Health Technology Forum: DC Meetup March 11 Featuring "Spring Success Stories"

If you are in the Washington, DC area, please join the Health Technology Forum: DC for an event featuring local entreprensurs, including Kevin MacDonald of KitCheck, which has just raised $12 billion of Series B funding to continue to grow its cloud and RFID based medication tracking business.

More information and details are at Health Technology Forum: DC.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Reward Medicare Patients For Saving Medicare Money

One of the most under-reported medical success stories in recent years has been the increase in medical tourism: traveling abroad to get high-quality care at a fraction of what it would cost in the United States.

The same Lasik eye surgery that might cost $4,400 here (for both eyes) is available in India, for example, for $500, according to the Medical Tourism Association. A heart-valve replacement that might cost $170,000 in the United States could cost less than $30,000 in Israel.

While going overseas for care isn’t for most people, it certainly should make us wonder why we don’t encourage Americans, especially Medicare recipients whose bills are largely paid by taxpayers, to at least shop around in their own states or communities.

Read the entire article at the Washington Post.

Get the Federal Government Out of the Electronic Health Records Business

In 2009, the federal government decided that doctors and hospitals were slow to take up electronic health records (EHR).  Isn’t everyone fed up with filling out forms and having his or her medical records filed in manila folders?  So the feds decided to dish out $30 billion to pay doctors and hospitals to install EHRs credentialed by a new government agency, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC).

By July 2014, $25 billion of these payments had gone out the door.  Unfortunately, results indicate that this federal spending has perverted the natural adoption of EHRs, and may have even lowered the quality of care.

Read the entire article at The American Thinker.

The Administration Should Fully Disclose The Risks of Enrolling in Obamacare For 2015

More and more businesses are figuring out that continuing to offer health benefits puts them at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis firms who socialize the cost of health care by shifting their employees onto Obamacare exchanges. These crafty firms, however, probably don’t realize they are putting their employees at enormous risk. If they are operating in one of 36 states where Obamacare might come to a screeching halt in the second half of 2015, their workers could lose their subsidized Obamacare plans as early as July.

Read the entire column in The Hill.

Health Care Spending Is Up, Way Up

The economic data on health spending has been bouncing around like crazy in the age of Obamacare, so we must not read too much into one report. Nevertheless, the January 30 report on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates that health spending has begun to race up again, despite moderate economic growth.

Read the entire column at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.

Relax: The FDA Will Not Regulate Things That Increase The Flow Of Your Qi

Qi, as I understand it, is a term in Chinese culture that refers to the life force or natural energy that flows in living things and, perhaps, the entire universe. Many Americans know about it through Chinese traditional medicine or martial arts. If you are a fan of such practices, you will be glad to learn that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently announced that it has no plans to regulate items which claim “to increase, improve, or enhance the flow of qi” as medical devices.

Read the entire column at Forbes.

Medical Device Excise Tax Kills Jobs, Obamacare Kills Many More

The sweet smell of success for the medical-device industry is wafting over Capitol Hill. News from Senator Orrin Hatch is that the Senate will take up repeal of the medical-device excise tax. This is a tax of 2.3 percent on most medical devices that was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act to fund Obamacare.

Read the entire column at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.