Contributer: Paula Wade
Topic: Aetna
Other than giving the folks in the Marketing Department something to do, “re-branding” is generally a fairly shallow cosmetic exercise at most businesses. But Aetna’s recent makeover of its logo attends a real transformation in the company’s business, shaped by healthcare reform and market forces and, perhaps, the uncertainty around healthcare’s future.
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Contributer: Ric Gross
Topic: ACOs
When Massachusetts passed its near-universal healthcare reform law in 2006, the state found itself in the center of the healthcare spotlight. In fact, as the law initially received positive reviews, those who helped craft the legislation were treated as a form of rock stars—healthcare versions of Bruce Springsteen, if you will.
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Contributer: Jane DuBose
Topic: Medicare
The past week might be one that Republican presidential candidates and the designers of CMS pilot programs will want to forget. Disappointing results. Funny numbers. The need for better PR. And that’s just Mitt Romney.
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Contributor: Laura Beerman
Topic: Pharmacists
When more people have access to healthcare coverage in 2014, the existing shortage of physicians could make a good doctor even harder to find. Waiting in the wings are other practitioners—including pharmacists—who can provide effective, patient-centered care.
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Contributer: Joel Peyton
Topic: Medicare star ratings
New star ratings metrics that measure both Medicare Advantage plans and Part D prescription drug plan performance could prove difficult for some stand-alone prescription drug plans. While PDP plans do not receive reimbursement bonuses based on overall performance, they do face scrutiny from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services if plans score less than 3 stars for three years in a row.
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Contributer: Sheri Sellmeyer
Topic: Pharma and social media
The days when pharma reps could discuss off-label uses of their companies’ drugs are a distant memory for some, and no memory at all for younger reps who entered the business after the FDA issued strict regulations on the matter.
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Contributer: Ric Gross
Topic: Medicaid
New year, same problem. That is how to best summarize what 2012 means for states as they continue to wrestle with the same issue that plagued them in 2011—namely, the rising cost and caseload of state Medicaid programs. In fact, at least half of the states are facing Medicaid shortfalls in their 2012 budgets. And, in terms of managing that cost, states have a limited array of tools to choose from.
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Contributer: Jane DuBose
Topic: Healthcare costs
Budgets remain pinched in households and boardrooms everywhere, and now there’s a new, national study that confirms what many have been suspecting for more than two years: Americans have tamped down their appetite for healthcare spending.
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Contributer: Sheri Sellmeyer
Topic: Medicaid
As Connecticut chooses to be a contrarian in the world of Medicaid MCOs, don’t look for it to spawn any imitators. Beginning this month, nonprofit MCO Community Health Network will run Connecticut’s program on an administrative-services-only contract.
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Contributer: Jane DuBose
Topic: Medicare
I’m sure it wouldn’t be a best seller, but it’s almost as if we need a mobile-phone app to keep up with the new Medicare care coordination programs from the federal government.
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