- Open Season advice articles keep popping up — here, here, here and here for example.
- The Federal Times featured an article on FEHB plan personal health record offerings.
- Aetna took a page out of Cigna’s playbook and entered into a settlement with the New Your State attorney general concerning its hospital ranking program according to this Hartford Courant article.
- The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study concluding that the HIPAA Privacy Rule is having a chilling effect on medical research according to this Washington Post article. I am not surprised by the fact that researchers simply don’t understand this complicated section of an unnecessarily complicated rule.
- The New York Times reports that President signed the FY 2008 Defense appropriations bill that also continues funding of the federal government through December 14, 2007, beyond the end of the current Open Season.
- According to Reuters, the Congressional Budget Office Director testified that medical tests and procedures of dubious value are driving up health care costs. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association has proposed the creation of a national institute to study the effectiveness of medical tests and procedures.
