Insurers promise to cover coronavirus tests, relax coverage policies

A major health insurance trade group is pledging its member plans will cover doctor-ordered testing for the coronavirus amid rising confusion and concern about who will bear the cost of care in an outbreak.

America’s Health Insurance Plans made the commitment Thursday, although it's still unclear when insurers might have to start paying for tests. So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has picked up the tab for COVID-19 testing. The cost picture is expected to become more complicated as more private labs and academic medical centers launch their own testing. Thursday alone, commercial labs Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp and BioReference Laboratories announced they'd launch testing for the virus.

The full Politico article can be viewed at this link.  

FHIR Fever Is Catching On In Healthcare

It's been almost two decades since the nonprofit Health Level Seven International (HL7) created the FHIR standard, now on its fourth release. The forces of government regulation, consumer demand, competition and the journey to value-based care are creating new pressure on the healthcare industry to embrace interoperability, a Deloitte report says, with FHIR emerging as the common language. Open standards to link diagnostic, clinical health and certain administrative data can reduce medical errors, eliminate opportunities for fraud and bring down the data siloes that account for so much waste.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.  

What big tech companies aren't saying about HHS data rules

Hospitals and doctors are pitted against patient data advocates in a strident debate over HHS plans to facilitate data sharing with software companies. But the biggest tech players — Google, Facebook, Amazon and others — have largely remained on the sidelines.

Health care professional groups have flooded HHS with comments on upcoming data sharing rules, expressing worry that developers could sell patient data for advertising and marketing purposes. They are urging HHS to add privacy provisions before finalizing the rules, which would force providers, vendors and insurers to adopt common standards so patients can share their information with apps they choose.

The full Politico article can be viewed at this link.  

The health care crisis no one is talking about

There are certain issues that you’d expect to be top-of-mind for older Americans, whether it be Social Security, Medicare, or scams that target seniors. But as I traveled through my district this year and held workshops for seniors across Maryland, there was one topic that I was surprised came up again and again: loneliness.

The crisis of social isolation and loneliness currently affects almost half of our population, and seniors are front and center.

The full article from The Hill can be viewed at this link.  

Trump's next health care move: Giving Silicon Valley your medical data

The Trump administration's push to give patients more control over their health records could turn over a massive trove of very personal data to giant tech companies, app designers and data brokers.

If proposed policy changes go through, patients would be able to download their health records on to their smartphones and direct it to apps of their choice. But there’s a major privacy pitfall: As soon as those records leave the software system of the doctor or hospital, they are no longer protected by HIPAA, the landmark medical privacy law.

That’s where Google and Apple step in to hoover up the data. The tech giants have lobbied the administration to require access. That might allow for unprecedented convenience, letting patients more easily share data for a second opinion or enabling a researcher to find participants for a clinical trial. But it also opens up a Wild West of data sharing on the most intimate health care details for millions of Americans.

The full Politico article can be viewed at this link.  

9 things Americans need to learn from the rest of the world’s health care systems

So the dissatisfying answer to “so what can the US learn from these other countries’ successes?” is: It’s complicated. But my hope for this series is it would speak to the kinds of values and strategies, if less the specific policies, that are necessary to achieve universal health care.

Every health system is different. But all of them, except ours, have figured out a way to make being uninsured or going bankrupt over medical bills a thing of the past. The US can do better.

The full Vox article can be viewed at this link.  

Envisioning a Better U.S. Health Care System for All: Reducing Barriers to Care and Addressing Social Determinants of Health

The American College of Physicians (ACP) has long advocated for universal access to high-quality health care in the United States. Yet, it is essential that the U.S. health system goes beyond ensuring coverage, efficient delivery systems, and affordability. Reductions in nonfinancial barriers to care and improvements in social determinants of health are also necessary. This ACP position paper calls for ending discrimination based on personal characteristics; correcting workforce shortages, including the undersupply of primary care physicians; and understanding and ameliorating social determinants of health. The ACP calls for increased efforts to address urgent public health threats, including injuries and deaths from firearms; environmental hazards; climate change; maternal mortality; substance use disorders; and the health risks associated with nicotine, tobacco use, and electronic nicotine delivery systems in order to achieve ACP's vision for a better U.S. health care system.

The full position paper can be downloaded below.  

The answer to America’s health care cost problem might be in Maryland

Maryland is the site of two big experiments in containing health care costs. The first: Since the 1970s, the state has set the prices hospitals can charge for medical care, known as all-payer rate setting.

The second experiment: Since 2014, it’s also capped how much health spending can grow overall, including how much revenue each hospital can take in.

The full Vox article can be viewed at this link.