As the business of health care reporter for the Chicago Tribune, much of my work in 2013 focused on the Affordable Care Act and its effects on the health care market. Here are four stories that illustrate the depth and breadth of my reporting over the year:
– “Hospitals looking for cash upfront” As patients shoulder more of their care costs, worried health systems are trying new strategies to make certain they’ll get paid for services. We began looking into this story after finding that a majority of plans on the Illinois Health Insurance Exchange carry high deductibles. Hospitals are having to adapt to a new environment in which collecting from patients is critical. We found that hospitals large and small are adopting new strategies to accommodate this new payer environment.
– “Obamacare deductibles may cause sticker shock Insurance companies are requiring higher out-of-pocket expenses to pay for complying with new rules” While many major media outlets were looking into the source of the problems behind the disastrous launch of the health insurance exchanges, we looked into the actual structures of the health plans consumers would be looking to purchase. We were the first major metro newspaper in a state where the federal government ran the exchange to investigate and analyze the health plans, using information culled from insurers’ websites, state regulators and by dealing directly with insurance companies to get data. The reporting and analysis was onerous because HelathCare.gov was largely nonfunctioning at the time. The story quickly went viral and spawned many similar stories nationwide.
– “Firm tapped for Medicaid under fire Feds investigating company set to work on state program” Working from a tip from a former insider, we found that Illinois is outsourcing part of its Medicaid program to a company that is under a federal grand jury investigation in Louisiana, was disqualified from bidding in Arkansas, was ushered out of Maine and has been the subject of complaints in Utah. The resulting report created a bit of a political firestorm in Illinois, with a one-time primary opponent of Gov. Pat Quinn and a state legislator each calling for a probe into the no-bid deal.
– “Many safety-net hospitals need help of their own” After a small South Side hospital teetered on the brink of closure, we investigated the Chicago-area’s myriad safety net hospitals and looked into how they must adapt to survive in a new health care environment.