“Just in time for the next presidential election, health care spending is starting to take off again. Through 2024, health care spending is projected to grow by 5.8% annually, on average, according to CMS. While this isn’t unexpected—health economists across the political spectrum expected health care costs to start growing again (and growth rates are expected to still be lower than the long-run average)—the window for addressing health care costs in a less painful way is closing. Without better cost controls in the private sector, and without immediate reforms to Medicare, the health care sector is set to gobble up a full fifth of the U.S. economy in just 10 years.
So the Obama Administration is going to have to put some corks back into their champagne bottles. Obamacare has not slain the health care cost dragon. Back to the drawing board.”
“Despite media rhetoric about soaring drug prices, absent a one-off jump in drug spending from expensive, life-saving Hepatitis C drugs, drug spending as a share of U.S. health care spending is expected to remain largely flat: from 9.9% in 2014 to 10.4% in 2024.
Less than 1% growth is hardly a cost explosion.
The big drivers of spending growth will, unsurprisingly, will be Medicaid and Medicare. Even as per-capita costs in these programs grow relatively slowly—averaging just around 4% through 2024—greater enrollment in the two programs will drive spending: 7% for Medicare, thanks to a retiring cohort of baby boomers, and around 6 percent for Medicaid, mainly due to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.” - America's Health Care-Cost Slowdown Goes Kaput, Forbes, 08/22/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/08/22/americas-health-care-cost-slowdown-goes-kaput-what-should-republicans-say-and-do-about-it/
‘Amid the holiday season craziness, The Washington Post published an in-depth account of how a subsidiary of Canadian IT giant CGI Group won the contract to lead the design and testing of the HealthCare.gov website.
The article debunked rumors that cronyism motivated the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) September 2011 decision to award CGI Federal the $93.7 million contract. Instead, the Post found that the main culprit was CMS, which by its own admission “dropped the ball” on evaluating the company’s background.
Specifically, what CMS contracting officials overlooked and/or downplayed was that more than 100 of CGI’s employees came from Virginia-based IT company American Management Systems (AMS), which CGI acquired in 2004. According to the Post, AMS had mishandled at least 20 government IT projects, including one particularly well-publicized fiasco involving the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board’s $36 million overhaul of its recordkeeping system.
AMS’s questionable past performance on government contracts should have set off alarms in 2007, when CMS awarded CGI and 15 other companies an umbrella contract allowing them to bid on future CMS projects. In fact, a former CMS official told the Post that AMS’s track record “could well have knocked [CGI Federal] out of the competition, and probably should have.”’
‘The part of the Post story that really rankled the Project On Government Oversight is contained in this passage:
While it is unclear whether agency officials examined the AMS track record, former CMS officials said it probably would not have made much difference, because past performance has long been an overlooked component of federal contracting.’
- HealthCare.gov Debacle Reveals Flaws in Contractor Screening, pogo.org, 01/03/2013
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2014/01/healthcaregov-debacle-revelas-flaws-in-contractor-screening.html
H/T: Crony Chronicles
'Disgraced federal bureaucrats don't seem to resign these days. They certainly aren't fired -- and even when they are, they appeal and are reinstated. No, they "retire," and make off with a raft of taxpayer-funded benefits accrued over years of "public service." As Ms. Snyder prepares to step aside to spend more time with her family or whatever, her boss is singing her praises:
CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner noted in an email that Snyder was set to leave CMS at the end of 2012 but stayed on at Tavenner’s request to help with “the challenges facing CMS in 2013.” “While the agency is losing a key member of its leadership team, we should celebrate Michelle’s dedication to a mission that provides vital health care services to tens of millions of our fellow Americans through the Medicare and Medicaid programs,” Tavenner said. Snyder is the second top CMS official to leave since the website’s rocky rollout. Tony Trenkle, who served as the agency’s chief information officer, retired in November.
A job well done, Michelle. Bravo. And what did that job entail? According to the New York Times, "her official biography says that Ms. Snyder was responsible for “standing up new programs and activities required by the Affordable Care Act." And who among us wouldn't "celebrate" her job performance? Aside from the millions who struggled to log on to the broken website she oversaw, and plugged sensitive data into a compromised website, that is. Mary Katharine Ham quips, "Botch the roll-out of the president’s legacy law so badly that you end up with three million fewer insured people than when we started, and you get to retire, announce it over a holiday weekend, and grab that juicy pension for 41 years of mediocre-to-disastrous public service." ' - Shhh: Embattled Obamacare Official Quietly 'Retires', townhall.com, 12/31/2013
Link to entire article appears below:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/12/31/shhh-embattled-obamacare-official-quietly-retires-n1770213?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm
'Weber Shandwick won a $3.1 million contract to help the Department of Health and Human Service roll out a campaign to convince skeptical -- or simply confused -- Americans the Affordable Care Act is good for them and convince them to enroll in a health plan.
Weber Shandwick's contract is limited to work on the rollout of Obamacare and it's not likely the agency will be involved in defending the administration in the latest dustup over Obamacare.
It seems businesses who want to purchase insurance coverage in state exchanges may only be able to offer their workers one plan next year because some states may not have exchanges for businesses fully set up by next year's deadline.
Rather, Weber Shandwick, which didn't return requests for comment, will be tasked with implementing roll-out communications based on old-fashioned marketing principles.”
One tactic involves the use of marketing -- and the help of Experian and other companies that target audiences -- to understand the psychology of the uninsured.
The department is getting a handle on "what worked best when we launched other large-scale health programs like [the Medicare prescription drug program' … and building from those experiences in order to be ready to execute effective tactics," said a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, the HHS agency in charge of the campaign.
CMS said it will tailor its message to different sectors of a consumer group that is 48 million strong but not monolithic.
CMS broke down the uninsured by geographic location and income levels. It also divided the uninsured into six basic groups based on attitudes.
Three of them won't be targeted. They are the "Informed, Healthy and Educated," the "Mature and Secure" and the "Vulnerable and Unengaged."
Instead, CMS will home in on three other groups that make up about 90% of the uninsured. They are the "Sick, Active and Worried," "Healthy and Young" and "Passive and Unengaged."
The Sick, Active and Worried people are Baby Boomers and Generation Xers who are savvy about health insurance but worried about cost and may have pre-existing conditions or a chronic illness that puts insurance out of their reach financially.
The Healthy and Young group are those in good health and think healthcare is unimportant. The Passive and Unengaged group is older but healthy and its members don't understand much about health insurance or care because they "live for the day." ‘ - Ana Radelat, Advertising Age, 04/05/2013
The entire article appears in the link below:
http://adage.com/article/news/weber-shandwick-obamacare-rollout/240744/
