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Over the years our firm has periodically sent out a newsletter to advise our clients and friends about recent changes, trends and happenings in the healthcare field. We are pleased to share the April issue of our newsletter with you. Each month we will do our best to share with you "insight" that we find helpful in our practice and that should be helpful for you in yours.
Our new
website is now live!
We worked hard to provide a user friendly site that is both informative and mobile devise compatible.
Visit Our Updated Website
. In addition to our new website, we are now live on
Facebook
. Be sure to
"like"
our new
Facebook Page
and
follow us
so that we can provide real-time updates and information to you. We also created pages on
Twitter
and on
LinkedIn
so that we can provide updates and information on all of the relevant social media platforms.
Please give us a call to review just how we might be able to be of service.
Sincerely,
Jay B. Umansky
The Law Offices of Jay B. Umansky PC
jumansky@stllaw.net
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NEWS WORTHY NOTES AND OPINIONS
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How to Provide a Better Customer Experience
Go The Extra Mile
ShepHyken
Going the extra mile is an old expression. It describes people who provide better customer service, do a little more than expected and try a little harder. This is a great concept for customer service and is further enhanced by Roger Staubach, the Hall-of-Fame football player who played quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, who said:
There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
This is a great metaphor that can be used in a variety of ways and is especially applicable to business, and specifically the concept of the customer experience (CX).
Going the extra mile is about the "baker's dozen," which is getting more than you thought you were paying for. It's the extra time a salesperson spends helping you make the right selection. It's the customer support rep that takes an extra few minutes to ensure you have all of your questions answered and won't need to call back. You get the idea.
I was talking to a client, Chris Cielewich at
FLAVORx
, about this very concept. FLAVORx is a machine that takes terrible tasting medications and flavors them. Parents love this, because kids are more willing to take their medicine. Sounds good so far. There is a catch, and here is where the concept of the extra mile comes into play.
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Deserting ObamaCare: UnitedHealth, nation's largest health insurer, bolts, fears huge losses.
Published April 20, 2016
FoxNews.com
The nation's largest health insurer, fearing massive financial losses, announced Tuesday that it plans to pull back from ObamaCare in a big way and cut its participation in the program's insurance exchanges to just a handful of states next year - in the latest sign of instability in the marketplace under the law.
UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said the company expects losses from its exchange business to total more than $1 billion for this year and last.
Despite the company expanding to nearly three dozen state exchanges for this year, Hemsley said the company cannot continue to broadly serve the market created by the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansion due partly to the higher risk that comes with its customers.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it now expects to lose $650 million this year on its exchange business, up from its previous projection for $525 million. The insurer lost $475 million in 2015, a spokesman said.
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EDITORIAL: Obamacare on the skids
The president's health care plan grows more sickly by the montH
Names identify people, places and things, but sometimes, particularly in politics, a name can be a disguise. After six years, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has been fully unmasked. It's clearly not affordable, either for a person seeking health insurance, companies that sell insurance coverage, or the U.S. government. It's a telling symbol of President Obama's dysfunctional leadership. When Mr. Obama leaves the Oval Office, Congress should be poised to replace his namesake program.
The nation's largest health insurance firm, United Healthcare, announced last week that it will drop out of most state insurance exchanges by the end of next year. United lost $475 million in 2015 and expects to lose $650 million this year, because Obamacare clients tend to be sicker and their care costs 22 percent more than care for workers in employer-based plans.
The number of companies sticking it out goes up and down like a yo-yo. When Obamacare came on the market in 2013, 395 insurers offered individual coverage. The number, according to the Heritage Foundation, fell to 253 in 2014, bounced up to 307 in 2015 and has dropped since to 287. Subsidies of $20 billion will soon end, and more companies are expected to quit the market. Crony capitalism loses its appeal when cronies can't capitalize.
As the economics of health insurance firms go, so goes the financial condition of Americans required to purchase coverage. The average Obamacare premium has climbed by 8 percent in 2016 and the cost of the mid-level "silver plans" has jumped 11 percent, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. With balance sheets in the red, many companies are expected to impose steeper raises in 2017. Nearly 13 million previously uninsured Americans bought coverage over the last three years, but twice that number still have not. Those millions figure it's more affordable to pay a tax penalty of $695 per person, or 2.5 percent of household income above the filing threshold, than submit to the unaffordable Affordable Care Act.
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JAY UMANSKY TO SPEAK AT HFMA JOINT SPRING CONFERENCE MAY 11-13, 2016
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We hope to see some, if not all of you at the Joint HFMA Spring Conference May 11-13, 2016 at the River City Hotel & Casino. Jay will be speaking between 1:15 and 2:15 on May 12, 2016. His presentation entitled "Have at the Lawyer" will provide attendees the opportunity to ask any and all questions about legal issues in health care financial management.
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