Tuesday Morning HealthyLinks

■ The folks at Cigna tell us that the IRS has extended the reporting dates for 1095's (these are the forms carriers and employers use to demonstrate that individuals have abided by the tax penalty Mandate). They were originally due out by January 31st of next year; that's been moved back over a month, to March 2nd.

Yay.

■ FoIB Holly R tips us to this interesting story about how a Cincinnati-area doctor "uses jet engine knowledge to fix woman's vocal cords."

At age 13, Anna Kessler was diagnosed with asthma, which kept getting progressively worse over time. She finally met with Dr Sidd Khosla, who had studied at MIT and was able to combine his knowledge of how jet engines work with Anna's condition.

Pretty cool.

■ And finally, a two-fer on lifesaving healthcare trends:

"1. Focus on people first ... getting patients actively engaged in managing their health and working with the physicians and technicians who treat them."

And "2. Why you need to go wireless ... a move toward continuous home monitoring and an effort to bring care to patients rather than requiring them to travel long distances to see specialists."

This, I think, is related to the burgeoning and ubiquitous use of telemedicine. I'm not completely told that it's a panacea, but it certainly has its place.

MVNHS© and Medicaid vs Babies

The Much Vaunted National Health System© continues its war on children. This time, a preemie was "left to die alone in a sluice room at an NHS trust plagued by clinical errors and bad staff attitudes."

In case you're wondering, a "sluice room" is "where used disposables such as incontinence pads and bed pans are dealt with, and reusable products are cleaned and disinfected."

For the MVNHS© "disposables" now includes babies, apparently.

Great system over there.

And lest we forget, our own version leaves much to be desired, based on this cautionary take from Florida:

"Kim and Richard Muszynski love Florida ... in September, the couple left the Sunshine State ... because they think Abby's health insurance was killing her."

The kicker?

"Like nearly half of all children in Florida, Abby has Medicaid"

Leaving aside for the moment that appalling statistic, it may be instructive to note that, as with the Much Vaunted National Health System©, Medicaid is not not insurance (after all, who pays premiums?) but taxpayer-funded health care. And, again as with the MVNHS©, who pays the piper calls the tune.

[Hat Tip: Holly R]

Thanksgiving 2016

Please remember everyone deployed away from their families this Thanksgiving. pic.twitter.com/w9Pv3UTHUQ

— Meoso (@MeosoFunny) November 24, 2016

Pre-Thanksgiving Heads' Up

It's time once again to break out Captain Kirk William Shatners wise words of warning about frying your fowl:



Have a great (and safe) Thanksgiving!

From the P&C Files: Easy Peasy, Yeezy

We've blogged before about Special Event policies for things like hole-in-one contests, special product promotions based on sports scores or political conventions. Here's another example:

Rap star Kanye West has been on tour recently, and was just hospitalized; he's since cancelled the balance of his tour, at a cost of at least $30 million. That's a lot of scratch even for a successful musician, which is why he (reportedly) has an insurance policy that likely covers this kind of situation.

Assuming that it ends up paying out (there may be specific exclusions, for example), his wallet will be grateful.

Wow, Pre-Existing Claims

With 2017's Open Enrollment in full swing, lots of folks are calling in for quotes and explanations, hoping to get their coverage in place for January 1. By now most of us know that, for better or worse (but mostly worse) ObamaPlans cover pre-existing conditions. This means that if one has, say, asthma, the new plan will cover it right away.

Some people, though, are less clear on the subject.

For example, 29 year old Megan Tice-Royea, is a grocery store manager in Newport, Vermont. Last year, she she decided she couldn't afford health insurance, despite making what appears to be enough to qualify for a healthy subsidy (or just buying a Cat Plan).

Which was a fine, rational decision, until it wasn't:

"In September, she was admitted to the hospital with a gallbladder infection. The surgery left her $32,000 in debt."

Ouch.

But here's the very best part:

"Now she’s considering signing up for an insurance plan through Obamacare, but only if it will help pay off her earlier medical bills."

Good luck there, Megan.

Now let's rewind the tape a bit, and take a look at "what might have been:"

Megan's 29, makes $14 an hour, and we'll assume that she doesn't smoke. Had she taken (literally - I timed it) 3 minutes, she could have visited her state's Exchange, where she would have learned that she qualified for a $347 per month subsidy, and then purchased a Bronze level plan for less than $60 a month (that's about $2 a day).

[ed: all rates and plans based on 2017 Exchange info, YMMV]

Her maximum out-of-pocket (including deductible) would have been $7,150 plus the $720 in premiums, meaning that the $32,000 claim would have cost her less than eight grand (about 25% of the actual bill).

Expensive 3 minutes.

[Hat Tip: FoIB Dr Dino]

LifeLock News

So this happened:

I reached out to our friend Steve Geis (VP at Cornerstone) for his thoughts. Steve's the one who basically put our LifeLock discount program together; he replied:

"In my opinion, this will only make LifeLock stronger.  I’m sure it will lead to new advancements in Cyber Crime/ Data Breaches using Symantec’s resources.

It’s too soon to tell if this will impact on brokers (and clients) but my guess is it will be business as usual.  We still have to wait for regulatory approval before the deal is done.

We’ll just have to wait and see what comes to us from LifeLock and we’ll communicate upon notice."

Thanks, Steve!

As a reminder, you can get a 10% discount on LifeLock services (15% is available for most employer groups).

[Hat Tip: Holly R]