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The Caregivers Marketplace

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I found a website that may be helpful for our readers and their families. The Caregivers Marketplace allows users to get cash back when they buy eligible products. I checked out the site, and there don’t appear to be any strings attached. The eligible products range from blood pressure monitors to vitamins to diapers to… Read more about The Caregivers Marketplace

New Cavalcade Of Risk

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The Cavalcade of Risk is up at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. A Colorado Health Insurance Insider article about what drives health insurance premiums was included in the cavalcade. Hank at InsureBlog has a piece about the rules against purchasing medications privately in the NHS – this is a fascinating subject, and one that I’ve written… Read more about New Cavalcade Of Risk

Grand Rounds from the South Pacific

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Yet again, Grand Rounds has opened my eyes to a medical blog that I haven’t seen yet, but I will read regularly from now on.  Marianas Eye is a very well written blog with a lot of good stuff including this weeks Grand Rounds, so we added them to our blogroll.

HR 6210 Won’t Solve The Problem For Small Groups

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We frequently get calls from employers here in Colorado who have three or four employees and would like to offer health insurance. But when they find out that the premiums are going to be a few thousand dollars a month, they realize that there is no way they can fit health insurance into their budget. Pooling together with other small businesses will help, but not […]

Number Of Underinsureds Rising Rapidly

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While an employee at a big company might consider $500 to be a high deductible, the majority of our individual health insurance clients in Colorado choose deductibles between $2000 and $5000, in order to keep the premiums down. That same employee at the big company may only be paying a few dollars a week for health insurance (with the employer paying […]

Health Wonk Review – Washington Week

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Check out the latest Health Wonk Review: “Washington Week” on Health Affairs Blog.  An article from the Colorado Health Insurance Insider is in the “Consumer and Patient Rights” section.  And my favorite article this week comes from Ezra Klein with an article about “Why Doctors Overprescribe.”  But just as interesting is an article from Bob… Read more about Health Wonk Review – Washington Week

What Drives Health Insurance Premiums

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Aetna CEO Ron Williams, who spoke today with the Senate Finance Committee about rising health insurance premiums. Williams cited the 6.6% profit margin reported for Aetna last year, and made the case that rising health insurance premiums are a reflection of rising health care costs, and that health insurance carriers have to raise prices in order to […]

Mandatory Health Insurance Not Likely

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In Colorado, two of the top five proposals being considered last year by the Blue Ribbon Commission included mandatory health insurance, and they’ve done it in MA – residents there are currently paying fines if they don’t have health insurance in place. But with Clinton out of the race, nationwide mandatory health insurance isn’t likely to come to […]

Individual Health Insurance Won’t Work For Everyone

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We work primarily in the individual health insurance market. Colorado is one of the healthiest states in the US, and yet we still have about one applicant in ten unable to obtain coverage. Luckily we have a high risk pool – Cover Colorado – that we can present as a last resort, but the high premiums and out-of-pocket expenses can be a bit off-putting. Although 9 out of 10 applicants […]

Uninsured Patients Not Causing ER Overcrowding

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and thus three emergency rooms – are within 20 minutes of our home in Broomfield Colorado (and if we were to go a few miles down the road to Denver, there are several more). But I don’t know the location of any urgent care facilities near our home. So in the event of a serious illness or injury, my first reaction would probably be to head for an emergency room […]

Caesareans Make It Harder To Get Health Insurance

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I just finished reading this article from the NY Times about how people who have had caesareans face more hurdles when they try to get individual health insurance. The article focuses on individual health insurance in Colorado, which made it especially interesting for me. Golden Rule – one of the companies mentioned in the article… Read more about Caesareans Make It Harder To Get Health Insurance

Happy Hospitalist Has Grand Rounds

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Well, Blog do gooders, [Happy Hospitalist] will show you how every brilliant blogger this week can be traced to Happy in six links or less.
How closely can we be traced to Happy?
Colorado Health Insurance Insider–>Managed Care Matters–>KevinMD–>Happy (3 degrees)

Young And Uninsured

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Most individual and group health insurance policies drop children once they are no longer full time students, although the rules on that have been changing in recent years. Colorado now allows dependent children to stay on their parents’ health insurance policy until age 25, and many other states have taken a similar position, with some allowing […]

Employers And Health Insurance Don’t Need To Mix

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What if every Colorado resident could be covered by a range of health insurance plans similar to what is available today in the group and individual market, but without any employer affiliations required? People would be covered continuously, regardless of their employment situation, and would not be trapped in a job just for the health insurance benefits […]

A National Disgrace

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Health care and the broken US health care system are big topics right now. We’re in the middle of an election year, and more and more Americans fed up with rising prices on health insurance, prescription drugs, and medical services in general. Health insurance companies claim that they’re barely scraping by and that the dramatic… Read more about A National Disgrace

Grand Rounds at .Parallel Universes.

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Emeritus did a great job with the latest Grand Rounds over at Parallel Universes this week. One of my favorite articles of the week was from NHS Blog Doctor about the conflict of Hormone Replacement Therapy. The article itself was interesting, but the comments […]

Preventing Diabetes

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Now researchers in a long-term study have found that a healthy lifestyle followed for six years continues to lower the risk for developing type 2 diabetes for another 14 years. That’s a pretty impressive result. Here in Colorado, nearly 221,000 people have diabetes […]

Colorado HB1389 Passes House And Senate

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HB 1389, the Fair Accountable Insurance Rates Act of 2008, has passed the Colorado House and Senate, and is headed to governor Bill Ritter for his signature next month. Health insurance companies doing business in Colorado will now be required to get approval from the state before enacting rate increases, and will have to disclose… Read more about Colorado HB1389 Passes House And Senate

McCain Health Care Hangs States Out To Dry

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In Colorado, we’re lucky to have Cover Colorado available for uninsurable residents who do not have access to other coverage. At least our state has a high risk pool that is open to new enrollees and provides health insurance for people who would otherwise be uninsured. But it’s far from ideal. The policies are expensive and the out of pocket costs are higher than […]