financially

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates told the National Conference of State Legislatures that one of the keys to keeping expanding healthcare costs is investing in technology. In a keynote speech to state lawmakers, Gates said advances in biotechnology and health information technology are likely to revolutionize healthcare. Gates said state investment will help that transformation, making a national health infrastructure financially attainable. As it stands, Gates said, "the overhead of this …

This week's big news is the continuing consolidation in the health plan market. Pacificare, a big regional California-based HMO, was swallowed by UnitedHealth. Meanwhile, the result of the Wellpoint-Anthem merger has essentially been the coalition of all the for-profit Blues plans. Thus far almost all of these mergers have been plans in different regions merging with each other. But …

Roughly 15 percent of Americans are uninsured at any one time, although up to 25 percent are uninsured for at least fourth months in a four year period. The past week has been designated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as "Cover the Uninsured Week". RWJ has been promoting this campaign for several years and two sets of facts have clearly emerged. The first set of facts is that …