Trends With Benefits | This American Life

An amazingly helpful look into what our disability program has become. Done with the usual attention to humanity and detail as we have come to expect from This American Life.

490: Trends With Benefits

Mar 22, 2013

The number of Americans receiving federal disability payments has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. There are towns and counties around the nation where almost 1/4 of adults are on disability. Planet Money's Chana Joffe-Walt spent 6 months exploring the disability program, and emerges with a story of the U.S. economy quite different than the one we've been hearing

Trends With Benefits | This American Life

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Are Americans Finding Affordable Coverage in the Health Insurance Marketplaces? - The Commonwealth Fund

Some good graphics and a chart pack on this topic. There are losers in this – higher income individuals and families who don’t qualify for significant subsidies under the exchanges.

By the end of the first open enrollment period for coverage offered through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, increasing numbers of people said they found it easy to find a plan they could afford, according to The Commonwealth Fund’s Affordable Care Act Tracking Survey, April–June 2014. Adults with low or moderate incomes were more likely to say it was easy to find an affordable plan than were adults with higher incomes. Adults with low or moderate incomes who purchased a plan through the marketplaces this year have similar premium costs and deductibles as adults in the same income ranges with employer-provided coverage. A majority of adults with marketplace coverage gave high ratings to their insurance and were confident in their ability to afford the care they need when sick.

Are Americans Finding Affordable Coverage in the Health Insurance Marketplaces? - The Commonwealth Fund

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A Direct Primary Care Medical Home: The Qliance Experience

An innovative primary care model…

Who and Where A Seattle primary care practice accepting patients of all ages, staffed by internists, family physicians, and nurse practitioners.

Core Innovations In this direct care practice, in lieu of insurance, patients pay an age-adjusted monthly fee for unrestricted, comprehensive primary care. Patients have no copayments for visits. Low overhead allows providers to have small patient panels, giving patients better access and allowing more time per visit. The objective is to shift care away from expensive specialists and hospitals.

Key Results Qliance has established a viable, sustainable business model with low overhead and patient panels about a third the size of those of the average insurance-based family physician. This has allowed patients to enjoy much greater access and clinicians to delve much more deeply into patients’ health issues, do more research on health problems, work more closely with consultants when necessary, and work more intensively with patients on health change, leading to greater engagement of and satisfaction among clinicians.

A Direct Primary Care Medical Home: The Qliance Experience

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