Blog posts on health care

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Health Savings Accounts in the USA

  Health Savings Accounts (HSA) allow you to save money in order to pay health expenses in a tax free account. They are similar to an IRA but are for health expenses.  Eligibility is limited to those with high deductible health care plans.

  HSA funds can be saved over the years. Flexible spending accounts are somewhat similar but that money can not be rolled from one year to the next. The idea with HSA is you can save money in good years so you have money to pay health care expenses in years when you have them.

   

  HSA are a great tool to buffer yourself against the very costly USA healthcare system.  It is far from a solution to the huge personal financial risks the USA system imposes on people, but it is a wise small step to help cope with the system until we finally get around to catching up to the rest of the rich countries on earth by adopting a much less bad health care system.

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• The Continued Failure of the USA Health Care System and Our Politicians

  Providing a health care is extremely costly everywhere. Rich countries nearly universally provide a health care system that allows all citizens to get needed health care. Nowhere is it perfect and nowhere is it cheap. And nowhere is it more of a mess than in the USA.

  Sadly those we elect in the USA have continued for the last few decades to keep the USA healthcare system the mess we have now. The Affordable Care Act took a relatively small step in addressing several of the most flawed aspects of the USA system. It left unaddressed many of the major flaws. Instead of taking where we are now and making improvements to address the problems left from decades of Democrat and Republican created and maintained USA health care policy all we have had are demands to “repeal Obamacare.”

  This is exactly the type on avoiding improvements to maintain the existing (for the last few decades) broken healthcare system those in the USA must live with. 

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  We need to elect people dedicated to improving results not those interested in repeating slogans and avoiding any actual work on actually making things better.

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• ACA Healthcare Subsidy – Why Earning $100 More Could Cost You $5,000 or More

  One of the benefits of the USA Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) is that health insurance costs are subsidized for those earning less than 400% of poverty level income. The way that this has been designed you could get $5,000 (or more, or less) in subsidies if you earn just below the 400% level and $0 if you earn just above.

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  60 year old in Virginia - earning $48,200 would receive $7,073 in subsidies (60% of the cost*). Earning $48,300 would mean receiving $0 in subsidies (for this and also examples, the examples shown are for a single individual, you can use the tool to try different scenarios).

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  The subsidy levels for those with very high health insurance costs (especially those over 50 years old, or with a family) are very large. If you are close to the subsidy cutoff level the costs of going over can be huge, costing you $5,000 or even over $10,000 just by making an extra $100.

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• New Health Care Insurance Subsidies in the USA

  Under the new law, nobody will have to pay more than 8.5% of their income on health insurance. The government will also pick up 100% of COBRA premiums through September. COBRA is health insurance for people who’ve lost their jobs.

  The Kaiser Family Foundation calculator lets you get a quick idea of what your approximate subsidy benefit. A 55 year old earning $55,000 would be entitled to a subsidy of $4,700 about 50% of their health insurance costs (based on the USA average). For a 50 year old the subsidy would be $2,900 or 38%. For a 60 year old the subsidy would be $6,800 or 59%. For a couple of 35 year olds and 2 children the subsidy would be $12,100 per year or 72%.

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• Benefits of a Mediterranean Diet May Include Reduced Risk of Cognitive Impairment As We Age

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  I have been taking this into account in my eating. I try to eat much more green leafy vegetable (though more is from my very low levels before). I try to reduce the amount of meat and increase the amount of fish and nuts. I try to eat enough fiber and I eat yogurt. I try to eat more fruits and vegetables in general. I try to reduce the amount of processed foods and sugar. My diet is far from great but it is much better than is was 20 years ago. I have probably been focused on doing better for over 10 years (post from 9 years ago: Healthy Diet, Healthy Living, Healthy Weight).

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• Traveling for Health Care

  My guess is that traveling for health care is going to increase greatly in the future. Health costs in the USA are enormous. Costs in Europe are different – often in wait time (or costs to avoid waiting) but another option is available – travel. Countries would be very wise to focus on building up this industry in my opinion. The economic benefits could be huge. The market is huge and growing. And the rich countries do not appear to be doing very well – especially the USA. The country needs to invest in a rigorous quality assurance system.

  It is almost certain the first attack will be attempts to frighten customers by saying your country is unsafe. And those tactics will be used to try and get the governments of rich countries to impose restraints on the ability of their citizens to seek health care in your country...

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• Alzheimer’s and the Complex Scientific Inquiry Process

  Medical research is complex. Once we figure out what is most critical and discover effective treatments often the explanations can then make it seem fairly simple. But that process is often decades of efforts that include years of frustration and confusion.
  
  For long term medical impacts we often need to guess at important biomarker indications that may be closely related to health outcomes. But that process often isn’t as easy as it sounds.

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• Great Visual Instruction Example

  This does a great job of explaining what you need to know clearly. While this presentation for Azithromycin doesn’t prevent a mistake it sure makes it much more likely that the process can be completed successfully. We need more effort in creating such clear instructions.

  Visual clarity is more important than lots of words. Applying that concept is not as easy as it sounds but it is a very important idea for instructions to end use and instructions for processes in your organization.

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• Measuring the Health of Nations

  Rankings: 1) France 2) Japan 3) Australia 4) Spain 5) Italy 6) Canada… 18) Portugal 19 and last) USA.

  The United States health system has some things to point to positively but the system seems to be losing ground to the rest of the world more and more quickly while many cling to a belief it is the best system around.

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• Losing Consumers’ Trust

  People are emotional about their food safety. It is not just the final results that matter but the impression given. And the impression I think many see is that those involved in the food industry often place money about a mission to feed the world.

  I think it is a mistake for any company to focus on only money rather than a larger purpose. But that is especially true if customers have an emotional connection to your product that requires customer to trust you care about them.

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• Drug Price Crisis

  It is nice to find at least a couple of people at MIT that want to have MIT focus research on the public good instead of private profit. As I have mentioned too many universities now act like they are for-profit drug or research companies. That is wrong. Drug companies can do so, institutions with purported higher purposes should not be driven to place advancing science below profiting the institution.

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• Society fails to invest in long-term solutions to long-term problems

  I respect John Green and his brother, Hank. Their Vlogbrothers YouTube Chanel is a regular, enjoyable and educational part of my online activity. I recommend watching a few of videos and seeing if they should also be part of your online activity. Here is a screenshot from when John liked one of my tweets :-)

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