Employer Healthcare Strategies

Since the start of the new Millennium, Medicare has been over-paying for home healthcare services all over the United States. This year, it's time to pay the piper.

The ACA calls for 1% reimbursement cuts for home services in 2017, following successive cuts in 2014, 2015, and 2016. This comes at a time when the need for home healthcare is only increasing.

Though there are legitimate complaints to be made about ACA health reform, the increase in public access to quality heath care is not one of them. Now, a new report underscores just how many people would lose insurance were the ACA to be repealed.

By 2021, 19.4% of Americans could be expected to live without insurance, an 81% increase from today. If the ACA stays on track, uninsured Americans would decrease to 10.7% by 2021.

While no one can predict the future, financial forecasters tend to think that future retirees' healthcare costs will continue to grow until they take up all of their Social Security dollars.

2016's retirees see about 57% of their SS checks going to healthcare (pretax). But healthcare costs grow by 5-7% annually, while Social Security provisions increase by only 2-3%.

America has only five major health insurance providers. With major mergers in the works, that number is likely to drop to three. This industry consolidation would have widespread effects, but its impact on Affordable Care Act consumer options is one of the most interesting.

All insurance providers are not available in all state exchanges. In some markets, customers only have one or two options.

Further consolidation would further limit choice, and industry analysts speculate that merger delays may be the result of federal regulations meant to preserve market diversity.

"Value-Based Care" has a great ring to it, but today's healthcare pricing method – charging by the procedure rather than by the outcome – can seem driven by anything but value.

Charging for healthcare procedures a la carte means that plenty of mistakes and unneeded services are mixed into the final bill – to the tune of $395 billion annually.

One longtime criticism of the healthcare industry is that patients don't have a good way of knowing what treatment is going to cost. A more transparent industry, one theory posits, would enable consumers to choose low-cost providers, thus increasing competition and driving down healthcare costs nationwide.

Certain tools to lead healthcare consumers to low prices do exist, but they are far from efficient and not yet widely used.

One of the most important recent healthcare reform changes is to the way healthcare providers approach EHR, or Electronic Health Records.

Every patient has an EHR. It is a detailed record of all sorts of health and treatment data, meant to prevent mistakes and save lives. Each EHR, along with similar paperwork requirements like The Physician Quality Recording System (PQRS) must be completed before a patient can be seen by a physician.

And while this digital bookkeeping may create a more thorough record of care, it's adding a lot of wait time in many practices.

People still express widely varied opinions about the Affordable Care Act and its effects on United States Healthcare.

Recent polls indicate that while Americans remain sharply divided about the ACA's political baggage, more are starting to recognize some of its practical benefits.

The Affordable Care Act is so big and complex that everybody is learning about it little by little, even years after it was enacted. One of the most important, and least understood, details is the way the ACA shifts financial risk in the provider/customer relationship.

The Provider now carries more risk than at any other point in the Insurance industry's history, a reform meant to trigger lower prices over the coming decade.

There are a bunch of researchers out there who study how regular people associate price of health care with quality of health care. As it turns out, most people think that today's health care is expensive and not very good.

While that may sound like bad news to you and me, it's actually good news for those trying to innovate new sources of low-cost care.

The thinking is that if people generally associate high quality care with high prices, they won't take advantage of low-cost care options, even if they are of a very high quality.