7/30/19
Maverick’s Update: What Matters to You About Health Policy
For all our talk about modernizing, vendors are still shipping paper health records. But the promise of improving health care through modern health technology tools is an earnest and world-wide discussion.
Will health care data breaches (including stories about paying ransom to hackers) and privacy complaints slow down health care data sharing efforts?
Democratic presidential candidates debate this week, and Paul Keckley offers some suggestions for a more thoughtful health care discussion.
One Thoughtful Paragraph
Is health care price transparency good or bad? Transparency is generally described as only a first step (CMS Administrator Seema Verma said so too) and must include quality and out-of-pocket cost data to be meaningful. With three new proposed rules, the Administration is trying to make transparency useful by forcing hospitals to publish proprietary, negotiated rates with insurers(dovetailing with the June 24, 2019 executive order and the proposed interoperability rules). Will this effort suddenly increase health care shoppingeven though almost no one uses the multitude of price comparison tools or price lists that exist now? Will transparency lower costs or will other factors need to change for transparency to matter? Shopping for health care is complicated, but can be aided by clear choices and aligning incentives, and will likely lead to a demand for tools that make it simple.