medicare
Broker commissions, visualized
The chart above, from a presentation last week from staffers at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, illustrates an important point that may help explain why so many people have rushed into Medicare Advantage over the years even though those plans may not be a good fit for them.
Brokers and agents can make a lot more money — 39% more over five years — if they get people to sign up for and renew a Medicare Advantage plan instead of staying in traditional Medicare. But those very tangible incentives may not always be clear to Medicare enrollees, MedPAC’s commissioners said.
hospitals
When hospitals become sumo wrestlers
Here’s a periodic reminder not to ignore local hospital mergers, because they occasionally raise more questions than they answer.
Near the Indiana-Kentucky border, Deaconess Health, the dominant hospital system in the area, is absorbing the 194-bed Jennie Stuart Health hospital and its outpatient clinics. The systems are promising to “enhance the quality of local health care” — without defining at all what that means.
The reality: Jennie Stuart is treading water financially (-0.5% operating margin on $223 million of annual revenue), and Deaconess is very profitable (5% operating margin on $2.3 billion of annual revenue). Jennie Stuart, which is in Hopkinsville, Ky., just gained the backing of a powerful nearby health system to take on the area’s other hospital heavyweight, Baptist Health. The big question: Will these sumo wrestlers compete on price, or drive up costs for the area’s insurers and employers? Deaconess and Jennie Stuart did not immediately respond to a request for comment from STAT.
