Hopkins is dropping CareFirst

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins is a terribly run hospital system. Their children's hospital in Florida almost lost their medicaid funding due to safety lapses: https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2019/02/01/federal-officials-threaten-all-childrens-funding-citing-problems/.

Good on BCBS for not feeding the beast.

You’re dumb if you think that every hospital that has the JH label slapped on it is identical. ACH was a sh*tshow long before JHHS took over, and they simply failed to clean it up fast enough (for which they have been correctly criticized).

All politics is local and so is all health care.

I work for JHU and can tell you how mismanaged it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins is a terribly run hospital system. Their children's hospital in Florida almost lost their medicaid funding due to safety lapses: https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2019/02/01/federal-officials-threaten-all-childrens-funding-citing-problems/.

Good on BCBS for not feeding the beast.

You’re dumb if you think that every hospital that has the JH label slapped on it is identical. ACH was a sh*tshow long before JHHS took over, and they simply failed to clean it up fast enough (for which they have been correctly criticized).

All politics is local and so is all health care.

umm... its not like hospitals lose their medicare money every day, things have to be really bad. this is shocking and sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A. Single payer health care systems do not pay doctors the big bucks
B. Carefirst is a nonprofit organization while Johns Hopkins made $200 million in profit last year

What that means for this discussion is up for debate but I think this is a complex issue.

My wife's side of the family has a few of people in the medical industry and they make really good money. Unsurprisingly, not one of them will be in a room with a patient this week.
CareFirst may meet the IRS definition of a non-profit but they feed a lot of money to a lot of millionaires.

Is the American healthcare system more complex? That's the intention. More pockets to be stuffed. It's the same reason the F35 jet fighter uses components from over 200 Congressional districts. I cannot imagine how many billions they spend to assure that we never convert to a single payer system. Besides, it would put my relatives out of work.

My doctor works for Hopkins and made a weak argument for me to stay with the practice. Alas, we have the golden handcuffs to BCBS so off we go.

CareFirst pays plenty of money to people at the top who never see a patient or save a life. The doctors I know making a lot of money don’t take insurance and tend to be in cosmetic practices. The oncologists, pediatrician’s, primary care, gerontologists I know don’t make large salaries when you consider what they do for a living. CareFirst executives make more than the doctors. It’s powered by greed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Carefirst post sounds pretty harsh. Really hope they work it out.

Harsh? It sounds rather calm and measured. I hope they take Hopkins down. I don’t particularly care whether it’s through private insurance companies or a move to a single-payer system, but someone needs to get health care costs under control.

“Take Hopkins down”…so you’d rather everyone suffer a discontinuity of care? I am also for a single payer system and MD is probably one of the closest use cases to it with its all payer rates that you’d see and this is still happening. I also find it disingenuous that Carefirst says they’re a not for profit company in the very beginning and suggests you call their member services who I find less than helpful most of the time.

Discontinuity of care? Find a new doctor. What would you do if your doctor moved away or retired? Surely you don’t expect insurance companies to write health care systems a blank check.

And fwiw, Carefirst was spectacular when we had a very expensive traumatic medical emergency. I remember being worried when they assigned a case manager to us, figuring it was their job to try to limit follow-up services. Instead, that case manager was incredibly helpful at identifying in-network providers, and personally made sure claims and prior auths were handled quickly. They even waived copays. That didn't end up being a ton of money, since we were within $500 of our out-of-pocket max, but I still appreciated it.

you are not too smart if you don't realize there is NO NEED for this kind of complexity in healthcare. how do other countries do it? why does US healthcare need to be so complicated? oh, i know - so that there is a huge layer of insurance companies and their lobbyists get their share.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:thank the greedy doctors and big pharma.

Actually Hopkins doctors don’t get paid much at all.

+1
I used to be one.
I had 10+ years of experience in a speciality with moderate salaries (ie not peds or rheumatology or another low-paying speciality), and made 180K/year working 60-70 hours/week.
Many have family money or a higher-earning spouse.
Couldn’t swing it anymore financially, and left.

Also, because of the structure of medical reimbursement for Maryland Hospitals, costs are more contained in Maryland than in other states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/opinion/maryland-medical-bills-lower.html

Doctors in Maryland actually have fairly low salaries relative to the cost of living.

But the whole system is broken and needs to be burned down and rebuilt.
Essentially every physician I know who is 50 or younger wants single-payrr.
We are all burned out and miserable.

You don’t think Hopkins underpays in part because they can? I.e., people will take the lower salaries in exchange for the prestige of working there.

I know in other areas of the university, this is definitely the case. They low-ball big time. For the medical center, with all that Bloomberg and Saudi money, how can they be hurting so much?

Can someone elaborate what this is about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:thank the greedy doctors and big pharma.

Actually Hopkins doctors don’t get paid much at all.

+1
I used to be one.
I had 10+ years of experience in a speciality with moderate salaries (ie not peds or rheumatology or another low-paying speciality), and made 180K/year working 60-70 hours/week.
Many have family money or a higher-earning spouse.
Couldn’t swing it anymore financially, and left.

Also, because of the structure of medical reimbursement for Maryland Hospitals, costs are more contained in Maryland than in other states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/opinion/maryland-medical-bills-lower.html

Doctors in Maryland actually have fairly low salaries relative to the cost of living.

But the whole system is broken and needs to be burned down and rebuilt.
Essentially every physician I know who is 50 or younger wants single-payrr.
We are all burned out and miserable.

You don’t think Hopkins underpays in part because they can? I.e., people will take the lower salaries in exchange for the prestige of working there.

I know in other areas of the university, this is definitely the case. They low-ball big time. For the medical center, with all that Bloomberg and Saudi money, how can they be hurting so much?

Can someone elaborate what this is about?

One of the shieks from United Arab Emirates has donated an enormous amount of money and has a building at Hopkins Medicine named after them.
I assume that's what the person is incorrectly referring to as Saudi money.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know if they have come to an agreement yet?

[Anonymous]

any updates on this?

[Anonymous]

I went to a carefirst openrollment zoom for state of MD employees. Seems as though they are working on an agreement and hope to have it by the end of SOM open enrollment (Nov. 4th) but no guarantees. There were 150 people on the call basically all raging about the JHU situation. I almost felt bad for the presenters, but it didn't make me feel much better. Personally, I am most likely switching insurance carriers to stay with JHU providers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:thank the greedy doctors and big pharma.

Actually Hopkins doctors don’t get paid much at all.

+1
I used to be one.
I had 10+ years of experience in a speciality with moderate salaries (ie not peds or rheumatology or another low-paying speciality), and made 180K/year working 60-70 hours/week.
Many have family money or a higher-earning spouse.
Couldn’t swing it anymore financially, and left.

Also, because of the structure of medical reimbursement for Maryland Hospitals, costs are more contained in Maryland than in other states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/opinion/maryland-medical-bills-lower.html

Doctors in Maryland actually have fairly low salaries relative to the cost of living.

But the whole system is broken and needs to be burned down and rebuilt.
Essentially every physician I know who is 50 or younger wants single-payrr.
We are all burned out and miserable.

You don’t think Hopkins underpays in part because they can? I.e., people will take the lower salaries in exchange for the prestige of working there.

I know in other areas of the university, this is definitely the case. They low-ball big time. For the medical center, with all that Bloomberg and Saudi money, how can they be hurting so much?

Can someone elaborate what this is about?

One of the shieks from United Arab Emirates has donated an enormous amount of money and has a building at Hopkins Medicine named after them.
I assume that's what the person is incorrectly referring to as Saudi money.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/about-us/locations/zayed_tower/

Weird racist vibes from PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait, does this cancellation by Hopkins include BCBS federal employee programs??

Yes. I'm a fed with a complex autoimmune disease and Hopkins is the closest hospital to offer specialized care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:thank the greedy doctors and big pharma.

Actually Hopkins doctors don’t get paid much at all.

+1
I used to be one.
I had 10+ years of experience in a speciality with moderate salaries (ie not peds or rheumatology or another low-paying speciality), and made 180K/year working 60-70 hours/week.
Many have family money or a higher-earning spouse.
Couldn’t swing it anymore financially, and left.

Also, because of the structure of medical reimbursement for Maryland Hospitals, costs are more contained in Maryland than in other states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/opinion/maryland-medical-bills-lower.html

Doctors in Maryland actually have fairly low salaries relative to the cost of living.

But the whole system is broken and needs to be burned down and rebuilt.
Essentially every physician I know who is 50 or younger wants single-payrr.
We are all burned out and miserable.

You don’t think Hopkins underpays in part because they can? I.e., people will take the lower salaries in exchange for the prestige of working there.

I know in other areas of the university, this is definitely the case. They low-ball big time. For the medical center, with all that Bloomberg and Saudi money, how can they be hurting so much?

Can someone elaborate what this is about?

One of the shieks from United Arab Emirates has donated an enormous amount of money and has a building at Hopkins Medicine named after them.
I assume that's what the person is incorrectly referring to as Saudi money.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/about-us/locations/zayed_tower/

Weird racist vibes from PP.

Right, no one could ever mistake SA and UAE. /s

The point is that jhu has gotten billions…from just two sources.

[Anonymous]

Just got this email:

Subject: Johns Hopkins to Remain In-Network for CareFirst Members

Dear Patient or Guardian,
You recently received a notification about possible changes to CareFirst’s coverage of Johns Hopkins Medicine. We are pleased to share with you that we have reached an agreement with CareFirst. As a result, Johns Hopkins doctors, nurses and other caregivers, as well as our ambulatory surgery centers, will remain in CareFirst’s network.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just got this email:

Subject: Johns Hopkins to Remain In-Network for CareFirst Members

Dear Patient or Guardian,
You recently received a notification about possible changes to CareFirst’s coverage of Johns Hopkins Medicine. We are pleased to share with you that we have reached an agreement with CareFirst. As a result, Johns Hopkins doctors, nurses and other caregivers, as well as our ambulatory surgery centers, will remain in CareFirst’s network.

Thanks for sharing this; it's good news!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins is a terribly run hospital system. Their children's hospital in Florida almost lost their medicaid funding due to safety lapses: https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2019/02/01/federal-officials-threaten-all-childrens-funding-citing-problems/.

Good on BCBS for not feeding the beast.

You’re dumb if you think that every hospital that has the JH label slapped on it is identical. ACH was a sh*tshow long before JHHS took over, and they simply failed to clean it up fast enough (for which they have been correctly criticized).

All politics is local and so is all health care.

I work for JHU and can tell you how mismanaged it is.

The university (JHU) is not the hospital system.
I also work for JHU, and am in leadership there, but don't profess to know about what the hospital system is doing.

But I would like to know -- is there some sort of well-managed hospital system we should switch to? From what I see, hospitals' incentives have nothing to do with my quality of care - they are all pretty bad places to be. At least at Hopkins there are people who are docking their own salary for some sort of prestige, which makes me think perhaps they value doing a good job or at least trying to do so, even if only at their research. But I don't have that high of hopes, just know that complaining one place is bad is just useless.