For each of the nearly 11,000 health technology companies in the Health 2.0 Source Database, there have been countless more that have failed. Sometimes it’s small companies with good ideas that never quite get off the ground — remember Zeo? — and sometimes it’s big, well-funded experiments that suddenly fall flat, like the recent closing of Qliance. There is no magic formula for success in this industry, and the so-called “graveyard” of health technology companies continues to grow. Yet, somehow, there exists this legion of entrepreneurs that never fails to produce the next passionate CEO willing to reach for those deceptively low-hanging health care fruit.

This year, at Health 2.0’s 11th Annual Fall Conference, the crowd favorite 2 CEOs and a President Panel returns to our main stage. We’ll hear from three visionary entrepreneurs who are tackling three diverse segments of health care: consumer health and wellness, data transparency, and patient education. Saeju Jeong, the CEO of Noom, will share how Noom’s intelligent health coaching apps that focus on fitness and nutrition are staying relevant in a crowded market that includes the likes of tracking giant MyFitnessPal, or the health coaching app Vida. David Vivero, the CEO of Amino, will also appear to discuss how Amino is tackling the long-standing transparency problem in health care by using data to help consumers find better doctors, book appointments, and estimate their costs. Finally, this year’s addition of a president comes in the form of Shradha Agarwal of Outcome Health. The Chicago-based startup has reportedly raised more than $500 million at a valuation of $5 billion, which means we’ll have no shortage of questions for Agarwal about scale, growth, and how Outcome’s patient education technology is actually helping to improve health outcomes.

Register now for the 11th Annual Fall Conference to join us, and to hear these leaders’ stories.

By JONATHAN HALVORSON

Eventually, the share of the American economy absorbed by healthcare will stop rising. The question is when, and how much more collective damage will be inflicted in the process. As it turns out, there is a solution under our noses that is nearly ubiquitous in business, personal finance, and government programs worldwide. It can be used to bring manageable, relatively predictable transformation, rather than sudden wrenching change. It is a called a “budget.” It is well past time to embrace the discipline of budgets in healthcare financing.

The basic idea is clear: set a limit on how much money can be spent for healthcare. Almost every wealthy nation disciplines its spending with a budget for healthcare expenditures. The United States does not, still retaining for the most part an open-ended model in which rates for individual services are set, without overall limits on what is spent. The discipline brought by budgets allows other nations to spend roughly half what the United States does per person, despite the fact that life and health are valued in France, The United Kingdom, Israel, and Germany no less than in the United States.

Global healthcare budgets aren’t a policy of the left or the right. The use of budgets has become associated with the political right in America, despite the fact that nearly every socialized universal healthcare system in the world has one. The fact that this isn’t about left or right becomes clearer when considering that even in America both sides have advanced their own versions of capping healthcare expenditures by a budgeting mechanism.

Continue reading…

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE

There is an old Vulcan proverb saying that only Nixon could go to China. Only a man who used to work for Joseph McCarthy could set America on a path to better relations with a virulently Communist country. A few years after Nixon went to China, Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister who represented people believing that the state of Israel should start at the Nile and end at the Euphrates, gave Egypt back all the lands conquered in a recent war and made a lasting peace with Israel’s largest enemy. They said back then that only Begin could make peace with the Arabs.

Today, I want to submit to you that only Trump can make single-payer health care happen in this country. Only a billionaire, surrounded by a cabinet of billionaires, representing a party partial to billionaires, can make that hazardous 180 degrees political turn and better the lives of the American people, and perhaps the entire world as a result. Oh, I know it’s too soon to make this observation, but note that both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Begin were deeply resented (to put it mildly) in their times, by the same type of people who find Mr. Trump distasteful today. The liberal intelligentsia back then did not have the bona fides required to cross the political chasm between one nation and its ideological enemies, or as real as death immediate foes. The liberal intelligentsia today lost all credibility in this country when it comes to providing a universal solution to our health care woes.

Free health care (and free college) are not solutions. These are rabble rousing slogans to gin up the vote, slogans that end up in overflowing trashcans left in ballrooms littered with red white and blue balloons after everybody goes home to get some sleep before the next round of calls to solicit funds from wealthy donors for the next campaign. Providing proper medical care to the American people is a monumental enterprise that engages tens of millions of workers from all walks of life, every second of every day, in every square mile of habitable land, littered with the hopes and fears of hundreds of millions of invisible men, women and children who call this great country their home. This is not something that can be made free. Nothing is free in our times, not even sunshine and fresh air.

Continue reading…

By JEFF GOLDSMITH

For the second time in just four months, President Trump finds himself standing on the sidewalk reeling and looking for the license number of the health policy truck that hit him.

In the wake of Senator John McCain’s unexpected vote last week killing the “skinny” version of ACA repeal, Republicans abandoned their efforts to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare.

Though the process may not be “over” as of this writing, this has been the most catastrophically mismanaged federal health policy cycle we’ve seen in our lifetimes. In this post, I turn to Blumenthal and Morone’s 2009 analysis, The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office” for help in deconstructing the Trump Presidency’s politically costly health policy adventure.

Blumenthal and Morone distilled eight key lessons about how to manage the health care issue from the records of the post-Roosevelt Presidents’ health policy efforts. Attached to each lesson is a letter grade for Trump’s performance.

To succeed in health reform, President must “care deeply” about the issue.

Candidate Trump did not pretend to be a health policy expert, but the most potent applause line in his campaign speeches was his promise to the Republican base to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare. Trump complicated his task, perhaps without fully realizing it, by running way to the left of his base in promising not to cut Medicare and Medicaid and to give people better coverage for less money.Continue reading…

It’s not news that technology-enabled innovations are major drivers in the transformation of care delivery. Cutting-edge solutions are re-organizing provider workflows and delivering real-time data analytics to improve outcomes, lower costs and empower both acute and chronic care patients to be their own best advocates. What’s new is the emergence of tech-enabled services that are taking aim at specific parts of chronic disease and specialty care.

By SAURABH JHA, MD

For American conservatives, Britain’s NHS is an antiquated Orwellian dystopia. For Brits, even those who don’t love the NHS, American conservatives are better suited to spaghetti westerns, such as Fistful of Dollars, than reality.

The twain is unlikely to meet after the recent press surrounding Charlie Gard the infant, now deceased, with a rare, fatal mitochondrial disorder in which mitochondrial DNA is depleted – mitochondrial depletion disorder (MDD). In this condition, the cells lose their power supply and tissues, notably in the brain, die progressively and rapidly.

The courts forbade Charlie’s parents from taking him for a last dash of hope to the United States. This confirmed for many conservatives the perils of a government-run healthcare system, where the state decides who lives and who dies through Death Panels.

Ted and Mike, whose healthcare reform might affect many curable little Charlies, were moved by the plight of an incurable Charlie. No European will understand the science behind their sentiment – if you care so much about a sick incurable baby, why don’t you care about sick, curable babies, they’d ask.

Brits will never get the importance conservatives place on individual choice, even if that choice is forlorn, and of the lure of medical heroism. Conservatives seldom acknowledge that modern medicine reaches its limitations too quickly for Death Panels to be effective. Charlie was given a grim prognosis by doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), arguably the finest hospital for sick children in the world.

Continue reading…

By JIM PURCELL

This Spring, California SB (Senate Bill) 562 proposed a single-payer healthcare financing system for California.  Governor Jerry Brown was immediately skeptical, stating, “This is called ignotum per ignotius….In other words, you take a problem and say, ‘I’m going to solve it by something that’s even a bigger problem,’ which makes no sense.”  And in early July, California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon tabled the bill calling it “woefully incomplete.”  While true, that incurred the predictable wrath of single payor advocates.

Understandably, it’s difficult for supporters not to be enthusiastic about SB 562 given the conclusions reached by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) based out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. PERI has released a Study commissioned by the California Nurses Association (which has always favored single payor universal coverage) that projects reductions in healthcare spending by $37.5 billion a year!  No small change there.

The Study reports that the proposed single payor system could provide “decent health care for all California Residents…” and while providing full universal coverage would increase overall system costs by about 10%, it “could” produce savings of about 18%.  The savings supposedly will be realized through reduced administrative costs, reducing pharmaceutical reimbursement charges, and “a more rational fee structure for providers.”  “More rational” usually means “reduced,” and that usually means primary care and mental health are the first in line to take it in the neck, given their limited negotiating leverage.

And it gets even better.  There would be no premiums, copays, or deductibles.  According to the Study, people could get treated whenever and wherever they want.  And money will be saved.  This is like heaven. 

Continue reading…