Policy 2.0 : Blog List - All Communities

Steep hikes are being faced by individuals who buy health insurance on their own

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:42:24 GMT

Health insurance premiums for individuals who purchase coverage on their own are soaring, as outlined by a study released Monday. When lawmakers debated the health care reform bill, health insurance companies were trying with many effort to make as much money as they could before the law's provisions kick in. Individuals facing sharp increases in their insurance premiums are trying to save money by settling for fewer benefits and higher deductibles. Meanwhile, steadily increasing insurance premiums, the recession and a drop in the number of employers offering health coverage swelled the ranks of the uninsured by nearly 3 million individuals in 2009.

Article Resource: People who buy health insurance on their own facing steep hikes

Cost trends of health insurance

Premium hikes for health insurance for individuals far exceed increases in the premiums for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a new survey on health insurance cost trends from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Associated Press reports the non-profit foundation said premium hikes for individual coverage averaged 20 percent. Customers who got to switch to cheaper plans brought the average increase in what individuals are paying for health insurance down to 13 percent. This year's individual health insurance premium spike tops last year's 5 percent average increase for all of the employer-sponsored family coverage. Health insurance cost trends for some of the employer-sponsored single coverage held steady.

Individuals with health insurance is getting expensive

The rising cost of health insurance for individuals made news earlier this year when Anthem Blue Cross tried to raise its rates by 39 percent in California. The New York Times reports that the Kaiser study sheds light on how widespread these premium hikes are. The New York Times reports that when the proposed Anthem hikes were met with outrage from federal and state officials, there was little details about how widespread such increases were in other parts of the country. Drew Altman, the Kaiser foundation's president and chief executive, told the Times that “The survey shows the steep increases we are reading about over the last various months aren't just extreme cases.”

A long wait to health care reform

The Kaiser survey highlights the challenges that about 14 million individuals younger than 65 who purchase their coverage in the individual market will face until changes under the health care reform law kick in 2014. By then, all Americans could be required to have health insurance or risk paying a fine. In the meantime, 52 percent of respondents within the Kaiser survey who already buy their own individual health coverage said they would keep their current plan next year, when 32 percent said they are not sure. 14 percent said that they would probably switch companies to cut costs.

High deductibles on health insurance plans

People are switching plans to higher deductibles to conserve money. $ 2,500 is the average deductible. There is an annual deductible of $ 5,000 or more. The number of those with high deductibles has risen from 39 percent in 2007 to almost 47 percent in 2009.

Millions of people losing health coverage

For the 2.9 million U.S. adults who joined the ranks of the uninsured in 2009, health care reform doesn’t do very much to help them with their current needs. USA Today reports that in 2009 — the latest statistics accessible — 46.3 million American adults had no health insurance coverage, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in five working adults don’t have insurance. The percentage of uninsured adults of working age went way up from 19.7 percent to 21.1 percent in 2009, and 58.5 percent of American adults went without insurance for at least part of the year.

More information on this topic

Associated Press

google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5je_4AEzpzQnfbTmeeOg1yUO9jWRgD9GFOU080

New York Times

nytimes.com/2010/06/22/business/22kaiser.html?src=busln

USA Today

usatoday.com/news/health/2010-06-20-uninsured-reform_N.htm

First drop in a big workforce shortage bucket

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:15:43 GMT

The Washington Post reports that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has announced $250m in funding to boost the primary care workforce. According to the Post's report, this initial allocation of funding will help train 500 primary care physicians, 600 nurses and 600 physician assistants. Estimates of the shortage of primary care practitioners across the country are upwards of 21,000.

Join Hope Street Group in Reinventing Primary Care

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:12:09 GMT

This summer, Hope Street Group is changing the status quo. We are launching the first health care project of its kind, an eight-week initiative that brings together health care practitioners, industry professionals, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and members of the academic and research community to develop health care policies. Together, we will be reinventing primary care to address resource shortages, reduce system-wide health care costs, and ensure that Americans have access to the quality health services they need most.

We are currently recruiting participants in this exciting initiative called “Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Reinvent Primary Care.” The initiative will focus on some of the most pressing, yet solvable, problems facing primary care. If you accept this invitation, you will be able to connect your ideas with our distinguished group of advisors, including Dr Doug Henley (Executive Vice President/CEO, American Academy of Family Physicians), Peter Lee (Director of Delivery System Reform, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Health Reform) and Dr. Bob Kocher (Special Assistant to the President, National Economic Council) - see the full list here: http://www.hopestreetgroup.org/docs/DOC-1781. You will be driving research-based recommendations - designed to lead real change - that will be presented to federal and state level policy-makers, industry, and the larger health care reform community.

To help this all come together, the project will use our online platform that has been used successfully by professionals in other fields to develop policy solutions. Hope Street Group will select participants based on their experience and expertise, so if you would like to accept this invitation please send a brief statement of interest to Diana Harris at Diana@hopestreetgroup.org by July 1, 2010. Only a limited number of individuals can participate in the project, so do not delay.

Hope Street Group is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to expanding economic opportunity for all Americans. Our approach is simple: bring new voices to the public policy debate in innovative ways in order to develop solutions to pressing national problems. To learn more about Hope Street Group, please visit: http://www.hopestreetgroup.org/community/healthcare and experience Policy 2.0, our customized online collaboration platform.

HSG Lines Up Impressive Group Of Advisors for the Reinventing Primary Care Project

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:47:57 GMT

Hope Street Group assembled the dream team of primary care advisors for our Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Reinvent Primary Care Project. Essentially, we will connect the best ideas created by the Policy 2.0 community with the following:

Primary Care Project Advisors

Dr. Richard Baron | President and CEO, Greenhouse Internists
Prof. James F. Cawley | Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Prevention and Community Health and Director, Physician Assistant / Master of Public Health Program, School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University
Representative Jim Cooper | Tennessee (D)
Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA | Executive Director, The John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, Massachusetts General Hospital
Paul Grundy, MPH | IBM's Global Director of Healthcare Transformation; President, Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative
Dr. Jeff Harris | Former President, American College of Physicians
Dr. Doug Henley | Executive Vice President/CEO, American Academy of Family Physicians
Dr. Charles Kilo | Chief Medical Officer, Oregon Health and Science University
Dr. Bob Kocher | Special Assistant to the President, National Economic Council
Jeff Korsmo | Executive Director of Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center, Mayo Clinic
Peter Lee | Director of Delivery System Reform, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Health Reform
Len Nichols, Ph.D | Director, Health Policy Program, New America Foundation
Bill Novelli | Former CEO, AARP; Distinguished Professor, Georgetown University
Prof. Joanne Pohl PhD | Professor, University of Michigan School of Nursing
Diane Rowland, ScD | Executive Vice President, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; Chair, MACPAC
Dr. Lewis G. Sandy | Senior Vice President, Clinical Advancement, UnitedHealth Group
Simon Stevens | Executive Vice President, UnitedHealth Group
Dr. John Tooker | Executive Vice President & CEO of the American College of Physicians
Dr. Reed V. Tuckson | Executive Vice President and Chief of Medical Affairs, UnitedHealth Group
David Walker | President and CEO, Peter Peterson Foundation
Dr. Steven Weinberger, FACP | Deputy Executive Vice President; Senior Vice President for Medical Education and Publishing, American College of Physicians

Team Leaders

Chronic Care Team
Dr. Sree Chaguturu | Attending Physician and Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital; Senior Associate, McKinsey & Company
Co- Leader: Dr. Si France | Engagement Manager, McKinsey & Company

Preventative Care
Dr. Jeff Harris | Former President, American College of Physicians

Co-Leader: Dr. Nathan Cobb | Research Investigator, Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies, American Legacy Foundation

Practitioner Shortage
Dr. Kate Tulenko | Deputy Director, CapacityPlus (USAID)
Co-Leader: Dr. Matthew Hunsaker | Director, RMED, National Center for Rural Health Professions, University of Illinois, College of Medicine at Rockford

Acute Care
Dr. Chris McCoy | Chief Medical Resident, Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

Functional Leads

Project Integrator
Dr Catherine Sonquist Forest (Clinical Instructor, University of California San Francisco Lakeshore Family Medical Center) –

Project Legal Counsel
Peter Urbanowicz | Managing Director, Healthcare Industry Group, Alvarez & Marsal

Project Health Economist
Joan E. DaVanzo, | Chief Executive Officer of Dobson DaVanzo

Hope Street Group Advisory Board

Drew Altman | President and CEO, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
John Podesta | CEO, Center for American Progress

Hope Street Group Board of Directors

Byron Auguste | Director, McKinsey & Company
Monique Nadeau | Executive Director, Hope Street Group
Andy Slavitt | CEO, Ingenix

There are many opportunities to be involved in this exciting eight-week initiative. Hope Street Group will be selecting participants based on their experience and expertise. If you think you would like to be involved, please contact me at Diana@hopestreetgroup.org for more information about becoming a participant.

Do Retail Health Clinics Threaten Primary Care?

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:39:54 GMT

Or is it much needed innovation?

Many Americans are unable to obtain timely appointments for acute illnesses and often turn to urgent care and retail health clinics, and hospital emergency rooms to obtain the routine care they should be receiving from their primary care provider.

These settings often offer what primary care practices are unable to deliver— walk-in care requiring no appointment, convenient locations, and consumer-friendly hours. Urgent and retail health clinics are typically staffed by physician assistants or nurse practitioners and supervised remotely by doctors. This allows these clinics to offer lower fees, which is increasingly attractive to patients without insurance and those newly unemployed.

However, the upturn in patients utilizing urgent and retail health clinics often leads to increased fragmentation and uncoordinated medical care for patients, poor follow up after treatment, and in the event of more serious acute illnesses—a referral back to their primary care physician. Additionally, patients increasingly relying on emergency rooms has led to overcrowding and reduced availability for those who need emergency services most, and higher system-wide costs due to an upturn in hospital readmissions rates.

For a concise overview, check out Deloitte recently updated Retail Clinic Report.

The importance of high-quality early childhood education for parents

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 24 May 2010 20:32:12 GMT

This article from the New York Times (thanks to Tyler Nottberg for the link) is a reminder of why early childhood education can help *parents* with their economic engagement and levels of activity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/business/economy/24childcare.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

How should health care reform wellness funding be spent?

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:13:58 GMT

The health care reform establishes a Prevention and Public Health Fund, starting with a $500 million dollar appropriation in 2010, rising to $2 billion per year starting in 2015. How should this money be spent? Robert Gould (President & CEO, Partnership for Prevention) thinks it should target one major health issue, rather than being spread ineffectually across many worthy causes. His pick: tobacco. He puts his case forward in Kaiser Health News.

Is he right? What about other critical population health issues like obesity? Should the fund concentrate on one issue at a time? And if so, how do we know when that issue is "fixed", so that we can move on to the next big need?

What do you think?

Do we need more than payment reform to fix primary care?

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:16:24 GMT

Dr Richard Baron thinks so, and recently shared his views with the New York Times. Dr Baron believes that the way primary care physicians are paid needs to change, but he says that physicians also need to "change what they are thinking about when they go to work". He also talks about providing a "protected laboratory for people to innovate around service delivery". See the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/health/13chen.html?ref=health

Is Dr Baron right? Is payment reform enough? If not, what else do we need to drive change in primary care and stimulate the rapid spread of innovation?

Health Affairs launch - Reinventing Primary Care

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:37:40 GMT

As Hope Street Group builds momentum on “Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Reinvent Primary Care” we knew we could not miss out on the launch of the new issue of Health Affairs entitled “Reinventing Primary Care”. Not only does the title mirror the focus of our open collaboration, the new issue also proved to contain a wealth of scholarly discussion and practical policy prescriptions for the future of primary care.

Kathleen Sebelius (Health and Human Services Secretary) kicked off the launch with a keynote address setting out the Administration’s funding provisions impacting on primary care, both through the Recovery Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She also acknowledged the tremendous challenges ahead in implementing the legislation, including the many places where it says, “The Secretary shall…”

The launch provided an overview of new models of primary care delivery, focusing in particular on patient centered medical homes and retail clinics. It also highlighted the importance of interprofessional teams in primary care, looking at the way teams work (or don’t work) in primary care settings, and the roles of nurse practitioners, physician assistants and pharmacists in primary care practice teams. The event concluded with a series of practice profiles, covering: Greenhouse Internists, the Group Health Cooperative, QuadMed, the implementation of electronic referrals to specialists, and the role of Medical Assistants in chronic disease management.

I attended the event with Monique Nadeau (Executive Director, Hope Street Group) and was impressed by the quality and breadth of the information covered and the interesting dialogue that occurred between panel members and the audience. I would be interested in the reactions of anyone else who attended or who has had an opportunity to look at the new Health Affairs issue.

Hope Street Group Convenes the Bipartisan Working Group on Using Open Collaboration to Reinvent Primary Care

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:46:43 GMT

On May 3, 2010, Hope Street Group convened our Bipartisan Working Group of business, political and civic sector leaders to address the urgent need to reinvent primary care. The Working Group looked at opportunities to maximize innovation in addressing resource shortages and acute, preventative, and chronic care delivery.

Once again, Hope Street Group leveraged the tremendous expertise and knowledge base of our community of advisors. Participating in the discussions on the night were:

Byron Auguste | Director, McKinsey & Company

Dr. Sree Chaguturu | Attending Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital; Manager, McKinsey & Company

Aaron Doty | Health Care Advisor, Hope Street Group

Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA | Executive Director ,The John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Paul Grundy, MPH | IBM's Global Director of Healthcare Transformation; President, Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative

Dr. Jeff Harris | Former President, American College of Physicians

Dr. Matthew Hunsaker | Director, RMED, National Center for Rural Health Professions, University of Illinois, College of Medicine at Rockford

David Javdan | Manager Director, Alvarez & Marsal, LLC;

Dr. Bob Kocher | Special Assistant to the President, National Economic Council

Peter Lee | Executive Director, National Health Policy Pacific Business Group on Health

Monique Nadeau | Executive Director, Hope Street Group

John Podesta | CEO, Center for American Progress

Diane Rowland, ScD | Executive Vice President, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; Chair, MACPAC

Andy Slavitt | CEO, Ingenix

Simon Stevens | Executive Vice President, UnitedHealth Group

Dr. Kate Tulenko | Deputy Director, CapacityPlus (USAID)

David Walker | President and CEO, Peter Peterson Foundation

Dr. Steven Weinberger, FACP | Deputy Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President for Medical Education & Publishing American College of Physicians

Participants considered the impact of the lack of a coordinated market in primary care, and the impediments to take up of innovation. They discussed the way in which geographic distribution and variation in the distribution of types of practitioners exacerbates the impact of workforce shortage in primary care. They also looked at how other players in the complex health care market may react when changes to primary care begin to take effect. Participants agreed that it was important to address the barriers to the spread of innovation (including drawing on the experiences of other countries), rather than duplicating the efforts of existing innovation leaders.

You can view a copy of the full Executive Summary here.