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Jay Hancock was a senior correspondent for Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News until he retired in Feburary 2022.
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Self-insurance, once the purview of only large companies, is becoming popular with small employers, too. But it could be a threat to the Affordable Care Act, since self-insured companies are exempt from many of the health law's requirements.
"We're in the midst of a mania right now," Dr. Scot Silverstein warns, speaking of the race to adopt electronic health records. "We know it causes harm, and we don't even know the level of magnitude. That statement alone should be the basis for the greatest of caution and slowing down."
Despite rapid growth in high-deductible health plans and rising employee contributions for insurance premiums, consumers' share of national health spending continued to fall in 2011 -- slipping to its lowest level in decades.
Thanks to Medicare payment incentives, hospitals and doctors are swiftly installing computerized patient information systems. Nearly 100,000 health care providers are using electronic health records (EHRs), the Department of Health and Human Services said in June.
The proposed regulations deal with several key issues, such as how plans structure their health benefits, the variations on premiums based on age and requirements for wellness programs.
The president's victory cements the Affordable Care Act, expanding coverage to millions but leaving weighty questions about how to pay for it.
The highest court in the country upheld most of the Affordable Care Act in June. But everybody knew it was only an overture to today's contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
Insurers are spending big dollars on marketing, technology and risk analysis of the new health care landscape. But with exchanges supposed to go live in late 2013, where and how companies will plunge - and how deep - is far from clear.
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