GLG News by Medicare Experts

The reason Marsh is struggling is because of poor leadership ending up with $850,000,000+ in fines from NY, IL and CT for bid rigging and prohibited contingency fees.  Future profitability & growth for these brokerages is anything but certain and likely to grow very slowly because they are...

A new article is highly critical of the pharmacy outsourcing businesses run by the big 3 wholesalers -- AmerisourceBergen (ABC), Cardinal Health (CAH), and McKesson (MCK). But after reading the article, I’m still not sure whether (a) there systemic flaws in the wholesalers' pharmacy outsourcing business...

The plans that figure out how to get doctors to self manage best of breed chronic care will certainly spend less money treating their insured lives.  For example, preventing a colon cancer, cervical cancer, heart bypass, transplants, premature infant, stroke or MI saves big bucks.  It saves...

Cardinal Health (CAH) recently stopped shipping controlled substances to certain customers so as to avoid a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) suspension of its license at a fourth facility.  It appears that Cardinal Health’s new role as supply chain enforcer is angering some of the customers who have...

An interesting new report finds that the drug price comparison web sites run by 10 U.S. states are not always useful or usable.  The wide variations in pharmacy prices for a common, high volume generic make me wonder about the efficiency of the pharmacy market and the value of apparent transparency. ...

Using appropriate Pay for Performance programs can drive physician behavior and results in changes in utilization, these should be continued but the patient component is a larger issue.    

Technology is proposed as a means to control health care costs through making the system more efficient.  While a more efficient system will certainly be helpful, our current population needs a change in behavior in a societal way if we truly hope to bend the trend.

We are beginning to see the changes required to create a movement around the idea of prevention. Companies that can focus on this space and produce results will be the future of health care.

Although patient deaths are of grave concern, the impact of a heparin shortage stand to put around 400,000 US dialysis patients at risk.  Heparin is the "oil of hemodialysis" and without it, hemodialysis would come to a standstill. There are alternatives available, such as Andiomax and Lovenox,...

Healthways has apparently decided that it is in their best interest to fight back against CMS over the recently released CMS report stating that vendors in Phase I of the Medicare Health Support Projects did not meet outcome or cost results. This may prove short sighted, and is certainly no way to make...