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Tag: health trends

The Devil We Know

Once again, the Supreme Court was unsurprisingly surprising. The conventional wisdom was that at least part of the health reform law would be overturned, but in practice the court blessed the status quo we have known for two years: The reform law will continue to be implemented.

It’s the devil we’ve known. Washington will issue more regulations. Insurers will be buried in requirements on coverage and benefits, driving up costs. Physicians will have more oversight and report to the government. Hospitals will see Medicare cuts. Millions of individuals will either get a new federal subsidy for insurance or be enrolled in Medicaid.

States will have more interference from Washington. While the Supreme Court gave them some flexibility on whether to expand their Medicaid programs, states will still be forced to either build a new insurance exchange, like Expedia for health insurance, or have the federal government build it for them.

By upholding the law, the court also left untouched two huge problems looming on the horizon. First, as the law expands coverage there will be a tremendous increase in demand for medical services, but there will not be an increase in the number of doctors, nurses and other providers to deliver care.

Millions of people may have very generous coverage, but they will struggle to find providers to deliver it.

Second, as businesses face requirements in 2014 to offer federally approved health insurance or pay a fine, many companies will do the math and see that paying the penalty is far less expensive than continuing to provide coverage.

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Sex Sells (or at Least Leads to Some Interesting Analytics)


One guarantee in the healthcare sector is that when it comes to personal health information (PHI), there is no lack of issues and pundits to discuss security and privacy of such information/data. If one does not jump up and down bleating on about the sanctity of PHI and the need to protect it at all costs, well then you may be labeled a heretic and burned at the proverbial stake.

Now don’t get us wrong. Here at Chilmark Research we firmly believe that your PHI is arguably the most personal information you have and you do have a right to know exactly how it is used. Whether or not you own it remains to be seen for we have seen, read and heard one more than one occasion – some healthcare providers believe that it is their data, not yours, and may only begrudgingly give you access to some circumscribed portion of your PHI that they have stashed in their vast HIT fortress, or worse, scattered in a number of chart folders.

But where we do differ with many on the sanctity of PHI is that the collective use of our de-identified PHI on a community, regional, state or even national level can give us some amazing insights into what is working and what is not in this convoluted thing we call a healthcare system in the US and needs to be strongly supported. Unfortunately, we do a terrible job as a country in educating the populace on the collective value of their data to understand health trends, treatments and ultimately ascertain accurate comparative effectiveness. This leaves the door wide open for others to use the old FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) factor to keep patients from actively sharing their de-identified PHI.

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