Presidential candidates aren’t the only high profile figures weighing in on how America can fix the broken parts of its health care system. Harvard Business School’s Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration, Clayton Christensen, author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and other best-selling works on innovation that have come out of his Harvard case study work, lays out...
Health Care Industry Archive
October 2008
Late last week, the health-insurance company UnitedHealth Group said its third-quarter profits only fell by 28 percent, and the fact that things weren’t worse led to general applause on Wall Street. Its battered shares are even up almost nine percent since its earnings release. Look inside the numbers, though, and it’s clear that the health plan’s biggest — and still...
HLTH, WebMD call off merger — HLTH, a holding company that currently owns 84 percent of the publicly traded WebMD, pulled the plug on a proposed merger with that subsidiary. The companies cited financial-market uncertainty and difficulty finding a buyer for a second HLTH unit, Porex, which makes plastic products for healthcare. [Source: Bloomberg] Medicaid spending to soar — The...
Intuitive Surgical, a maker of surgical robotics for minimally invasive procedures, reported robust third quarter 2008 revenue growth of 50 percent. The company cited expanding acceptance of its surgical robots and higher sales of its da Vinci Surgical Systems, particularly for hysterectomies and prostate surgery. The system, however, which can sell for anywhere from $1 million to $1.7 million...
Massachusetts Blues focus on internal cost-cutting — In a departure for the managed-healthcare field, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts aims to rein in its own administrative costs as a way of coping with the erosion of employer-based health insurance and competition. The move strikes a sharp contrast with that of most health-insurance organizations, which typically deal with...
So now the health-insurance provider WellPoint has put up $10 million for a new X Prize — one that promises the money to anyone who can figure out a new way to fix the healthcare system. The X Prize Foundation is the same organization that created similar prize competitions in order to encourage entrepreneurs to build a private manned spacecraft (which one did, sort of), vastly speed up...
Congress calls for investigation of Health Net — The Woodland, Calif.-based health-insurance company is in the sights of Congress, especially John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell accuses Health Net of using misleading robocalls to pressure seniors into enrolling for particular Medicare Advantage plans. [Source: Modern Healthcare] Chicago hospital...
One of the reasons healthcare is such a hairball to understand — much less reform — is that so few of the actual workings of the system are remotely transparent. Much hospital pricing, for instance, is so deeply shrouded in layers of individually negotiated discounts, almost none of which are publicly disclosed, that many doctors and even administrators often don’t know what a...
Anthem Blue Cross sued for rescission-settlement efforts — Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo sued the health-insurance company, a unit of WellPoint, charging that it illegally sought to reach settlements with policyholders by offering them $1,000 in exchange for dropping all legal claims. Anthem and several other health plans recently settled state accusations that they had...
Medical care doesn’t sound like one of those things consumers would skimp on when times get tough. Yet signs are mounting that patients are in fact delaying or skipping on treatment as a result of higher costs and concerns over the economic downturn against the backdrop of the financial crisis. The data, in many respects, are still somewhat on the soft side. A recent analyst report by...
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