Covered California Choosing Wisely Against Defensive Medicine
Part of Covered California's mission is to improve health care quality and lower costs. In an attempt to meet these goals they announced a partnership with the American Board of Internal Medicine...
View ArticleCovered California To Waste Money On Doctor Education
Covered California has already awarded $43 million for public outreach and education. Seven of the recipients that received grant money are organizations that are already involved with the health care...
View ArticleSacramento Outpatient Surgery Cost Comparisons
In an effort to shed a little light on the range of outpatient surgery costs a health care consumer might have for a particular procedure, Anthem Blue Cross in association with WebMD created a cost...
View ArticleHealth Net restricts provider networks on Covered California plans
There was tremendous confusion over which doctors were in-network for the new individual and family plans offered through Covered California in early 2014. While the major health insurance plans...
View ArticleHealth Net’s new skinny EPO and HSP networks
While Covered California was preparing a large press announcement with the California Medical Association (CMA) about extolling the number of physicians that are participating in Covered California...
View ArticleWe need open enrollment rules for Doctors and Hospitals
With the announcement that Blue Shield of California may be dropping Sutter Health physicians and hospitals from their list of network providers in Northern California, Blue Shield members are...
View ArticleFinding out if your hospital is in-network with your new health plan
The California individual and family plan market place will be changing quite a bit in 2017. Next to confirming if your favorite doctors are covered by the new health plans, many consumers want to make...
View ArticleDo You Want To Lower Health Care Insurance Premiums? Start With Mandatory Fee...
Forcing either the health plans or the providers to post a list of costs for routine services is a very low impact way of adding consumer information to the health care market. The government is not...
View ArticleFiguring Out Which Health Plan Is Best For You and Your Family
Before I start gathering coverage information, I create a table with preferred or “must have” providers, hospitals, and drugs in rows, with the available health plans across the top columns. I then...
View ArticleWhy Single Payer Won’t Happen In California In 2019
The single payer proposals I have read deal mainly with the consumer side regarding access to care and reduced patient costs. What seems to be missing is recognition that medical groups and hospital...
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