The President's executive gun control initiatives today involve mental healthcare issues according to the Hill's Healthwatch. This one puzzled the FEHBlog
Obama said his administration would finalize rules on mental health parity, the requiring of mental healthcare to be covered the same way as physical healthcare. The regulations have languished since 2008, and Senate Democrats had called on Obama to push the rules forward as part of his gun-control recommendations.
Those quite complicated 2008 rules were issued in interim final form and have been effective for over four years in the FEHBP. The FEHBlog shudders to think what HHS and DOL have up their respective sleeves on this finalization, but he senses the cost curve moving up again. Several of the President's mental health initiatives make sense but this mental health parity law already has been stretched to its limits (in not beyond) by the existing regulation.
Modern Healthcare reports that hospital prices only rose 5.1% in 2012 compared to 6.2% in 2011. Thank heavens for small miracles. That's just about two times higher than the growth in the urban consumer rice index. The physician price index for 2012 roughly was in line with the CPI-U change.
The AMA News reports that patients, at their doctors's recommendation, are using health and fitness apps created by large health insurers like Aetna and CIGNA. The FEHBlog noticed today that several FEHB plans have apps available on Microsoft's Healthvault as para of OPM's Blue Button initiative.
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