 trillion.
A type of health insurance plan encouraged by President Trump, in which workers band together to get coverage, has applied to cover residents in Nevada.
The plans, known as “association health plans,” have been framed by the White House as a cheaper option for insurance coverage than Obamacare. Critics and pro-Obamacare groups have warned consumers that the plans may not be as extensive as those offered under the healthcare law.
The Obama administration improperly paid out $434 million to Obamacare customers to pay down the cost of insurance in 2014, the first year the law’s health insurance marketplaces went online, a federal watchdog reported Monday.