This article comes from The Baltimore Sun.

During the recent presidential primary campaign, the candidates talked frequently about proposals to reduce the 47 million people in this country without health insurance by measures such as expanding eligibility for Medicaid and requiring that individuals buy coverage or pay a fine. What they failed to do is recognize that lack of coverage is merely a symptom of a larger problem: the high cost of medical care, which makes insurance unaffordable for many.

U.S. health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product run around 16 percent, far in excess of any other technologically advanced country. And we get less for it, as measured by statistics reflecting health status, such as life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rates. We can only hope that in the coming presidential election campaign, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will shift their focus from symptom to cause.

Reforms aimed at controlling medical care costs should recognize the following:

Much of the medical care delivered in the U.S. - perhaps 30 percent to 40 percent - is unnecessary, wasteful, even dangerous. Incentives to provide unnecessary care need to be removed. Providing reimbursement to providers on a capitated, rather than fee-for-service, basis might help. Capitation means the provider is compensated on the basis of the number of people for whose medical care he is responsible rather than the cost of the services provided, motivating the provider to keep costs low. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This article is from U.S. News and World Report.

I’ve written about how one of the biggest problems small-business owners have to deal with is buying health insurance for their employees when the costs are rising so dramatically. The National Association for the Self-Employed released the results of a survey today that gives us some more hard data on the issue. The survey is based on a sample of 4,000 “micro-businesses”—those with 10 or fewer employees—so it tells us about only the smallest of small businesses.

The results drive home how much more expensive it is for small businesses to pay insurance premiums—median costs rose from 3.7 percent of a business’s total revenue to 5.5 percent. But they also offer some surprising statistics that aren’t so negative—some of the smallest firms of this already small group actually saw a greater increase in access to health insurance than other firms. In 2005, 13.8 percent of businesses with under $50,000 in gross sales offered health insurance in 2005. Now that number is up to 40 percent.

The share of micro-business owners who have health insurance for themselves grew from 54.9 percent in 2005 to 67 percent in 2008. Some of that increase, however, might have been made possible for micro-businesses by cutting back on health spending for their employees. The proportion of respondents who buy coverage for their full-time employees dramatically fell from 46.2 percent to 18.6 percent.

This post comes from CNN Money.

How much money do you need to pay the doctor’s bills in retirement? The answer: More than you probably think.

According to a report released Tuesday, the retirement health tab can run between $64,000 and $122,000 for a 65-year-old man whose former employer pays his insurance premiums, and between $86,000 and $140,000 for a woman of the same age. For retirees who don’t have access to an employer-offered plan, the costs - mostly for prescription drugs - run even higher.

“Given the magnitude of money people will need in retirement, they need to prepare for this now,” said Paul Fronstin, director of health research and education programs at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. “They can’t wait for a year or two before retirement to start saving,” he added.

EBRI, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy group, calculated the likelihood that retirees would be able to afford their health bills. It sorted retirees into three categories: covered by Medicare with premiums paid by a former employer’s health plan; covered by Medicare and in a former employer’s plan but receiving no subsidy; covered by Medicare and with purchased supplemental insurance.

According to Fronstin, there are about 9 million retirees who supplement Medicare with employer-sponsored health plans. That’s nearly 22% of the 42 million people currently benefiting from Medicare.

Fronstin, one of the authors of the report, said saving for health care costs in retirement is a more urgent issue than most people believe. He believes that employers will phase out health care benefits to retired employees and that Medicare will become less generous.

He also said many employees mistakenly believe that they will have employee-sponsored health benefits when they retire.

“They’re thinking it’s going to be there for them when it’s not,” Fronstin said.

The report broke down its findings based on the amount of risk retirees are willing to take in having enough money to cover medical bills. At the high-risk level, retirees have a 50% chance of having enough money; the medium risk, a 75% chance; and the low risk, a 90% chance. Click here to read more details and the rest of this interesting article.

This article comes from the San Jose Mercury News.

The ailing California budget has state officials looking at ways to cut the ranks of Medi-Cal recipients who are no longer eligible for the program that provides critical medical coverage for the poor, elderly and disabled.Advocacy groups, however, worry that a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requiring recipients to provide more frequent updates on their financial and residential status amounts to a sneaky way to cut benefits for those who are eligible, including children.

“The intent of that proposal is that a percentage of those families on Medi-Cal will for some reason not fill out the paperwork and fall off the coverage, though they remain eligible,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Health Access California.

The governor’s office and the state Department of Health Care Services said the effort is not intended to deprive eligible people of benefits.

They added, however, that the state’s anticipated $17 billion budget deficit leaves little choice about taking a closer look at who receives Medi-Cal.

“People become ineligible; they may move, they may get a job and get higher income, and they don’t typically remember to tell us of this change. But we continue to cover people,” said Stan Rosenstein, chief deputy director of health care programs for the California Department of Health Care Services. Click here to read the rest of this interesting article.