May 29, 2025 — A new analysis from Milliman has a revelation for health plan managers complaining loudly about the burdensome costs of GLP-1s blowing up their budgets. They’re doing it wrong. Expenses for GLP-1s that can dramatically improve the health of persons with obesity simply do not have to break the bank for a health plan. In fact, […]
August 6, 2024 — “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Ancient texts remind us there is nothing new about stigma and bias toward people living with illness and disability. But still, it is jarring to encounter such expressions of weight bias as the Telegraph published not long ago. William Sitwell wrote: “Fat people are costing us all billions. […]
February 18, 2024 — Who knew that financial toxicity was a thing? Perhaps like us, you have merely thought of it as the financial burden of healthcare – without assigning it the status of a medical complication that dysfunctional healthcare causes. But recent publications are making it ever more clear that people living with chronic diseases are having to […]
September 17, 2023 — OMG. How can we possibly cope with the costs of treating obesity with these expensive new obesity meds? This question seems to be on the lips of many who pay for health plans. But a new study in Nature Communications turns that question on its head. How can we afford to continue withholding effective treatment for […]
December 3, 2020 — We didn’t expect this: COVID-19 is a boon to the health insurance industry. Despite a health crisis killing someone every minute in the U.S., costs for medical care are down. That’s because of people avoiding or delaying healthcare – possibly putting their health at risk. But for health insurers, that means a big increase in […]
February 17, 2013 — A new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the latest signal that something is happening to push health costs in a favorable direction. The CBO is removing hundreds of billions of dollars from its estimates of how much the federal government is spending healthcare. The new estimate is 15% below what was […]
