07.16.2014

#FullRepeal Daily Digest

McAllen Monitor: Texas sees rise in Medicaid signups [Also known as the "woodwork effect" this was anticipated but often brushed aside by Obamacare supporters]

More than 80,000 additional Texans have enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program since the rollout of the Affordable Care Act last fall despite Republican state leaders’ decision not to expand eligibility to poor adults, according to federal figures.
The 80,435 new enrollees as of May — mostly Texans who already qualified for coverage but did not previously seek it — represent a 1.8 percent increase over pre-Obamacare figures. That places Texas, which has the nation’s highest uninsured rate, in the middle of the pack among states that chose not to expand access to those programs to everyone under 138 percent of the federal poverty line under the president’s signature health law.
734,000 Texans have signed up for private health insurance plans via the federal marketplace since the Affordable Care Act’s rollout…Dallas was one of eight cities nationwide awarded grants last week by the National League of Cities to augment Medicaid and CHIP enrollment efforts.

The Weekly Standard: Obamacare Misses Its Target on the Uninsured by Half

In February of this year, the CBO projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 13 million as of 2014. In April, the CBO had seen enough of the Obama administration’s skillful rollout of Obamacare to reduce that estimate to 12 million.
Now the Urban Institute finds that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of uninsured adults by 8 million since the rollout began last fall. (Gallup shows a similar number.) That’s far short of the number of newly insured that the CBO projected in April of this year, in February of this year, or in 2012 — and it’s less than half the tally the American people were told Obamacare would hit when they opposed it in 2010.

Yahoo Health: Smartphones Are the New Stethoscopes

Due to increasingly compressed office visits, patients are becoming more active participants in managing their healthcare, and a new generation of Internet-savvy physicians is using social media to improve the way they run their practices. The goal isn’t to replace face time with patients but to provide teaching tools, stay abreast of breaking medical research, and communicate more efficiently with patients.
Currently, 67 percent of physicians use social media — sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest — for professional purposes, according to a recent report released by the Federation of State Medical Boards.
“First Derm” users can diagnose a sexually transmitted disease within 24 hours for a $40 fee, according to TechCrunch. That’s more expensive than a co-pay, the website points out, but it saves people the time and potential embarrassment of schlepping to an office visit.
The app “Figure 1” is also gaining popularity among the medical set. Dubbed “Instagram for doctors,” it allows professionals to swap and discuss medical photos. The app’s founder, Canadian internist Josh Landy, MD, told Business Insider that his colleagues now have the ability to view photos of rare diseases on real patients whose identities are obscured.
[RELATED] Forbes: The Convergence of Medical And Consumer Health Apps
- When used in a clinical setting monitored by physicians, mobile apps are already leading to improved health. In a recent cardiac rehabilitation program at the Mayo Clinic, patients who used a smartphone-based app developed by the clinic to record daily measurements such as blood pressure, weight, blood sugar levels, minutes of physical activity, and dietary habits over a three-month period were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 90 days of discharge, compared with those patients who followed a traditional regime. The app also provided educational materials that would formerly have been provided via books, CDs, and DVDs. The interactive nature of the process led to improved results.
[RELATED] PBS Newshour: FDA regulation can't keep pace with new mobile health apps
- “The whole mobile app world has its own ecosystem where things live, die and sort of recycle again…and it’s mostly consumer driven,” said Bakul Patel, senior policy adviser for FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health at a roundtable discussion on medical device security in June. “The end-of-life cycles [are] so short compared to any other products we’ve ever seen,” he said. The rate of innovation in the mobile marketplace has led the agency to target apps that “present a greater risk to health.”

Politico Pulse: NEW ADS FROM PLANNED PARENTHOOD

The group is releasing digital ads today targeting Senate candidates who support the Hobby Lobby decision: Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Cory Gardner in Colorado, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Dan Sullivan in Alaska as well as Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott. The ads:http://bit.ly/1reVSvD

California Health Report: Fewer Doctors Enrolled in Low-Income Insurance Program Despite Surge in Patients

Nearly 25 percent fewer physicians were signed up to treat low-income patients in the state’s insurance program this spring compared to a year prior, despite the surge in patients enrolled in Medi-Cal.The drop in providers is due to the Department of Health Care Services’ efforts to remove doctors who haven’t complied with application requirements or billed the program in a year, spokesman Anthony Cava said.
About 109,000 physicians were enrolled in Medi-Cal last spring, according to the Health Care department. But by this May, that number had dropped to 82,605.
In the last year, the Health Care department has updated its provider requirements, as part of the Affordable Care Act, Cava said. Those requirements “have strengthened the department’s ability to deny or terminate providers who do not comply with application requirements,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal: Study Backs Crowdfunding For Medical Research

A new study concluded that crowdfunding is a "viable approach" to support medical research that tests proof-of-concept or nascent theories. The study, which analyzed 97 crowdfunding campaigns for cancer and rare-disease research, said the money-raising technique also could increase the chances of securing traditional grants or private investment needed to support additional clinical work.