Search the News Archive

Health Insurers May Be Finding New Ways to Discriminate Against Patients

[A]advocates say ... some insurers are placing high-cost medications for chronic conditions into the highest-priced tiers of the drugs they cover, which would force patients to pay potentially thousands of more dollars out of pocket for essential medications.... A new analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that is the case. Of 48 exchange health plans Harvard School of Public Health researchers analyzed, they identified 12 plans that appeared to discriminate against HIV patients."

Negative Studies of Depression Meds Remain Unpublished

Excerpt: Industry-sponsored studies of antidepressants that come up with positive results are more likely to be published than those that come up with negative results, says a paper in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Money Motivates Smokers to Kick the Habit

Excerpt: Want people to improve their health? Pay them to do it. There's more evidence suggesting financial incentives work. A study published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found smokers who were paid to quit succeeded far more often than those who got no cash reward. This comes on the heels of another study that found cash payments successfully encouraged people to lose weight. Both studies were led by Kevin Volpp of the University of Pennsylvania's business and medical schools.

Health, Life Insurers Hold Billions in Tobacco Stocks

Excerpt: A new article on insurance company holdings, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, shows that U.S., Canadian and U.K.-based insurance firms hold at least $4.4 billion of investments in companies whose subsidiaries manufacture cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco and related products.... 'These data raise a red flag about the prospects of opening up vast new markets for private insurers at public expense, as has happened in our state of Massachusetts, whose recent health care reform is often cited as a model for national reform.'

A Randomized Trial of Four Financial-Incentive Programs for Smoking Cessation

"Of those assigned to reward-based programs, 90.0% accepted the assignment, as compared with 13.7% of those assigned to deposit-based programs.... Reward-based programs were associated with higher abstinence rates than deposit-based programs ... However, ... the rate of abstinence at 6 months was 13.2 percentage points higher in the deposit-based programs than in the reward-based programs among the estimated 13.7% of the participants who would accept participation in either type of program."

Advertising May Have More Influence on Prescriptions Than Science

Excerpt: Few Canadians are taking a controversial new cholesterol-lowering drug compared with millions in the United States, where the medication has been heavily promoted, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results suggest that advertising may have a greater influence on the use of a medication than scientific evidence.

Mental Health Coverage Affordable, Study Finds

"A new study involving federal employees has found that providing better mental health coverage does not lead to an explosion in insurance costs, a potentially important development in an old national debate over what insurance plans should cover. The study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, examined seven federal health plans in the years after 1999[.]"

Are Your Health-Promotion Programs Really Saving You Money?

Excerpt: Preventive services have been a prime component of the Obama administration's vision for healthcare reform. Underlying it is the idea that prevention adds up to billions in savings by boosting patient wellness and providing early detection of conditions that, if allowed to go untreated, could wind up costing more in their advanced stages. But not so fast. Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, sent a letter to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee citing a 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed that 'slightly fewer than 20% of [preventive] services that were examined save money, while the rest add to costs. ... [S]creening costs will exceed the savings from avoided treatment in cases in which only a very small fraction of the population would become ill in the absence of preventive measures.'

Comparing Local and Regional Variation in Health Care Spending

"There was substantial local variation in health care (drug and nondrug) utilization and spending. Furthermore, many of the low-spending hospital service areas (HSAs) were located in high-spending hospital referral regions (HRRs), and many of the high-spending HSAs were in low-spending HRRs.... The effectiveness of payment reforms in reducing overutilization while maintaining access to high-quality care depends on the effectiveness of targeting.... HRR-based policies may be too crudely targeted to promote the best use of health care resources."

Experts Release 11-Point Plan To Reduce Health Spending

"The proposals include state spending targets; competitive bidding for medical devices, laboratory tests and other Medicare services; and a dramatic move away from the traditional way doctors and hospitals are paid. They were the consensus of a group of 23 mainly centrist and left-leaning economists, academics and former Obama administration officials, including Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Ezekiel Emanuel, who served as health policy adviser to the OMB. Emanuel was the chief author of the report, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine."