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Showing posts from September, 2014

For-profit LTC homes attract fewer applicants than not-for-profit homes

Government data suggests for-profit long-term care bed s are less desired by the public than not-for-profit beds.    There are long wait lists for a beds in long-term care (LTC) facilities.  (This is driven by the government's decision to add only a few new LTC beds despite the rapid growth in the number of people 85 and older, the main users of these beds.) But some LTC facilities attract longer line-ups than others. In early 2014, there were 41,842 beds at private, for-profit LTC facilities in Ontario (54% of the total of 78,138 beds).  But only 6,781 people in the community put themselves on a wait list for one of these beds.  In other words, each for-profit bed has 0.16 people on the wait list for it.    In contrast, there were 19,599 not-for-profit LTC beds (25% of the total), but 9,113 people put themselves on the wait list for them.   In other words, there were 0.46 people waiting for a not-for-profit bed.   That is 2.9 times higher demand than fo

Sharp decline in for-profit health insurance efficiency

A new study from the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows   sharply   increasing inefficiency in the Canadian for-profit health care insurance industry.   The study indicates that less and less of the  premiums in employer health insurance plans are paid out in benefits by the for-profit insurance industry.   Since 1991, the amount paid out in benefits has declined from 92% to 74% in 2011.   The rest goes for profits, administration, and other items.     The benefit pay-out is less than required by US law - - which now requires that 80% to 85% of health insurance premiums are paid out in clinical care and quality improvement.   While this is bad, plans purchased from for-profit insurance corporations by individuals do much worse, with benefits paid declining from 46% to 38% of premiums .   In contrast, employers that self-insure  (where employers pay claims themselves and purchase only processing services from insurance companies) do much better – with be