Health Wonk Review — Up and unbiased at the Healthcare Economist.
THCB Sponsorship announcement
I am delighted to announce that THCB is partnering with Silverlink, the automated interactive voice solutions company based in Burlington, Mass. Silverlink is now a platinum sponsor. I did a podcast with CEO Stan Nowak a few weeks ago that’s well worth a listen and explains what they do in great detail (although I had no idea they were interested in sponsoring then).
The quick version is that Silverlink puts all manner of health information, from alerts about medication refills to complex HRAs and disease management information, into outbound phone calls guided by voice recognition. Health plans, PBMs and others are using those calls to improve their outreach/customer service to their members…and you’ll know from my opinion about health plans’ typical customer service that anyway to improve that can’t be a bad thing!
For details on the business arrangements of how THCB’s corporate sponsorships work you need to email John Irvine. As most of you know John has always run the tech side of THCB and in recent months has taken over business side. Which, given the recent sponsorships with Silverlink, Orion Health and CDW, appears to be a great management move on my part!
The only difference you’ll notice is that if I’m doing a piece or a podcast on a sponsor I’ll be open about it–just as I have done when I’ve done podcasts with consulting clients of mine. I’ll still call them as I see ’em, and still ask the same questions–I suspect that that’s part of the attraction. The rest of the attraction of course is for the sponsors to get in front of you, the gentle and good THCB reader. So I’d be grateful if you could continue to look at the sponsors’ information kindly!
POLICY: Blue Shield dumps the realtors whereas Blue Cross dumps on Arnie
And in the kicking butt and taking names department (more great work from Lisa Girion on this), California’s big non-profit Blues plan manages to wriggle out of insuring one unprofitable group — Realtors . Whereas Wellpoint, the parent of California’s for-profit Blue’s insurer has decided that it just can’t stomach the insistence of the Governator that they spend 85% of their revenue on medical care (i.e. give up a big chunk of their profits) and is the first insurer to publicly oppose his plan. (Although I told you that was coming a while back)
Hmm….this is a deal I think they should take while it’s still on the table. They have a new CEO. I wonder how long she intends to be around? If it’s more than a couple of years I bet she’ll wish they’d not done that.
POLICY: Gratzer vs Cohn at TNR
The New Republic turned over its column to David Gratzer yesterday and today Jonathan Cohn responds. All good stuff, even if Jon yet again misses out on laying down the financial consequences of being poor and sick here. And he is a little too nice to David. Not hard because David is really nice, but all the same the positions he espouse are factually challenged and basically don’t pass the rational sniff test.
At least that’s what I thought after he and I had a more than polite agree to disagree conversation, in which I think I played Manchester United and he played Roma! Mind you they tied that first leg, so perhaps Jon is waiting till later in the week to really stick it to David!
POLICY/POLITICS: Pat Salber on gun laws
In the wake of yesterday’s massacre in Virginia, here’s Pat Salber about the gun massacre on campus.
We need to empower and fund reputable organizations to perform the research on violence and violence prevention. (It has effectively disappeared from the Center from Disease Control’s research agenda in the last six years). We need to put the health and safety of our kids ahead any other political agenda…can we possibly value gun ownership more than the safety of our kids at school?
If our past actions are a predictor of the future, then this is what will probably happen. Time will pass and the rawness of our emotions, so exposed right now in the aftermass of the Virginia Tech Massacre, will dampen. We will start to waffle on any enthusiasm to pursue rational gun control…we simply won’t care as much as the folks who profit from profligate sales of firearms. And then we will be right back to where we have been for the last twenty or thirty years, waiting for one more (short-fused) time bomb to explode onto our campuses and into our national psyches.
How many more school kids need to get shot to death? How much more campus blood and gore do we need to see? How many more unbearable tragedies do American families need to endure before we finally stand up and demand a change in our national firearm policy?
POLICY: Crazy Canadian-haters
I got a hysterical email the other day from someone asking my help in making a movie to castigate Canadian health care. Why? Well they’re Scared Sicko.
BLOGS: Health care blogs & extremely modest fame
This article in Federal Computer Week says that health care blogs are no blip–or at least that’s what I told them.
POLICY: My last word at TPM–competition within social insurance
So the book club at TPM is drawing to a close. Here’s my first piece trying to explain that social insurance whether voucher/competition-based or fee-schedule-based is pretty similar compared to what we have now. In fact it’s a Distinction without a Difference. But that just seemed to confuse everyone, so I tried again with a larger explanation with a longer title called Social insurance is the key–but it can handle competition, just not the type you’re used to!
THCB Sponsorship announcement
I’m pleased to announce that THCB has lined up a number of long term sponsorship deals this week. We’ve signed CDW-Healthcare up as a silver sponsor, in a deal which sees them sponsor the site for the next year. If you want to support the site take a few minutes to go browse their extensive collection of IT products for your healthcare business. We’ve also reached a similar agreement with Orion Health, which brings them on board as our gold sponsor. If you’re not familiar with them, Orion makes some very cool clinical workflow and integration products, including the Rhapsody integration engine, the Concerto Medical Applications suite and the Soprano Clinical Workflow suite. They’re based in New Zealand with offices in Los Angeles and the UK. They’ll also be sponsoring our up and coming technology section, which will be going live later this month. If you’re in the healthcare field and you’d like to reach a monthly audience of 35,000+ smart, tech-focused visitors on the cutting edge of the business, you may want to consider becoming a corporate sponsor. Contact john for details.
POLICY: HSAs–The master speaks
Uwe skewers the HSA as a regressive tax shelter that impacts only the poor over at Health Affairs Blog. This time the cracks are at Bloomberg readers rather than certain crank health policy shops in Dallas, TX but it’s still a beautiful read.
