A study from the RAND Corporation published in JAMA Open Network, “Trends in Low-Value Health Service Use and Spending in the U.S. Medicare Fee-for-Service Program, 2014-2018,” showed that spending on low-value health care services for fee-for-service Medicare recipients dropped only slightly from 2014 to 2018. This modest decline came despite a national campaign to educate health care providers about wasteful care and wider use of payment strategies to discourage such care. From 2014 to 2018, the proportion of study participants who got any of 32 low-value services decreased from 36.3% to 33.6% and annual spending per 1,000 individuals on low-value care decreased from $52,766 to $46,922.
A report from the National Center for Health Statistics, “Multiple Chronic Conditions Among Veterans and Nonveterans: United States, 2015–2018,” showed the prevalence of multiple (two or more) chronic conditions among veterans and nonveterans and examined whether differences in sociodemographic factors, smoking behavior and body mass index would explain differences in veterans’ health status. Among adults aged 25 and over, the age-adjusted prevalence of multiple chronic conditions was higher among male and female veterans compared with nonveterans, the report noted.
Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA. Researchers writing in The Lancetexplain how a universal payment system, such as that contained in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to cut the national health expenditure in the United States by 12 percent, or about $450 billion annually, based on the value of the U.S. dollar 2017. “The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health care premiums combined with existing government allocations,” the researchers wrote. In addition, such a shift would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years annually when compared again the current system.
This interactive map from Health Research Institute (HRI) provides state-by-state predictions of market filings for 2015, forming a preliminary picture of who will participate in health exchanges and what premiums might look like.
Catalyst for Payment Reform report
This report from CPR, titled Using Education, Collaboration, and Payment Reform to Reduce Early Elective Deliveries: A Case Study of South Carolina’s Birth Outcomes Initiative, examines how the South Carolina Medicaid program used a policy of non-payment for early elective deliveries to improve birth outcomes. After the state Medicaid program formed a partnership with the state’s largest commercial insurer, the two sides decided not to pay for certain early elective deliveries and thus saved millions of dollars in neonatal intensive care unit costs and other charges. South Carolina was the first state in the nation to adopt such a program, CPR said.
Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012
Report released by the Census Bureau in September 2013 showing that real median household income and the poverty rate were not statistically different from the previous year, while the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.