Private Medicare, Medicaid Plans Exaggerate In-Network Mental Health Options, Watchdogs Say

Companies running private Medicare and Medicaid insurance plans inaccurately list many mental health professionals as being available to treat the plans’ members, a new federal watchdog report says. The investigators allege that some insurers effectively set up “ghost networks” of psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals who purportedly have agreed to treat patients covered…

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If You Could read My Mind – Wait, You Can?

By KIM BELLARD Over the years, one area of tech/health tech I have avoided writing about are brain-computer interfaces (B.C.I.). In part, it was because I thought they were kind of creepy, and, in larger part, because I was increasing finding Elon Musk, whose Neuralink is one of the leaders in the field, even more…

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Direct and Indirect Effects of COVID-19 Vaccine

Clinical trials focus in-sample (direct) effect of vaccines on health outcomes (e.g., decrease in illness, hospitalization, emergency department use, and death). Typically, however, clinical trials do not test whether the vaccines reduce transmission. FDA do not require this as it would be logistically challenging and costly to estimate indirect effects of vaccination within a clinical…

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HHS’s Independence: If Not Now, When?

By DAVID INTROCASO After having worked in DC for sixteen years, in 2013 I created The Healthcare Policy Podcast.  The title was in part intended to be sarcastic because healthcare policymaking in DC is very narrowly drawn.  Consequently, healthcare delivery is excessively commodified, reductionistic and financialized or in sum anachronistic and ironically lacking purchase.  If the…

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