With the implementation of health insurance exchanges in October 2013 and the beginning of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, there is tremendous risk for the American public to be worse off. Certainly the millions of Americans who currently are uninsured because their employers do not offer insurance coverage and those with pre-existing conditions unable to purchase affordable individual coverage, will benefit. It is those with employer based insurance coverage who may lose. They just don’t know it yet. Employers have found it difficult to absorb the rising health insurance premiums and costs, which have increased faster than inflation. They have tried many ways to slow health care spending including requiring employees to have more “financial skin in the game” to encourage them to make “smarter” choices about their health care. They’ve done this with higher deductibles and co-pays and requiring employees to pay a larger percentage […] Read More »
Tag Archive for entrepreneurs
The problem with health insurance exchanges. The risk for patients. Pension plan to 401k analogy.
Posted on October 3, 2013
Future of Health Care Crystal Ball Via Rock Health – Inspiring Stories. Much Potential. More Questions.
Posted on August 27, 2013
If you want to see the future of health care, the can’t miss conference of the year is the Health Innovation Summit hosted by Rock Health in San Francisco. As a practicing primary care doctor, I had the opportunity to view health care through the lenses of a technology entrepreneur. I thought the conference was even better than the one I attended last year. Absent was the provocative rhetoric by 2012 keynote speaker Vinod Khosla who noted that “technology will replace 80 percent of doctors”. What continued to remain was the curiosity, confidence, enthusiasm, and optimism that health care and medical care could be even better and the willingness of entrepreneurs to fix a problem and build a business around it. Themes I found particularly interesting included the following: Make health care smarter by creating platforms, whether software or hardware, like wearables, to collect patient data and to analyze data, […] Read More »
Is HealthTap Good for Doctors?
Posted on July 16, 2013
Is HealthTap good for doctors? I had a chance to hear Ron Gutnam, CEO and founder of HealthTap, at the 2013 Stanford Innovation Health Summit. He describes it best (comments begin at 3:00). “Patients or people can get health answers from physicians in minutes for free using their mobile devices, using their web browser from any time and any where. We started with pediatricians and obstetricians serving pregnant women and moms. Less than two years we have expanded our physician network to over 37,000 US licensed physicians in good standing, 128 specialties in all 50 states. We have physicians in over 3100 cities across the country. You can go to HealthTap, ask any question you want and get an answer for free in minutes or a few hours. There is a shift in how people want to get their health information today, from whom, and how fast they expect to […] Read More »
Recasting the Patient as Consumer – Good Idea? Consumer Driven Health Care?
Posted on June 13, 2013
Are patients now consumers? I recently jumped at the opportunity to attend the 2013 Healthcare Innovation Summit at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Subtitled IT-Enabled Disruption, it featured opening keynote speaker Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Stanford psychologist and lecturer Dr. Kelly McGonigal, and many other interesting people asking – how do we change health care? Recasting the Patient as Consumer As a practicing primary care doctor, the most intriguing session was labeled – “Recasting the Patient as Consumer”. I have major reservations that this is what patients really want. I have some skepticism on whether consumer driven health care can truly make care more affordable (here, here, here, and here). Was the current fad of pushing the onus of health squarely on the individual may be too simplistic? Panel members included: Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap Bassam Kadry, Anesthesiologist and Participatory Medicine Advocate Ann Lamont, Managing Partner of […] Read More »
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