Tag: Kim Bellard

Health Insurance Needs to Grow Up

Aug 3, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

I’ve been covered by private insurance my entire life. Even more telling, I worked in the health insurance industry for — gasp! — some thirty years. It’s not just paid for my healthcare, it’s financed my life.

Today, though, for the first time in my life, I’m covered by public insurance — and I couldn’t be more relieved.

Now, I’m not going to go all Wendell Potter. I know many people have their health insurance horror stories, but, sadly, people have them about pretty much every part of the healthcare industry. I believe most people working in health insurance, like most people working in healthcare generally, sympathize with the people they serve and are just trying to do a good job.

The problem is that the health insurance model has outgrown the times. I’ll try to explain some ways how.

Premiums

Once upon a time, most people had employer coverage, and those employers paid all or most of its cost. Those days are gone. Employer coverage is still the predominant form of private health insurance, and employers still pay the majority of its cost, but percentage of people with employer coverage continues to drop and the amount they pay for it continues to increase.

THCB GANG, Episode 20

Jul 30, 2020

Episode 20 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, July 30th! Watch it below!

Joining Matthew Holt were some of our regulars: writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), MD & hospital system exec Rajesh Aggarwal (@docaggarwal), health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), WTF Health Host Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), and guest Jennifer Benz, communications leader at Segal Benz (@jenbenz). We discussed how employers & health plans need to build trust in order to improve engagement data, how health consumers’ are changing the way they interact with health care, and how to support patients when they are accessing the system.

If you’d rather listen, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan

Too Many Small Steps, Not Enough Leaps

Jul 28, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

I was driving home the other day, noticed all the above-ground telephone/power lines, and thought to myself: this is not the 21st century I thought I’d be living in.

When I was growing up, the 21st century was the distant future, the stuff of science fiction. We’d have flying cars, personal robots, interstellar travel, artificial food, and, of course, tricorders. There’d be computers, although not PCs. Still, we’d have been baffled by smartphones, GPS, or the Internet. We’d have been even more flummoxed by women in the workforce or #BlackLivesMatter.

We’re living in the future, but we’re also hanging on to the past, and that applies especially to healthcare. We all poke fun at the persistence of the fax, but I’d also point out that currently our best advice for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic is pretty much what it was for the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic: masks and distancing (and we’re facing similar resistance). One would have hoped the 21st century would have found us better equipped.

So I was heartened to read an op-ed in The Washington Post by ReginaDugan, PhD. Dr. Dugan calls for a “Health Age,” akin to how Sputnik set off the Space Age. The pandemic, she says, “is the kind of event that alters the course of history so much that we measure time by it: before the pandemic — and after.”

Healthcare Should Get Into Some #GoodTrouble

Jul 21, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

As hopefully most of you know, Rep. John Lewis, civil right icon and longtime member of Congress, died this past Friday. Rep. Lewis was often described the “conscience of Congress” – perhaps a low bar in today’s Congress but important nonetheless — for his unwavering commitment to social justice. I have always been struck in particular by one of his quotes:

Rep. Lewis must have been heartened by the fact that, in 2020, plenty of people are, indeed, making noise and getting into good trouble, necessary trouble over issues that he cared deeply about, like Black Lives Matter and voting rights. There are others who are better able to write about those people and that trouble. So I’d like to talk about his call to action with respect to healthcare.

If you are working today in healthcare — especially in the United States — or, for that matter, someone getting healthcare or having a loved one get it, then you should be making some noise and getting into good trouble, because our healthcare system most definitely makes it necessary.

It should come as no surprise that we’re not very happy with our healthcare system, rating it lower than do citizens in most other developed countries. And for good reason: it’s the world’s most expensive while delivering sub-par health results and leaving tens of millions without financial protection. Even our physicians don’t like it. Even our latest, best effort for improving the sorry state of our healthcare system — the Affordable Care Act – is under risk of repeal due to a lawsuit brought by 18 states and backed by the Trump Administration.

Every day, too many of us suffer in the healthcare system, ranging from waits to indignities to critical mistakes, and some face financial ruin due to the care — whether good or bad. Most of us suffer in silence, or only complain to our friends and family. We don’t see a lot of mass protests about the pitiful state of our healthcare system, and I have to wonder why.

We have to stop being so passive.

THCB Gang, Episode 18 LIVE 7/16 from 1PM PT/4PM ET

Jul 16, 2020

Episode 18 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, July 16tth! Watch it below.

Joining Matthew Holt were some of our regulars: writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), policy & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), MD turned leadership coach Maggi Cary (@MargaretCaryMD), and guest Suneel Ratan, GM of Collective Medical Technologies (@CollectiveMed)! We discussed ACOs & fee-for-service problems, what the future of care looks like as a result of the November elections, and how to serve communities that are socioeconomically disadvantaged with calls to #DEFUNDHealthcare. Give it a watch below if you missed the live version

If you’d rather listen, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan

Virtually Better

Jul 14, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

The COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t have come at a better time for virtual reality. It has caused many workers to work remotely, introducing many workers to collaborative tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams and even more to video platforms like Zoom or Skype. But we’re just beginning to understand what collaboration could look like — such as virtual reality (VR).

As CNBC noted: “Virtual reality is booming in the workplace amid the pandemic.” Even a pre-pandemic Perkins Coie survey, done for the XR Association, predicted an explosion of immersive technologies like VR, augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). Elizabeth Hyman, President of XRA, said: “We are at the precipice of an integration of XR technology that will transform businesses and society for the better.”

The report expected healthcare to be the industry most impacted by immersive technologies (outside of gaming/entertainment).

Take VR-start-up Spatial, which thinks it has a better mousetrap. Chief Product Officer described their solution to MIT News:

Spatial is a collaborative, holographic, augmented reality solution. You can teleport to someone’s space, work as an avatar sharing that 3D space, and use it instead of a screen to manage a project, present an idea, and more.

Don’t you love the “and more,” as though the teleportation wasn’t enough?

Goodbye Glasses, Hello Smartglasses

Jul 7, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

It’s been a few months since I last wrote about augmented reality (AR), and, if anything, AR activity has only picked up since then — particularly in regard to smartglasses. I pointed out then how Apple’s Tim Cook and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg were extremely bullish on the field. and Alphabet (Google Glasses) and Snap (Spectacles) have never, despite a few apparent setbacks, lost their faith.

I can’t do justice to all that is going on in the field, but I want to try to hit some of the highlights, including not just what we see but how we see.

Let’s start with Google acquiring smartglass innovator North, for some $180m, saying:

We’re building towards a future where helpfulness is all around you, where all your devices just work together and technology fades into the background. We call this ambient computing.

North’s founders explained that, from the start, their vision had been: “Technology seamlessly blended into your world: immediately accessible when you want it, but hidden away when you don’t,” which is a pretty good vision.

And We Thought Pandemics Were Bad

Jun 29, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

Those of us of a certain age, or anyone who loves classic movies, remember the famous scene in “The Graduate” when Benjamin Braddock is given what is intended as a helpful clue about the future. “Plastics,” one of his father’s friends says. “There’s a great future in plastics.”

Well, we’re living in that future, and it’s not all that rosy. Plastics have, indeed, become an integral part of our world, giving billions of us products that we could never otherwise have or afford. But our future is going to increasingly be driven by an unintended consequence of the plastics revolution: microplastics.

And that’s not good.

Microplastics are what happens to plastic after it has gone through the wringer, so to speak. Plastic doesn’t typically decompose, at least not in any time frame we’re capable of grasping, but it does get broken down into finer and finer particles, until they reach microscopic levels (thus “microplastics”). We’ve known for some time that plastics were filling our landfills, getting caught in our trees and bushes, washing up on our shorelines, even collecting in huge “garbage patches” in the ocean. But it wasn’t until more recently that we’ve found that plastics’ reach is much, much broader than we realized, or could see.

The ocean full of microplastics, and fish are as well. They’re in our drinking water. Indeed, “There’s no nook or cranny on the surface of the earth that won’t have microplastics,” Professor Janice Brahney told The New York Times.

Dr. Brahney was coauthor on a recent study that found microplastics were pervasive even in supposedly pristine parts of the Western U.S. They estimated that 1,000 tons of “plastic rain” falls every year onto protected areas there; 98% of soil samples they took had microplastics. Dr. Brahney pointed out that, because the particles are both airborne and fine, “we’re breathing it, too.”

THCB Gang Episode 15

Jun 25, 2020

Episode 15 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, June 25th!

Joining Matthew Holt were our regulars: health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), WTF Health Host Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), radiologist Saurabh Jha (@RougeRad), policy expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), and THCB’s Editor-in-Chief, Me (@zoyak1594)! We got into increasing COVID-19 rates, updates in health policy, what is the future of hospitals, and how the new generation is dealing with the health care industry. All while keeping an eye on the politics of the US.

If you’d rather listen, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan

TikTok Teen’s Time

Jun 23, 2020• 2

By KIM BELLARD

I knew about TikTok, but not “TikTok Teens.” I was vaguely aware of K-Pop, but I didn’t know its fans had common interests beyond, you know, K-Pop. I’d been tracking Gen X and Millennials but hadn’t really focused on Gen Z. It turns out that these overlapping groups are quite socially aware and are starting to make their influence felt.

I can’t wait for them to pay more attention to health care.

This is the generation that has grown up during/in the wake of 9/11, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the 2008 recession, the coronavirus pandemic, and the current recession — not to mention smartphones, social media, online shopping, and streaming. Greta Thunberg is Gen Z, as is Billie Eilish, each of whom is leading their own social movements. This generation has a lot to protest about, and a lot of ways to do it.

They were in the news this past weekend due to, of all things, President Trump’s Tulsa rally. His campaign had boasted about having a million people sign up for the rally, only to find that the arena was less than a third filled. An outdoor rally for the expected overflow crowd was cancelled.

It didn’t take long for the TikTok Teens/K-Pop fans to boast on social media about their covert — to us older folks — campaign to register for the rally as a way to gum up the campaign efforts. Steve Schmidt, an anti-Trump Republican strategist, tweeted: “The teens of America have struck a savage blow against @realDonaldTrump.”