What We're Reading, October 22, 2015: can aspirin prevent the recurrence of cancer, Clinton wants careful scrutiny of insurance mergers, and small businesses race against time to comply with the ACA.
Does an Aspirin a Day Keep the Cancer Away?
England’s federal healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS), is funding a huge clinical trial that will confirm, or not, the beneficial effects of daily aspirin in preventing cancer recurrence. The study, planned for a period of over a decade, will recruit about 11,000 patients across 100 study centers in the United Kingdom, with 2 groups taking either a daily dose of aspirin (100 mg or 300 mg) or a placebo. The trials plans to recruit patients who are, or recently were, treated for bowel, breast, oesophageal, prostate, or stomach cancer.
Read more here.
Clinton Skeptical of Consumer Benefit From Insurance Mergers
While shareholders of insurance giants Aetna and Humana approved the proposed merger of the 2 companies earlier this week, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton released a statement yesterday calling for careful scrutiny of the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna mergers. “I am very skeptical of the claim that consumers will benefit from them because the evidence from careful studies shows that too often the companies end up pocketing profits rather than passing savings to consumers,” Clinton said in the statement.
Read more here.
Small Businesses in a Frenzy to Comply With ACA Demands
This is the time for owners of business with less than 100 but more than 50 full-time employees to prepare to meet Obamacare’s requirements—affordable insurance for employees and their dependents come January 1. This, along with the need to file tax forms by the end of January that includes information on the amount they spent on employee coverage and the Social Security numbers of the employees and their dependents, might require expensive outsourcing—a nightmare for some small businesses.
Read more here.
Urticaria Diagnosis Challenged by Overlapping Pruritic Skin Conditions
April 23rd 2025Urticaria is complicated to diagnose by its symptomatic overlap with other skin conditions and the frequent misclassification in literature of distinct pathologies like vasculitic urticaria and bullous pemphigus.
Read More
New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
Listen
Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
Listen
ACOs’ Focus on Rooting Out Fraud Aligns With CMS Vision Under Oz
April 23rd 2025Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are increasingly playing the role of data sleuths as they identify and report trends of anomalous billing in hopes of salvaging their shared savings. This mission dovetails with that of CMS, which under the new administration plans to prioritize rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.
Read More