Reimbursement
Based on insurer estimates of payables and receivables, plus an uncertain funding limit, the risk corridor program can seem like it's actually making the new individual market more shaky.
Perhaps the most visible wage hike by a chief executive in a century, Aetna's hourly raises are part of an audacious effort to not only profit in the new healthcare economy but influence its course.
While so much is changing, so much is still the same in healthcare, like the fact that some 85 percent of commercial health insurance payments are still paper-based.
As providers face declines in reimbursement from commercial plans, they are seeing more patients covered under the lower-reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare.
The increasing prevalence of diabetes is, as it happens, coming with rising costs, especially for kids.
The government continues to seek complex payment methodologies, which often involve problematic incentives to improve the existing system. Therein lies the problem.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott's high-stakes visit to Washington to persuade the Obama administration to keep the federal government's $1 billion in annual funding for hospital care of the poor produced no breakthrough.
Paul Keckley, managing director for Navigant Center Healthcare Research and Policy Analysis, says King v. Burwell will decide much of the controversial reform's fate.
From a niche option for busy parents to a $16 billion ubiquitous sub-industry, retail healthcare clinics are offering more choices for a range of ailments. And there are a lot more opportunities to evolve the model.
As long as employer-sponsored benefits are here to stay, one technology company wants to be a modern kind of broker and HR service. It may or may not spell an early retirement wave for a generation of insurance producers.