Saturday, March 7, 2015

The Anthem Hack



Anthem Inc., the giant health insurer and service company for many Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, was subject in January to what may be the largest data hack ever.

Anyone with a primary or secondary plan from any of these carriers may have data in jeopardy.

The find out what Anthem Inc., is doing to protect victims log on to http://anthemfacts.com.

cross posted: protectingseniorcitizens.blogspot.com



Thursday, March 5, 2015

Disruption is Disruptive!



The hottest word in business today is “disruption” as in “the I-phone disrupted the cell phone business” or “Uber is disrupting the taxi cab business.”

The Affordable Care Act was clearly intended to be disruptive, Obama administration denials to the contrary. The administration has quit with the denials, finally, but has never really informed the general public how massive the disruption has been and will be.

The ACA was designed to disrupt most of clinical medicine, including the physician-patient relationship, but we really do not talk about that so much.

One theory floated by ACA supporters is a massive wave of innovation has been started that will eventually creates higher quality and lower cost in U.S. health care.

Good news – there is a great deal of innovation in the system, sort of a do it to survive operation.

Bad news – not every practice can be the Mayo Clinic, with primary care and rural care seemingly on the short end of the innovation train.

Disruption sometimes fails – think Pontiac Aztek or Windows 8. There are no guarantees, and the stakes here are incredibly high.