health insurance

The Olin Business School now offers a major in healthcare management. Professors from both the medical and business schools will teach courses to both business and non-business majors. The degree will help develop a strong grounding in all aspects of the health care industry as well as in the science behind medicine.

The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis now offers a major in healthcare management. Professors from both the medical and business schools will teach courses to both business and non-business majors. The degree will help develop a strong grounding in all aspects of the healthcare industry as well as in the science behind medicine.

Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, will be among the speakers at a June 8 conference on Medicaid financing.Rising healthcare costs and diminishing health insurance coverage will be among critical issues debated by leading medical policy experts as Washington University hosts a daylong public forum on Medicaid financing June 8 in the School of Medicine’s Eric P. Newman Education Center. Participants include top administrators from a half dozen major research hospitals and a range of academic, government and think-tank policy experts, including Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Rising health care costs and diminishing health insurance coverage will be among critical issues debated by leading medical-policy experts as the University hosts a daylong public forum on Medicaid financing June 8.

Steven SmithPresident George W. Bush’s State of the Union address on Jan. 23 may be remembered as one of the least consequential State of the Union addresses in a generation, but its presentation could open the door on a period of real legislative compromise as both parties struggle to boster reputations in advance of the 2008 elections, suggests Steven Smith, an expert on congressional politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Video Available

The Bush administration’s plan to push through health savings accounts is limited in how much it can lower healthcare costs, according to a business professor in the Olin School of Business at Washington University. He says that health savings accounts could work for some things – if the relationship between most doctors and patients changes, and if there were greater acceptance of the variety of ways to keep people healthy. More…

Bernstein”Imagine an electrical appliance industry with plugs of 9,000 different shape and sizes that need one of 9,000 matching sockets to work. Preposterous as that is, that’s the “design” of American health insurance – tens of thousands of medical care providers must plug their billions of billings into thousands of differing insurance policies,” says Merton C. Bernstein, a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “This wasteful design has its silver lining, though. Eliminating administrative costs through universal Medicare coverage, or Medicare-for-All, would save as much as $280 to $300 billion a year, enough to pay for covering the 45 million uninsured. ”

Eliminating the need to ascertain eligibility.Years of double-digit increases in health care costs are devastating business, federal, state and family budgets. While the United States pays more per capita for health care than any other industrialized country, 44 million people lack assured care. “Most people overlook the most affordable way to achieve universal coverage – putting all of us under the Medicare umbrella,” says Merton C. Bernstein, a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “That single-payer system would reduce non-benefit spending by doctors, hospitals, clinics, laboratories and health care insurers by about $300 billion a year, providing funds to insure everyone without additional outlays.”