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The typical cost of health care for a family of four with employer-based insurance this year is $23,215, according to a new report from the Milliman actuarial firm. The bad news first: That amount has more than doubled in the past 10 years. The goodish news: That cost grew just 5.4 percent between 2013 and 2014, the slowest growth rate since Milliman started keeping track in 2002. That $23,215 figure isn't what the employee pays, though. Employers pay about 60 percent of those costs ($13,520), while workers pay the rest through payroll deductions ($5,908) and out-of-pocket costs ($3,787). The employee share of the costs have been rising faster - increasing 73 percent since 2007 - than the employer contribution, which has grown 52 percent over the same period. The Milliman numbers are for family coverage under preferred provider plans, so it excludes the increasing prevalence of consumer-driven health plans, in which employees handle a higher share of the costs. Don't blame the four-year-old Affordable Care Act for these changes, though. Milliman says Obamacare has barely had any impact so far on these large employer plans, but that's about to change. The actuarial firm cites Obamacare's impending excise tax on "Cadillac" plans - valued at at least $27,500 for family coverage starting in 2018 - as a factor that will force employers to scale back health plans. Milliman points to other factors that will push down cost increases. Higher out-of-pocket costs are fueling efforts around health-care price transparency, and that's making consumers become better health-care shoppers. Conversely, an improving economy and an increase in expensive specialty drugs will pressure costs to rise.

Expatriates may find it hard to avail of health insurance when they are in a foreign place. The system varies from that of your own nation and customs of availing is a far cry especially in developing nations. Luckily, developing countries like Indonesia and Thailand are starting to expand its insurance's scope to a more international level, catering to both local and foreign individuals. Companies operating in Jakarta, Indonesia, for instance, realize the importance of a comprehensive medical plan to cover sickness and accidents that happen to the staff that they hire. Westhill Insurance Consulting is also aware of the struggles faced by expatriates when it comes to getting insurance. What preparations do you do then? 1. Find out before you come The company who hired you and the person you are working for should provide medical insurance for you and your family members just as they do with local folks. Ask for details from your employer to ensure that your policy will adequate cover your family members for sickness, accidents or emergencies, on home leave and when you are visiting other countries for work-related purposes. If you are joining a new company, remember that they may never love you more than when you first join. Do not rely on promises that medical insurance coverage will be sorted out when you arrive. It could be the case that what the company considers ideal coverage may not meet your expectations. Be sure before you arrive that you understand what medical coverage your company provides for regular medical concerns, major medical situations such as surgery or deliveries,

According to healthcare attorney Susan Miller, detailed evidence of HIPAA compliance and going beyond just the black letter HIPAA rules will be important factors when the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) makes its HIPAA audit rounds this fall. Miller said that OCR has been talking about evidence of compliance since 2009, when it first released the HIPAA Omnibus Rule Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). Evidence of compliance, in my view, goes beyond what the rule asks of an organization, such as where its policies and procedures are. This includes the Notice of Privacy Practices (NPPs), business associate agreements (BAAs), but they've also [made it clear] that organizations must have a breach plan. In no place in the regulation does it say that an organization has to have a breach plan or process. It does makes sense to have a breach plan to know what the organization will do when it has a breach event. I would suggest that organizations have a breach plan that they look at and update yearly. OCR will be looking for specific things in the plans, Miller said, including communication tactics within a breach plan. And Miller tells her clients that they need a detailed training plan, as well as the training materials and sign-in sheet or even some way to know when staff completes computer based training (CBT) modules, depending on how they do training. The important thing is knowing the training was completed. And organizations need something similar to a contingency plan, which is in the Security Rule but the larger organizations name as business continuity and disaster recovery plans. "Think of [the Boston Marathon bombings] - you need something that's going to help you continue to function during these events that are out of the control of the covered entity or business associate (BA)," Miller said.

Westhill Consulting: Healthcare & Insurance - Individuals, families and the self employed Health Insurance It is hard to find a health insurance in the current situation of our marketplace. It seems impossible to get one of those as per this individual health insurance can offer you a confusing array of options more especially if you're one of the millions of Americans who buys their own health coverage. This health coverage are sometimes good but not always and worse few are expensive. Agents though are everywhere, and they are easy to find and readily available. They offer you cheap health insurance but you got to remember this: health coverage isn't cheap if it doesn't adequately cover your expenses when you need it most. Health reform legislation is recently passed and thanks to this the landscape is changing for consumers. Soon, millions of uninsured will have an access for a quality but low-cost insurance. The chief challenge could be determining options to choose the right coverage. There is nothing to worry about! Because Westhill Healthcare Consulting has everything that one has to know, all the information you needed. Learn. Compare. Save. We have library of articles and we are sure every article is fruitful. Learn how to cut your health care costs, get coverage if you're self-employed. Go trough most frequently asked questions about health coverage and be familiar with health insurance terms. Discover how health reform will affect your benefits and your budget. Otherwise find out how it stands to help populations that historically have faced barriers to affordable health coverage. It would be useful and practical if you use free, no-obligation health insurance quotes to compare private health insurance in your area, plan benefits and coverage costs. Every plan id different in every state so the first thing to do is to go trough our state guide in order to evaluate coverage options, including whether yo

"Is 'Obamacare' like Canada's health-care system? 'Not even close,' according to critics The first major U.S. health-care reform passed in nearly 50 years is the Obamacare but regardless of critics passing judgment on "Obamacare" as "Canadian-style" health insurance, critics note that major differences between the two systems persist. The U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which went into effect earlier this week, is "not even close" to the Canadian system says McGill University Professor of Political Science Antonia Maioni. "Obamacare keeps in place the basic principle of health care in the United States which is: if you want to get access to care you need to buy insurance coverage," she told CTV News Channel on Friday. "Obamacare is trying to make it easier for people to be able to buy that insurance coverage and, if you are very poor, to be able to qualify for a government program. But it doesn't have the same principle as in Canada, where if you are a legal resident, you are automatically enrolled in a provincial or territorial health plan." In an op-ed published in the Globe and Mail, Maioni said the major differences between "Obamacare" and Canada's health-care system include: "Obamacare" is not a single-payer system (where one entity, usually the government, pays all costs) Care depends on the type of insurance coverage you buy Insurance coverage varies by state Wait times are based on the level of insurance coverage Obamacare" faces challenges in cost control Maioni said that while "Obamacare" was passed, in part, to address American spending on health care - the highest in the world at nearly 18 per cent of GDP, or $3 trillion - the act remains "problematic." "There's nothing in it that speaks to really serious cost control," she said. She furthermore said that while Canada also spends a lot on health care, there are mechanisms that the provinces can use to contain spen

Entrepreneurs' Outlook for the Healthcare Cloud Is ... Cloudy I've written sunny posts about the opportunity for entrepreneurs in key areas of digital healthcare: health & fitness wearables and healthcare transparency businesses. The "healthcare cloud" is a third major area of innovation, but here the opportunities for entrepreneurs will be fewer and will carry more risk. [Disclosure: New Atlantic Ventures in which I am a partner has an investment in one of the four companies cited below: TruVeris.] First, the pro's: the idea of putting data and applications in the cloud is taking hold throughout the IT world, including healthcare. Payers and providers get the fact that they are being held accountable for managing cost and outcomes for groups of people ("Population Management") and they are working hard to master this problem, which creates strong need to collect and analyze data from many sources in one logical database. And cloud technologies promise to both lower costs by strengthening care coordination, and to improve clinical outcomes, e.g., analysis of medical data in the cloud has revealed drug interactions that were not previously understood (1) Read more http://www.westhillinsuranceconsulting.com/

The scams Phantom treatments. Dishonest medical providers will bill health insurers for expensive treatments, tests or equipment you never received - and for illnesses or injuries you don't even have. Double billing. Unethical providers may double- or triple-bill health insurers for the same treatments, hoping the insurer won't discover the overruns in the big stack of bills. Shoddy care. You might receive shoddy or substandard treatment for real and urgent medical problems. One eye doctor shined pen lights into patients' eyes and said he'd performed cataract surgery. Surgeons have used defective pacemakers and catheters during heart surgeries, which have killed patients or required more surgeries to correct the problems. Unneeded care. You might receive dangerous and even life-threatening treatment you don't need. One surgeon performed heart surgery on patients who didn't need it. Bogus insurers. Insurance agents or brokers sell you low-cost health coverage from fake insurance companies. Then they take your premiums and disappear. You're left without vital health coverage, and don't even know it until you make a claim. Identity theft. Cheaters steal your medical ID number, then use it to bill health programs tens of thousands of dollars for phantom treatment. Crooks steal your health info from dumpsters behind medical clinics, break into doctor offices and steal files, and hack into computer databases containing your records. Rolling labs. Mobile diagnostic labs give needless or fake tests or physical exams to consumers, then bill health insurers for expensive procedures. Runners. A person hired by a medical provider to drum up business trolls through neighborhoods, often low-income areas, enticing people to come to a clinic for tests. These runners will even round up children for unneeded tests and procedures.

Welcome to Wonkbook, Wonkblog's morning policy news primer by Puneet Kollipara (@pkollipara). To subscribe by e-mail, click here. Send comments, criticism or ideas to Wonkbook at Washpost dot com. To read more by the Wonkblog team, click here. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters) Wonkbook's Number of the Day: 70 percent. That's the latest estimate of the mortality rate in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the World Health Organization announced. Wonkbook's Chart of the Day: Oil prices are falling, and fast. Wonkbook's Top 5 Stories: (1) Obamacare October surprises and a lower sales bar; (2) Ebola treatments for U.S. patients; (3) attorney general nomination update; (4) security threats of climate change; and (5) new help for long-term jobless. 1. Top story: With a month to go, why the Obama administration won't oversell Obamacare in year two Team Obama's year-two strategy: Underselling Obamacare. "The Obama administration vastly oversold how well Obamacare was going to work last year. It's not making the same mistake this year. Gone are the promises that enrolling will be as easy as buying a plane ticket on Orbitz. The new head of HHS is not on Capitol Hill to promise that HealthCare.gov is on track. And no one is embracing Congressional Budget Office projections of total sign-up numbers.Sobered - and burned - by last fall's meltdown of the federal website, the administration is setting expectations for the second Obamacare open enrollment period as low as possible. Officials say the site won't be perfect but will be improved." Jennifer Haberkorn in Politico. Explainer: 5 things we need to know about Obamacare before enrollment begins. Jason Millman in The Washington Post. Source: Westhill Healthcare Consulting Jakarta fraud prevention review</d

The U.S. health care system has changed significantly since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The federal law introduced many changes to the insurance space and health care market and helped change the way that people shop for health insurance coverage. With the launch of insurance exchanges, new marketplaces were opened up to consumers, but these exchanges also represented a promising opportunity for scammers that are looking to exploit a person's private information. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently issued a warning about the growing prevalence of insurance scams, and there are some things that people can do to protect themselves and their information when shopping for insurance coverage. Be Careful About What You Share Online Many insurance scams seek to collect personal information through fraudulent websites. These sites can be designed to look official, but are merely fronts for criminal activity. Many fraudulent sites attempt to show that they represent an insurance or government agency, offering policies at discounted rates, but the policies that these sites offer are not real and exist only to collect information, such as medical records. Beware of Unsolicited Calls Sometimes, scammers prefer to take a more direct approach and will disguise themselves as insurance agents representing a reputable company or exchange. These people often attempt to call consumers and offer inexpensive insurance policies based on the information that they provide. Insurance exchanges do not randomly contact consumers and organizations promoting coverage through exchanges will never ask for personal information to be shared over the phone. Document Everything Keeping records of all salespeople you may come in contact with, as well as the names of their representative companies, could be valuable if your information is ever compromised. Information can be used for or against you, and collecting information from the agents or organizations trying to sell you

The needs of elderly parents can surprise even those who are prepared, but you don't have to support your family alone Adult children of older parents should prepare financially for the costs of care and travel. Photograph: Alamy We all want to age like the late Pete Seeger, who celebrated his 90th birthday performing onstage in front of thousands of adoring fans of all ages at Madison Square Garden, and went on to entertain the Newport Jazz Festival audiences a few months later. In our pragmatic moments, we know that the odds of living that long and in such good health aren't in our favor. We know we need to plan not only to live longer but perhaps to spend more time in costly nursing homes or care facilities. It's not just ourselves we have to worry about. Failing to develop a plan to help our parents in their final years could deliver a similar kind of blow to our emotional and financial wellbeing. In the last few months, I've watched three friends, ranging in age from their 40s to the early 60s, scramble to resolve non-medical problems for their parents. In all cases, that meant forking out on costly airfares to be there in person; in one case, it required money to hire a new accountant. "I've always been aware that at some point, there would be an emergency, but I had assumed it would be a stroke or something, not this," one told me, ruefully. A recent US Trust survey revealed that while about half of all Americans have planned for their own long-term care needs, on

Charging you for help getting new insurance Someone contacts you, offering to help you navigate the Health Insurance Marketplace for a fee - or saying that you need a new insurance card now or you'll have to pay a penalty. Regardless of the set-up, their goal is to get your bank account or credit card number. Don't give your information. The people who offer legitimate help with the Health Insurance Marketplace - sometimes called Navigators or Assisters - are not allowed to charge you. In fact, you can't pay them. What's more, you don't need to buy a special insurance card, or pay any penalties for not buying one, either. Bottom line: Never give your money or your information to anyone who contacts you. Medicare cards Someone gets in touch, saying you need a new Medicare card because of "Obamacare." They tell you that you'll lose Medicare coverage if you don't pay a fee for a new card or give them your Social Security number and bank account or credit card number. Not true. The Affordable Care Act doesn't say you need a new Medicare card, or another health insurance card. Nor does the law say you'll lose Medicare coverage. Don't give your personal or financial information to anyone who contacts you. When in doubt, call 1-800-MEDICARE, before you give anyone your money or information. Medical discount plans Someone contacts you, offering discounts on health services and products. They might say the discount plan will save you money and that it meets the minimum coverage required under "Obamacare" so you won't have to pay a penalty or look at other plans. Medical discount plans are not health insurance. Sometimes, medical discount plans illegally pretend to be insurance. The only way to know is to ask specific questions and not pay until you read the terms. Most medical discount plans are a membership in a "club" that claims to offer reduced prices from certain doctors, certain pharmacies, and on some procedures.

MEDICAL science is hazy about many things, but doctors agree that if a patient is losing pints of blood all over the carpet, it is a good idea to stanch his wounds. The same is true of a health-care system. If crooks are bleeding it of vast quantities of cash, it is time to tighten the safeguards. In America the scale of medical embezzlement is extraordinary. According to Donald Berwick, the ex-boss of Medicare and Medicaid (the public health schemes for the old and poor), America lost between $82 billion and $272 billion in 2011 to medical fraud and abuse (see article). The higher figure is 10% of medical spending and a whopping 1.7% of GDP-as if robbers had made off with the entire output of Tennessee or nearly twice the budget of Britain's National Health Service (NHS). Crooks love American health care for two reasons. First, as Willie Sutton said of banks, it's where the money is-no other country spends nearly as much on pills and procedures. Second, unlike a bank, it is barely guarded. Some scams are simple. Patients claim benefits to which they are not entitled; suppliers charge Medicaid for non-existent services. One doctor was recently accused of fraudulently billing for 1,000 powered wheelchairs, for example. Fancier schemes involve syndicates of health workers and patients. Scammers scour nursing homes for old people willing, for a few hundred dollars, to let pharmacists supply their pills but bill Medicare for much costlier ones. Criminal gangs are switching from cocaine to prescription drugs-the rewards are as juicy, but with less risk of being shot or arrested. One clinic in New York allegedly wrote bogus prescriptions for more than 5m painkillers, which were then sold on the street for $30-90 each. Identity thieves have realised that medical records are more valuable than credit-card numbers.