Thursday, July 31, 2008
Cost of Health Care VS Gas prices
Gas prices are in the political spotlight right now; this year's spike has been painful and the calls for action — and heads — have pushed other issues to the side. But it is worth remembering that when it comes to real, sustained growth in costs, when it comes to real, sustained erosion of families' disposable income, gas still can't hold a candle to the real elephant in the room: health care.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
HEALTH CARE COST ---UNIVERSAL COVERAGE
John F. Wasik July 2, 2008
Healthcare will become one of the most onerous personal-finance issues in coming years unless the system is changed to ensure universal access, cost control, and long-term financing.
US families now pay more than $12,000 a year for health coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Yet why doesn't any presidential candidate fully endorse a comprehensive national plan?
What would make healthcare available to more than 47 million who don't have coverage and the majority of American families whose premiums have risen 78 percent since 2001? Massive buying power through consolidation of separate programs and a public-private partnership.
To understand what a pervasive problem medical spending is, you need to digest some numbers. Health expenditures consume about 16 percent of US gross domestic product. Translated to an individual family, medical insurance claims 20 percent of median income. That's compared with 8 percent in 1987, according to the nonpartisan New America Foundation. Life expectancy is directly connected to medical coverage. Uninsured and underinsured (an additional 25 million) Americans visit doctors less frequently, pay more for care, and have the highest rate of preventable deaths before age 75, according to the Institute of Medicine.
Employers who do offer coverage are less competitive in a global marketplace. Workers who don't have policies end up in emergency rooms demanding costly care that taxpayers will ultimately finance.
Unless the growing bite of health costs is addressed, related spending will double by 2017 from 2007 levels, consuming one out of every five dollars produced in the United States, according to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
How do you save the best of US healthcare while providing it to everyone at a reasonable cost? Creating one new, entirely government-run public program may be untenable and politically unacceptable. The road to a solution can merge both private and public interests. What would such a hybrid look like? It would:
1) Outsource cost controlling. That means hiring audit firms to see where costs can be cut. The government could act like a huge accounts-payable department; a private firm would police billing and implement best practices.
2) Negotiate the best price. Maybe Wal-Mart's purchasing practices could be the model.
3) End fees for service. Medical expenses should be based on performance and outcomes, not on number of procedures.
4) Make technology a big part of the system. A major overhaul focusing on efficient technology use is in order.
The healthcare picture of the future isn't cloudy. There will be devastating financial consequences if we don't hunker down and prepare for a much more severe fiscal storm.
John F. Wasik is a Bloomberg News columnist. He can be reached at jwasik@bloomberg.net. Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2008/07/02/healthcare_costs _must_be_brought_under_control_or_the_economy_will_surely_suffer/
Healthcare will become one of the most onerous personal-finance issues in coming years unless the system is changed to ensure universal access, cost control, and long-term financing.
US families now pay more than $12,000 a year for health coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Yet why doesn't any presidential candidate fully endorse a comprehensive national plan?
What would make healthcare available to more than 47 million who don't have coverage and the majority of American families whose premiums have risen 78 percent since 2001? Massive buying power through consolidation of separate programs and a public-private partnership.
To understand what a pervasive problem medical spending is, you need to digest some numbers. Health expenditures consume about 16 percent of US gross domestic product. Translated to an individual family, medical insurance claims 20 percent of median income. That's compared with 8 percent in 1987, according to the nonpartisan New America Foundation. Life expectancy is directly connected to medical coverage. Uninsured and underinsured (an additional 25 million) Americans visit doctors less frequently, pay more for care, and have the highest rate of preventable deaths before age 75, according to the Institute of Medicine.
Employers who do offer coverage are less competitive in a global marketplace. Workers who don't have policies end up in emergency rooms demanding costly care that taxpayers will ultimately finance.
Unless the growing bite of health costs is addressed, related spending will double by 2017 from 2007 levels, consuming one out of every five dollars produced in the United States, according to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
How do you save the best of US healthcare while providing it to everyone at a reasonable cost? Creating one new, entirely government-run public program may be untenable and politically unacceptable. The road to a solution can merge both private and public interests. What would such a hybrid look like? It would:
1) Outsource cost controlling. That means hiring audit firms to see where costs can be cut. The government could act like a huge accounts-payable department; a private firm would police billing and implement best practices.
2) Negotiate the best price. Maybe Wal-Mart's purchasing practices could be the model.
3) End fees for service. Medical expenses should be based on performance and outcomes, not on number of procedures.
4) Make technology a big part of the system. A major overhaul focusing on efficient technology use is in order.
The healthcare picture of the future isn't cloudy. There will be devastating financial consequences if we don't hunker down and prepare for a much more severe fiscal storm.
John F. Wasik is a Bloomberg News columnist. He can be reached at jwasik@bloomberg.net. Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2008/07/02/healthcare_costs _must_be_brought_under_control_or_the_economy_will_surely_suffer/
Monday, June 23, 2008
Health Care Massachusetts Health Care Reform
Universal Health Care Education Fund, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02111-2040
To the Editor:
Re "The Massachusetts Model" (editorial, June 16):
As a Massachusetts primary care physician, I dearly wish that your optimism for our state's health care plan were well placed. My fear, however, is that any plan that does not eliminate the colossal waste of multiple competing private health insurers is doomed to failure.
Costs can never be contained while supporting bloated private bureaucracies and for-profit medicine. Most physicians now support single-payer, national health insurance ("Medicare for all").
Alan Meyers, Boston, June 16, 2008
The writer is associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and a founding member, Physicians for a National Health Program.
To the Editor:
You hail Massachusetts’ health reform as a promising model for the nation. But within the last year both the State Senate president and the executive director of the agency implementing the new law have publicly recognized that it will collapse if health care costs continue to rise by double digits, which they have.
No effective cost-control legislation is in sight. In Massachusetts we see history repeating itself: a large expansion of Medicaid in the mid-1990s added more than 300,000 residents to the rolls, cutting the uninsured population almost by half. A few short years of rising costs, however, were enough to erase those gains and place the state back to where it started.
Similar fates have befallen many "universal" state reforms hailed as models for the nation. Without eliminating the waste inherent in commercial health care systems and making comprehensive coverage a right, no country has ever been able to achieve universal health care.
We need a single-payer health care system that will be there for our children, not another unsustainable experiment with obvious math problems that won't be there just a few years from now.
Benjamin Day, Executive Director
Mass-Care: The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care
Boston, June 17, 2008
To the Editor:
Your editorial lauds the Massachusetts health care reforms as "off to a good start" and "heartening." The editorial addresses the reforms' higher than projected costs thus:
"The shortfall occurred mostly because the state underestimated the number of uninsured residents and how fast low-income people would sign up for subsidized coverage. It is a warning to other states to keep projections realistic."
I'm sorry, but if states can low-ball the cost of reforms to get them enacted, and still get praised by the paper of record, that's exactly what they'll do. Some "warning."
Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies
Cato Institute, Washington, June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/opinion/l19health.html
*******************************************************************************************************
Anxiety Over Health Insurance Shapes Life Choices
By VICTORIA E. KNIGHT, The Wall Street Journal 6/10/08
Anxious over being caught uninsured or paying sky-high premiums, some people -- especially those with health problems -- are going to great lengths to get or keep job-based health coverage.
Wedding dates are being moved up to quickly get both husband and wife on a company plan. On the flip side, married couples are holding off on getting divorced so they will both stay on their existing plan. In some cases, those who are self-employed are going so far as to hire employees to qualify for group insurance.
Concern over coverage also is affecting a host of other major life decisions, insurance-industry watchers and financial advisers say, including the age of retirement and the state where people choose to live.
"People are turning themselves inside out to get health insurance," says Karen Politz, a research professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute in Washington.
Under federal law, insurers are required to charge all participants the same for premiums in employer-sponsored group plans regardless of health status. In state-regulated individual markets, by contrast, people with health problems may end up paying high premiums, face exclusions for past or existing medical conditions or be denied coverage.
Financial advisers say health-coverage worries are rampant among clients. For those with medical conditions, conversations increasingly center on how to get or stay on a group policy or segue into the individual market in a way that prevents insurers from denying coverage or excluding pre-existing conditions.
In certain circumstances, two federal laws -- Cobra and Hipaa -- provide such protections, but the rules can be complicated. Insurers may not be limited in what they can charge participants, although some states may set limits. If you are young and healthy, you will likely find a less-expensive policy in the individual market.
"Access to coverage is a huge issue," says Leon Rousso, a certified financial planner in Ventura, Calif. "You may have the financial means to pay for premiums but not be able to get coverage, leaving you exposed to potentially catastrophic losses if you become ill."
Obtaining insurance through an employer is often the easiest way to get comprehensive coverage for those who don't qualify for Medicare or federal or state programs for the very poor.
Employers tend to subsidize premiums, making it more affordable for those in poor health who benefit from being part of a larger risk pool. The coverage tends to be more comprehensive and cost-effective in group policies.
*******************************************************************************************************
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars.
To the Editor:
Re "The Massachusetts Model" (editorial, June 16):
As a Massachusetts primary care physician, I dearly wish that your optimism for our state's health care plan were well placed. My fear, however, is that any plan that does not eliminate the colossal waste of multiple competing private health insurers is doomed to failure.
Costs can never be contained while supporting bloated private bureaucracies and for-profit medicine. Most physicians now support single-payer, national health insurance ("Medicare for all").
Alan Meyers, Boston, June 16, 2008
The writer is associate professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and a founding member, Physicians for a National Health Program.
To the Editor:
You hail Massachusetts’ health reform as a promising model for the nation. But within the last year both the State Senate president and the executive director of the agency implementing the new law have publicly recognized that it will collapse if health care costs continue to rise by double digits, which they have.
No effective cost-control legislation is in sight. In Massachusetts we see history repeating itself: a large expansion of Medicaid in the mid-1990s added more than 300,000 residents to the rolls, cutting the uninsured population almost by half. A few short years of rising costs, however, were enough to erase those gains and place the state back to where it started.
Similar fates have befallen many "universal" state reforms hailed as models for the nation. Without eliminating the waste inherent in commercial health care systems and making comprehensive coverage a right, no country has ever been able to achieve universal health care.
We need a single-payer health care system that will be there for our children, not another unsustainable experiment with obvious math problems that won't be there just a few years from now.
Benjamin Day, Executive Director
Mass-Care: The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care
Boston, June 17, 2008
To the Editor:
Your editorial lauds the Massachusetts health care reforms as "off to a good start" and "heartening." The editorial addresses the reforms' higher than projected costs thus:
"The shortfall occurred mostly because the state underestimated the number of uninsured residents and how fast low-income people would sign up for subsidized coverage. It is a warning to other states to keep projections realistic."
I'm sorry, but if states can low-ball the cost of reforms to get them enacted, and still get praised by the paper of record, that's exactly what they'll do. Some "warning."
Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies
Cato Institute, Washington, June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/opinion/l19health.html
*******************************************************************************************************
Anxiety Over Health Insurance Shapes Life Choices
By VICTORIA E. KNIGHT, The Wall Street Journal 6/10/08
Anxious over being caught uninsured or paying sky-high premiums, some people -- especially those with health problems -- are going to great lengths to get or keep job-based health coverage.
Wedding dates are being moved up to quickly get both husband and wife on a company plan. On the flip side, married couples are holding off on getting divorced so they will both stay on their existing plan. In some cases, those who are self-employed are going so far as to hire employees to qualify for group insurance.
Concern over coverage also is affecting a host of other major life decisions, insurance-industry watchers and financial advisers say, including the age of retirement and the state where people choose to live.
"People are turning themselves inside out to get health insurance," says Karen Politz, a research professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute in Washington.
Under federal law, insurers are required to charge all participants the same for premiums in employer-sponsored group plans regardless of health status. In state-regulated individual markets, by contrast, people with health problems may end up paying high premiums, face exclusions for past or existing medical conditions or be denied coverage.
Financial advisers say health-coverage worries are rampant among clients. For those with medical conditions, conversations increasingly center on how to get or stay on a group policy or segue into the individual market in a way that prevents insurers from denying coverage or excluding pre-existing conditions.
In certain circumstances, two federal laws -- Cobra and Hipaa -- provide such protections, but the rules can be complicated. Insurers may not be limited in what they can charge participants, although some states may set limits. If you are young and healthy, you will likely find a less-expensive policy in the individual market.
"Access to coverage is a huge issue," says Leon Rousso, a certified financial planner in Ventura, Calif. "You may have the financial means to pay for premiums but not be able to get coverage, leaving you exposed to potentially catastrophic losses if you become ill."
Obtaining insurance through an employer is often the easiest way to get comprehensive coverage for those who don't qualify for Medicare or federal or state programs for the very poor.
Employers tend to subsidize premiums, making it more affordable for those in poor health who benefit from being part of a larger risk pool. The coverage tends to be more comprehensive and cost-effective in group policies.
*******************************************************************************************************
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Massachusetts Health Care Containment
Dear Howard:
>
> Thank you for your advocacy – it made a difference!
>
> Last night, the Massachusetts Senate approved a health care cost containment bill with key provisions that may help to keep prescription drug costs down by limiting the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry.
>
> Did you know that the pharmaceutical industry spends over $7 billion annually marketing to physicians, and that 94% of physicians receive meals and other payments from pharmaceutical companies? The cost of that marketing is passed along to consumers and other purchasers in the price of prescription drugs.
>
> Today, pharmaceutical industry salespeople are the primary source of providers’ information about medications. The Senate bill includes a program in which medical professionals will provide physicians with unbiased data they need to make appropriate prescribing decisions, unlike pharmaceutical sales representatives who provide promotional information.
>
> There are several additional steps in the legislative process before this becomes law but now is the time to thank the Senate for their leadership.
>
> Thank you for your advocacy – it made a difference!
>
> Last night, the Massachusetts Senate approved a health care cost containment bill with key provisions that may help to keep prescription drug costs down by limiting the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry.
>
> Did you know that the pharmaceutical industry spends over $7 billion annually marketing to physicians, and that 94% of physicians receive meals and other payments from pharmaceutical companies? The cost of that marketing is passed along to consumers and other purchasers in the price of prescription drugs.
>
> Today, pharmaceutical industry salespeople are the primary source of providers’ information about medications. The Senate bill includes a program in which medical professionals will provide physicians with unbiased data they need to make appropriate prescribing decisions, unlike pharmaceutical sales representatives who provide promotional information.
>
> There are several additional steps in the legislative process before this becomes law but now is the time to thank the Senate for their leadership.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
CVS PHARMACY
has asked Massachusetts health officials for approval to open the first of 20 to 30 planned "MinuteClinics" in Boston-area stores that executives said will offer patients fast, inexpensive care in a region struggling with packed emergency rooms and closed doctors' practices.
RETAIL CLINICS Show how the lure of profits creates opportunities for competition and quality care at an affordable price.
In a world where consumers are able to control more of their own routine health care spending.
The presciption for the clinics success;
Strict protocols to ensure high-quality care
Low prices that are clearly posted
Convenience
RETAIL CLINICS Show how the lure of profits creates opportunities for competition and quality care at an affordable price.
In a world where consumers are able to control more of their own routine health care spending.
The presciption for the clinics success;
Strict protocols to ensure high-quality care
Low prices that are clearly posted
Convenience
Competition won't ail you
The convenient-care clinic model arose from the mitmatch between what consumers need and what the Health care System was offering them.
QuickMedx runs stripped-down medical clinics in Cub Foods stores in the Twin Cities. Patients pay a flat $35 fee, and the clinics try to get people in and out in 15 minutes.
The clinics can charge lower fees than other clinics because they use nurse practitioners who diagnose and prescribe medications for about a dozen common ailments. They refer more complicated problems elsewhere.
This year marks the first time since opening in May 2000 that the company is taking its kiosk outside of a grocery store. Whitman said a local corporation — yet to be announced — has invited QuickMedx to open a clinic on its campus
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