SAN JOSE, Calif., (Reuters)—At its Silicon Valley headquarters, network gear maker Cisco Systems Inc. is going to unusual lengths to take control of the relentless increase in its U.S. healthcare costs. The company is among a handful of large American employers who are getting more deeply involved in managing their workers’ health instead of looking…
Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan Partner to Cut U.S. Healthcare Costs
NEW YORK (Reuters)—Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. said on Tuesday they will form a company to cut health costs for hundreds of thousands of their employees, setting up a major challenge to an inefficient U.S. healthcare system. The move by three of the best-known U.S. business leaders—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Berkshire’s…
Healthcare Prices Hard to Find Online
(Reuters Health)—Consumers who search online for prices of common medical procedures may be disappointed by what they find, a U.S. study suggests. Researchers used the search engines Google and Bing to check the cost of common services like cholesterol tests, hip replacements and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in 8 cities: New York; Los Angeles;…
U.S. Healthcare Costs to Escalate Over Next Decade
WASHINGTON—The cost of medical care in the United States is expected to grow at a faster clip over the next decade and overall health spending growth will outpace that of the gross domestic product, a U.S. government health agency said on Wednesday. A report by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) cited…
Rheumatology Research Abstracts Highlight Treatment for Hand OA, Risk of Depression in Lupus and More
WASHINGTON, D.C.—What do treating hand osteoarthritis (OA) in the primary care setting, high financial strain and risk of depression in patients with lupus, prolonged sitting and cardiovascular disease, and sex-specific treatment after total hip arthroplasty have in common? They were all topics presented during a session titled ARHP I: Exemplary Abstracts at the 2016 ACR/ARHP…
Biosimilar Drugs Could Save Up to $110 Billion by 2020
LONDON (Reuters)—Lower-cost copies of complex biotech drugs, known as biosimilars, could save the U.S. and Europe’s five top markets as much as 98 billion euros ($110 billion) by 2020, a new analysis showed on Tuesday. Realizing those savings, however, depends on effective doctor education and healthcare providers adopting smart market access strategies, the report by…
Do Tiered Physician Networks Help or Hurt? What Rheumatologists Should Know
Health insurance plans are increasingly favoring tiered physician networks, which some fear have the potential to limit patient access to such specialties as rheumatology to achieve short-term cost reduction…
Drug Industry Must Address Image Problem over Prices
NEW YORK (Reuters)—Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s research chief said on Tuesday the drug industry must act responsibly when it comes to pricing medications, given the mounting anger over the high cost of therapies in the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton brought new attention to the issue last week, proposing to cap patients’ treatment costs,…
Poverty May Increase Odds of Repeat Hospitalizations
(Reuters Health)—When patients are hospitalized more than once in the same month, it may have more to do with their income or education levels than the quality of care they received, a U.S. study suggests. Perhaps unsurprisingly, patients 85 and older are more likely to return to the hospital within 30 days of being sent…
Early, Aggressive Therapy for RA May Result in Cost Savings Long Term
By considering the long-term damage from early, aggressive rheumatoid arthritis, researchers in the UK were able to develop a model demonstrating the long-term cost effectiveness of more aggressive combination therapies v. short-term treatments…