Health Care

Hawaii is making progress when it comes to passing policies to prevent and reduce suffering and death from cancer, according to a new report by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network....

Hawaii’s health-care exchange, the Hawaii Health Connector, has taken another blow....

...On average, it takes CMS 190 days to approve a waiver, though it can take up to 1,637 days (more than four years!) to receive approval....

“Bravo!…to HSMA for taking the lead in pulling out of the Health Connector...."

...legislation that will make it legal for a terminally ill patient to access investigational drugs....

...ACA enrollees may also be sicker....

...Last week, the House of Representatives voted to authorize Speaker John Boehner to file a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s failure to fully implement Obamacare....

"The ACA is threatening to dismantle multi-employer health and welfare funds that provide affordable, high-quality health care...."

Ryan is looking back to the success of the 1996 welfare reform....

...WalletHub used data from 47 states to construct a health-related return on investment metric....

...Overall non-Medicaid expansion states improved their median INDEX score by 0.6% while Medicaid expansion states median INDEX scores declined by (0.80%)....

The decision covers residents in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands...the law was "undermining the stability" of the territories' insurance markets....

State figures show net enrollment increased 12 percent between Oct. 1 and June 30....

...lack of community-based resources to support patients with underlying mentally illness in managing their other medical conditions....

A $100 million web portal operated by the state Department of Human Services and designed by KPMG to connect Hawaii residents with Medicaid services has also been problematic, House lawmakers said Tuesday....

Hepatitis A, which causes severe gastrointestinal illness and, in severe cases, liver failure and death, incubates in the human body for between 15 and 50 days....

...the ACT Now for Veterans bill (H.R. 5131) to direct the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to reimburse non-VA medical providers who provide care to eligible veterans....

The VA healthcare system is the sole source of coverage for only about one-fifth of enrolled veterans....

Many people in Hawaii already had health insurance because of a 1976 Hawaii Prepaid Healthcare law....

Approximately 60 percent of the 7.1 million people receiving public mental health services nationwide want to work....

26,010 individuals enrolled in Medicaid between Summer 2013 and April 2014....

...For all OPR combined, the prescribing rate in Alabama was 2.7 times the rate in Hawaii....

The new VA Secretary needs to quickly understand the serious depth of the problems facing the VA in Hawaii....

“Six more members of board of directors for the Hawaii Health Connector will vacate June 30 leaving the board without a quorum.  It is a perfect time to replace it with a solution that is more appropriate for the state of Hawai’i."

...some 64,000 veterans enrolled in the system for at least 10 years have yet to see a doctor....

"...I applaud the recent Senate compromise action reached between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) to allow vets access to private healthcare providers...."

"I see that several of the points that we made in our January 31st McDermott Report are being addressed," said McDermott....

Nearly one in five of Hawaii’s waitlisted patients — that is, those remaining in a hospital after the need for acute care ceases — have an infectious disease....

...Rough Seas for Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie's Obamacare Exchange....

...when the Bracy family investigated their options they couldn’t find any plan that didn’t both cover elective abortions and require a surcharge solely for that purpose....

"...immediately allow our veterans to use their VA identification card to obtain medical care through the private health care system, with the VA paying the bill...."

...Vanguard derived its findings by developing special software to scour online reviews on Google+ and Yelp.com websites of 46,300 individual doctors....

...6 million people have had their insurance policies canceled, and another 19 million are enrolled in private health plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act....

The problems emerging from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are deeper than corruption and mismanagement....

...Abercrombie today announced the release of more than $46 million for various capital improvement projects....

...16.0 percent of seniors with a college education are physically inactive compared to 50.2 percent of seniors with less than a high school education....

The Washington Post has inside sources providing all sorts of juicy details on this problem....

“Bad news is piling up for Governor Abercrombie’s Hawaii Health Connector."

The CMS says it will continue to be flexible with states....

"...we wrote to our congressional delegation and were told, in no uncertain terms, that we would not be able to secure it...."

Former U.S. Rep. Charles Djou, D-Hawaii, noted Hawaii’s enrollment cost is 26 times the national average, 2 1/2 times the cost for the second most expensive state....

"A recent study showed that the cost per enrollee for Obamacare in Hawaii is nearly $24,000."

Excluding Hawaii and the District of Columbia, which were outliers, the state Exchange with the highest cost-per-enrollee was Massachusetts, at $5,681. Hawaii’s cost-per-enrollee was 32 times California’s....

Here are nine of our predictions that have come to pass—and it’s not over yet....

The Hawai‘i Health Connector Hawai‘i concluded its first open enrollment period, which included a grace period that ended on April 30, with 9,785 enrollees....

...and 32,209 more enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP through the end of March 2014, compared to enrollment before the Marketplace opened last October....

The top-performing states—Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Hawaii—lead the nation across most dimensions of care, and have done so over time....