Five Health Plans participate in New Jersey's NJ FamilyCare program. They are: Aetna AMERIGROUP NJ Horizon NJ Health UnitedHealthcare Community Plan WellCare Through managed care, New Jersey Medicaid believes beneficiaries have better access to healthcare providers than they do through Medicaid's traditional fee-for-service health insurance. Lewis Attas, MD is a hematology specialist in Englewood, NJ and has been practicing for 32 years. He graduated from Mt Sinai School of Medicine in 1982 and specializes in hematology, medical oncology, and more.
Updated 3:19 AM EST Dec 15, 2019
New Jersey lawmakers have introduced a bill that would change the corporate structure of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield in what they said would give the company more flexibility to invest in technology and social programs.
Horizon officials said the conversion from a not-for-profit health services corporation to a not-for-profit mutual holding company would have no impact on its customers. But they said it would help them compete with other insurers.
Kevin Conlin, Horizon's chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in a statement that the change 'gives us the flexibility to accelerate the pace and scale of investments that will help us continue to deliver for our members in the face of a rapidly changing health care marketplace.'
Watch the video at the top of this story to learn more about New Jersey's health care costs.
[ Make sure you don't miss any of our coverage by buying a digital subscription to APP.com and downloading our mobile app today.]
Newark-based Horizon is the state's biggest health insurer with about 3.8 million members. It reported revenue of $13 billion and net income from operations of about $56 million in 2018.
The bill comes as both insurers and providers are under political pressure to put the brakes on rising health care costs.
Horizon has said it is trying to do just that. It has touted a transformation in which it is working more closely with providers to deliver care in communities. And it has been investing in digital technology that allows patients to connect with doctors and nurses through their apps.
Healthcare: NJ Obamacare enrollment ends Dec. 15. Why are premiums rising again?
Horizon was created by the state in 1932 as a nonprofit organization that was an insurer of last resort, covering residents regardless of their health. The state and U.S. since then have required all insurers to provide coverage no matter their pre-existing conditions.
The company in the 2000s considered converting to a for-profit company, but didn't follow through.
Drug prices: Why won't feds flex power, get better prices?
A bill introduced Monday by Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex, Morris, would allow Horizon to change to a not-for-profit mutual holding company, similar to Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 18 other states.
'Treat the whole person': What will it take to improve access to mental health in NJ?
State Sen. Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said he supported the change.
'These changes will better enable New Jersey’s only not-for-profit health insurer to modernize the way it is organized so it can invest more in member benefits, including consumer technology and preventive care,' he said in a statement. 'For those who depend on Horizon, this change will ensure the company can continue to provide the highest quality healthcare into the future.”
Horizon officials said the company currently is hamstrung by regulations specific to its current structure — and a higher tax rate than its competitors — that prevent it from investing as much as it needs to improve its customers' health.
NJ health insurance spikes: 'The bill gets higher and higher, you get less and less'
The company's board of directors would continue to have what it said was significant public representation that included more members appointed by the governor, Senate president, and Assembly speaker.
Consumer advocates weren't as quick to offer their support.
Maura Collinsgru, a health care expert with New Jersey Citizen Action, said she wondered what a conversion would mean for the company's reserves.
'This is a huge change of our largest insurer,' she said. 'This bill should go through serious deliberation, and all of the stakeholders, including advocates and consumers, really need to digest what this is.'
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about New Jersey's health care industry for a decade. He can be reached at 732-643-4038; [email protected]; and @mdiamondapp.
Updated 3:19 AM EST Dec 15, 2019
A team of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers is conducting oil dispersion experiments at the 600-ft.-long salt water wave tank at the US Department of the Interior's Ohmsett facility on the Jersey Shore. Credit: NJITIn a 600-ft.-long saltwater wave tank on the coast of New Jersey, a team of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers is conducting the largest-ever simulation of the Deepwater Horizon spill to determine more precisely where hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil dispersed following the drilling rig's explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Led by Michel Boufadel, director of NJIT's Center for Natural Resources (CNR), the initial phase of the experiment involved releasing several thousand gallons of oil from a one-inch pipe dragged along the bottom of the tank in order to reproduce ocean current conditions.' The facility at Ohmsett allows us to simulate as closely as possible the conditions at sea, and to thus observe how droplets of oil formed and the direction and distance they traveled,' Boufadel said.Later this summer, his team will conduct the second phase of the experiment, when they will apply dispersants to the oil as it shoots into the tank to observe the effects on droplet formation and trajectory.His team's research, conducted at the U.S. Department of the Interior's Ohmsett facility at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Leonardo, N.J., was detailed in a recent article, 'The perplexing physics of oil dispersants,' in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS).'
These experiments are the largest ever conducted by a university in terms of the volume of oil released and the scale,' he noted. 'The data we obtained, which has not been published yet, is being used by other researchers to calibrate their models.' The team expects to come away from these experiments with insights they can apply to a variety of ocean-based oil releases.' Rather than limiting ourselves to a forensic investigation of the Deepwater Horizon release, we are using that spill to explore spill scenarios more generally,' Boufadel said. 'Our goal is not to prepare for the previous spill, but to broaden the horizons to explore various scenarios.'
More than nine years after the Deepwater Horizon exploded, sending up to 900,000 tons of oil and into the Gulf of Mexico, there are, however, lingering questions about the safety and effectiveness of a key element of the emergency response: injecting chemicals a mile below the ocean surface to break up oil spewing from the ruptured sub-sea wellhead to prevent it from reaching environmentally sensitive regions. To date, spill cleanups have focused primarily on removing or dispersing oil on the and shoreline, habitats deemed more important ecologically.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |