Posts by Ellen Andrews
Health care not immune from gender wage gap, but the size depends on your job
American women workers make 82.5 cents for every dollar men do, according to 2014 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. However that ratio varies considerably by industry from 91.3 in construction to 56.7 cents in legal positions. In health care support positions, women so better than average American women but still 87.9% of…
Read MoreCT Mirror reports on drop in per person Medicaid spending
Friday the CT Mirror reported on the remarkable falling cost of care for Medicaid members, down 5.9% just last year. The program now covers one in five state residents, more than any other government or private plan. Reasons include changing four years ago from a traditional insurer model to a single administrator, progress getting care…
Read MoreHealth care as economic driver in CT
CT By the Numbers is reporting on the CT Health Council’s campaign to highlight the importance of the health care industry in our state’s economy. The Council, a group of health care industry leaders, has installed a set of posters this month in the LOB to make the point. For example, CT’s health care sector…
Read MoreConsultants hired to study options for CT to improve value in health care purchasing
Bailit Health has been hired to work with the Healthcare Cabinet for a study to identify successful practices in other states and make recommendations to the General Assembly by Dec. 1st. Researchers will collect successful cost containment practices from other states and identify factors that are driving health care cost growth in CT. Recommendations will…
Read MoreHow CT can save $1 billion
Per person costs in CT’s Medicaid program fell, actually went down, by 5.9% last year. If the rest of CT’s state budget could match that performance, we would have a $1 billion surplus. Following is my list for how we could spend it (this was fun). · Reverse the HUSKY parents cut · Reverse the…
Read MoreA little perspective — health care is expensive, but less than housing or transportation
In 2013 Americans of all ages devoted more of total household spending to housing and transportation than health care, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For most age groups that year, health care spending was also behind food and pensions/Social Security. Spending on health care peaked for ages 65 to 74 at $5,188/person; children spent…
Read MoreMedicaid still saving $ hundreds of millions
Four years after shifting from managed care organizations to a care-management focused program, CT’s Medicaid program continues providing significant relief to the tight state budget. At today’s Medicaid Council meeting we learned that per person spending was down 5.9% from FY 2014 to 2015, saving the state $360 million just last year compared to no…
Read MoreJanuary web quiz: CT’s health system performance
Test your knowledge about the performance of CT health system. Take the January CT Health Policy Webquiz.
Read MoreOnly 15% of CT Medicaid smokers are getting medications to help quit
An article in this month’s Health Affairs estimates that only 15% of CT’s 102,000 Medicaid adults who smoke are getting medications to help them quit. While this is better than the 10% US average, there is a lot of room to improve. 31% of adults in our state’s Medicaid program smoke, about twice the rate…
Read MoreCT teen birthrate down 11% last year
New data on births rates from the CDC finds that last year, as in 2013, CT had the third lowest teen birth rate among states. In both 2013 and 2014, MA and NH had the lowest and second lowest teen birth rates, respectively, across all states. CT’s 2014 teen birth rate dropped by 10.9% from…
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