“Cover Oregon has given a $70,000 contract to Aaron Karjala, the health insurance exchange’s former top technology official, to assist with litigation against Oracle Corp.
Clyde Hamstreet, formerly the exchange’s acting executive director, signed the contract with Karjala June 3, less than three months after Gov. John Kitzhaber publicly called for his firing.”
“Luis Martinez of Hialeah survived two heart attacks during the more than 10 years that he went without health insurance.
So he was relieved to finally find coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchange in March, two weeks before the enrollment deadline.
But four months after he and his wife signed up for a subsidized, bronze-level health plan with Coventry, Martinez, 51, said he feels as though he has fallen into a black hole of government bureaucracy while trying to prove his income and his wife’s citizenship in order to keep their coverage, part of a national effort to verify policyholders’ eligibility.
Martinez, who has stents implanted in his coronary arteries, said he has tried repeatedly for more than a month to comply with the government’s requests for additional documentation to resolve inconsistencies in his personal information — or risk losing his $457 monthly subsidy, and health insurance for him and his wife, Rocio Balbin, 46.
So far, officials with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are not satisfied with his response.”
“Better access to data about real world patient experience holds enormous potential to help achieve many of the goals of health reform, including improving the quality and delivery of medical care, reducing costs, and improving safety and outcomes by accelerating the knowledge base upon which the development of new treatments and cures relies.
Capturing data about the actual experience of patients outside of the carefully controlled clinical trial setting – Real World Data – can help fill the knowledge gap between clinical trials and clinical practice. RWD offers a treasure-trove of information that could allow providers, innovators, health plans, researchers, and others in the scientific and medical communities to make faster, more efficient, and less costly advances in medical research and clinical treatment. Life sciences companies can use this data to explore the benefits and risks of treatment options including their effectiveness in patient subpopulations, expedite enrollment in clinical trials, identify new targets for research and development, and transform the value equation in medical care.”