About health insurance/insurers
From today’s STAT newsletter re: UnitedHealth’s loan program due to the Change hack: “Eleven providers and provider lobbying groups told [STAT that] UnitedHealth was handing out minuscule amounts in its initial loan program. Many loans were in the three-figure range. Mike Gebhart, CFO of Highlands Oncology Group in Arkansas, told [STAT] his practice was offered $59,000 — less than 1% of the $7 million per week in claims the group normally gets. But UnitedHealth has since rolled out another program, where providers tell the company what their shortfall is. Gebhart got a loan offer that he described as ‘exactly what we needed.’”
In a related post: UnitedHealth has paid out $2B in advanced payments following cyberattack “In its latest update on the response to the cyberattack on Change Healthcare, UnitedHealth Group said that it will begin today to release medical claims preparation software, a move it says is a critical step in restoring services.
The software will be rolled out to thousands of customers in the next several days, according to the announcement. UHG said that it intends to have third-party attestations available before services are fully online.”
Medicare Payment Policy [March, 2024 MedPAC report] An excellent summary of current status and recommendations for the Medicare program. For example: “We estimate that Medicare spends 22 percent more for [Medicare Advantage] enrollees than it would spend if those beneficiaries were enrolled in [traditional] Medicare, a difference that translates into a projected $83 billion in 2024 … the many iterations of full-risk contracting with private plans have never yielded aggregate savings for the Medicare program.”
Absolutely worth a least a skim.
About pharma
The top 10 pharma R&D budgets for 2023 FYI Merck earned the top spot with $30.53 billion.
About the public’s health
Toxic asbestos is now fully banned, a move that EPA calls ‘historic’ “ The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday finalized a ban on chrysotile asbestos, part of a family of toxic minerals linked to lung cancer and other illnesses that the agency estimates is responsible for about 40,000 U.S. deaths each year.
The federal ban comes more than 30 years after EPA first tried to rid the nation of asbestos, but was blocked by a federal judge. While the use of asbestos in manufacturing and construction has declined since, it remains a significant health threat.”
National HIV self-testing program finds high demand, many testing for first time “…from March 2023 to December 2023…181,558 orders were placed — most (86%) for two tests — and a total of 337,812 tests were shipped.
Sixty percent of orders included enough information to describe people ordering the tests in terms of priority populations: 61% were men who reporting having sex with male partners in the previous 12 months — 18% Black and 33% Hispanic — 10.7% were gender diverse people and 10% were Black women.
Most participants (62%) ordered tests through messages and in-app buttons in the Grindr app — seven out of 10 orders were placed through a social media or dating app — and most people who ordered tests either had never had an HIV test (26%) or did not have a test in more than 12 months (27%).”
About healthcare personnel
Nurses report wage, staffing dissatisfaction but most say they'll stick around until retirement, report finds “…nearly a quarter of nurses say they are very likely to leave their role this year. Though nurses are slightly less dissatisfied with current staffing levels compared to 2023, 88% believe that patient care is being negatively impacted by staffing shortages. More than half of nurses (63%) are assigned to care for too many patients at a time. Nearly a quarter reported they were required to perform tasks outside of their job description due to staffing shortages.”
NRMP® Celebrates Match Day for the 2024 Main Residency Match®, Releases Results for Over 44,000 Applicants and Almost 6,400 Residency Programs FYI. Concerns remain about primary care numbers.