Greetings from San Diego, where we’re just wrapping up the 2018 meeting of the American Public Health Association. It’s been a whirlwind stretch of great presentations, engaging conversations, and electric scooters! Have you seen these things? I was surprised at how many of my public health colleagues were willing to ride without a helmet… But the companies could do a lot better. How about helmets that are locked to each bike or scooter, and get unlocked and locked along with the wheels? The companies should make it so that those things don’t go unless the rider has a helmet strapped to their head.
This month, it’s our turn to host the Health Wonk Review! It’s a real honor to get a chance to share some of the health policy-related blog posts out there today.
Our blog’s submission is from doctoral student Wenhan Guo and his professor, Dr. Eva DuGoff, at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. They take a deep dive into the Medicare Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP). Since its first year, 2012, the HRRP has penalized hospitals with excess readmissions for selected conditions to incentivize fewer preventable hospital readmissions. In 2019, 2,599 hospitals are expected to be penalized. The 30-day preventable readmissions rate has gone down, and Medicare has saved money, but are hospitals being penalized for factors beyond their control?
Over at HealthInsurance.org, Louis Norris looks at the open enrollment process for people who may have lower income this year than last. The post addresses the new rules for comparing projected income with income information that the government already has via the data services hub, when people are enrolling in a plan through the exchanges. In short, people need to be prepared to show documentation of their projected income if the info the government has is different, by 10% or more, from what the applicant is projecting.
Next, Tom Lynch of Workers’ Comp Insider says that when it comes to healthcare, the U.S. is winning the “how much can we spend” sweepstakes” in comparison to other nations, but what do we get for that in terms of quality and outcomes? He discusses that in his post At The Bottom Looking Up.
From Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal: Pharmaceutical and Other Health Care Corporations Funnel Dark Money to Republicans to Defeat “Leftward” Democratic Candidates – Partisanship Trumps Social Responsibility.
It appears that some health care corporations are now using their money for partisan and ideological purposes, and they favor one kind of partisans/ ideologues. … The suspicion is that this unipolar dark money funding could be about top managers’ self-interest than just the corporate bottom line. We hope that sunlight will do some disinfecting.
Most people think of pharmacists as people who just dispense pills. But can pharmacists be integrated as part of the care team and serve as health care providers? Jason Shafrin at The Healthcare Economist investigates.
And the big winner of the 2018 midterms is… Medicaid. Joe Paduda at Managed Care Matters describes the mid-term election results pertaining to Medicaid. Some of these developments are very interesting!
It’s apparent that Medicaid expansion will continue, as results of referenda in three deep red states supported expansion. While continuing expanded Medicaid failed to pass in one state, overall growth is not unlike what we saw when Medicaid was launched in the mid-sixties.
Peggy Salvatore at has been writing about health policy and health IT for about 20 years, and in this post, she reflects on how far we have come: Technology is Catching Up to the Dream.
Finally, we leave you with this: Mixing religion and health. In this post, InsureBlog’s Henry Stern explores the relationship between religious ritual and personal health.
Lisa M. Lines