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Antidote to Growing Inequality = Universal Healthcare: World Health Organization Head
'We have to evict private insurers and other profiteers from our healthcare system,' says U.S. doctor and single-payer advocate.
by Andrea Germanos
Providing universal health coverage is a key way to address increasing global inequality, the head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan made the comment—which echoes previous comments she's made—during a keynote address on the first of a two-day conference on universal health coverage taking place in Singapore.
"Universal health coverage is one of the most powerful social equalizers among all policy options. It is the ultimate expression of fairness," Agence France-Pressequotes her as saying.
Achieving such coverage demands "deliberate policy decisions," she said, adding, "At a time when policies in so many sectors are actually increasing social inequalities, I would be delighted to see health lead the world towards greater fairness in ways that matter to each and every person on the planet."
The WHO defines the goal of universal health coverage as ensuring "that all people obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them," and describes such coverage as "the hallmark of a government’s commitment to improve the well-being of all its citizens."
A fact sheet from the UN body issued in September 2014 states: "At least a billion people suffer each year because they cannot obtain the health services they need."
In her comments to the 34-member WHO executive board last month, Chan also referred to universal coverage as "one of the most powerful social equalizers," and stressed the importance of investing in healthcare systems.
"Health systems and supporting infrastructures... are not a luxury to invest in when funds are available or other priorities have been met," she said at the time. "They are an essential cushion against the shocks our 21st century societies are delivering with ever greater frequency, whether from a changing climate or a runaway virus."
An Ode to Obamacare
by Gail Colling
Let’s sing the praises of Obamacare for a minute.
Get back here! I said just for a minute. O.K., it’s not the tidiest law in history. You’re probably still sulking because you wanted something simple and rational, like a single-payer plan. But it’s here, and about 10 million people have health coverage who didn’t have it before.
Plus, it’s apparently working better than any of us imagined. Here is how great the Affordable Care Act is doing: The Supreme Court is about to hear a challenge to the law, filed on behalf of four Virginia plaintiffs, who claim to have suffered grievous harm by being forced to either buy health coverage or pay a penalty. Lately, reporters have been trying to track down this quartet of pain, and discovered they are:
— A 64-year-old limo driver who does not seem to be required to do anything under the Affordable Care Act because the cost of even a very cheap health care plan would be more than 8 percent of his income. (People who have to pay more than 8 percent are allowed to just opt out of the whole program and stay blissfully uninsured.) Also, he’s a Vietnam veteran and thus presumably eligible for free veteran’s health care, making the whole discussion even more irrelevant.
— A 63-year old man in Virginia Beach who would apparently have been eligible for stupendous savings on health insurance under the new law. And who is also a veteran.
— A woman who listed her address as a motel where she hasn’t been staying since late 2013. And wherever she is, she probably wouldn’t have any Obamacare problems because of the 8 percent rule.
— A 64-year-old woman who seemed to have little or no idea what the case was about. “I don’t like the idea of throwing people off their health insurance,” she told Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones.
That plaintiff, an anti-gay rights activist, also told Mencimer that because of previous health problems, she faced insurance costs of $1,500 a month, a vastly higher premium than she’d pay under Obamacare. Also, The Wall Street Journal determined that her annual rate of pay as a substitute teacher was so low she, too, should be off the hook because of the 8 percent rule. Also, she’s about to qualify for Medicare.
Comments by some of the plaintiffs did suggest that they experienced serious pain over the fact that Barack Obama is president. “... When he was elected, he got his Muslim people to vote for him, that’s how he won,” one told Facebook.
Obamacare sign-ups expected to top 10 million amid sizable expansion
As the deadline for signing up for coverage through the Affordable Care Act approaches Sunday, enrollment in plans provided through the federal health law is on track to expand substantially over 2014.
Nationwide, preliminary tallies from state and federal health agencies suggest sign-ups should top 10 million and will probably go even higher in the final rush this weekend.
That total, though short of independent estimates that had projected 2015 enrollment at 13 million, still signals progress that will probably further drive down the nation's already falling uninsured rate.
Eight million people signed up on marketplaces in 2014 (though the final enrollment tally last year was less than 6.7 million, as some consumers dropped plans or shifted to different coverage through the year and others were dropped because of immigration issues).
"Enrollment for 2015 showed strong growth," said Dan Mendelson, chief executive of Avalere Health, a Washington consulting firm that closely tracks the health law. "This market is here to stay."
The 2015 enrollment campaign — the second since insurance marketplaces created by the law debuted in 2013 — also has gone considerably more smoothly.
The federal HealthCare.gov website and similar state-based sites experienced no catastrophic meltdowns. Wait times at call centers around the country have been far shorter.
And marketplaces in states such as Hawaii, Maryland and Massachusetts, which barely functioned last year, have signed up tens of thousands of consumers since the current enrollment period began Nov. 15.
Despite the gains, coverage for millions remains in jeopardy, as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a challenge to the law's system for providing government subsidies to offset consumers' insurance premiums.
Back-end problems with data systems continue to make the enrollment process cumbersome for insurers. Some consumers may be facing stiff premium hikes if they automatically re-enrolled in their current plans, rather than selecting new, lower-priced options.
And with tens of millions of other Americans still uninsured, Obama administration officials and other proponents of the law are scrambling to get as many people as possible into health plans.
"We want those numbers to go higher," Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell told supporters at a medical ministry in North Carolina last week. "Once Feb. 15 comes, open enrollment is over and folks will have to wait until next year to enter into the system."
In California, the push has taken on particular urgency as state officials try to hit an ambitious target of 1.7 million, about half a million more people than the final 2014 total.
As the deadline for signing up for coverage through the Affordable Care Act approaches Sunday, enrollment in plans provided through the federal health law is on track to expand substantially over 2014.
Nationwide, preliminary tallies from state and federal health agencies suggest sign-ups should top 10 million and will probably go even higher in the final rush this weekend.
That total, though short of independent estimates that had projected 2015 enrollment at 13 million, still signals progress that will probably further drive down the nation's already falling uninsured rate.
Eight million people signed up on marketplaces in 2014 (though the final enrollment tally last year was less than 6.7 million, as some consumers dropped plans or shifted to different coverage through the year and others were dropped because of immigration issues).
"Enrollment for 2015 showed strong growth," said Dan Mendelson, chief executive of Avalere Health, a Washington consulting firm that closely tracks the health law. "This market is here to stay."
The 2015 enrollment campaign — the second since insurance marketplaces created by the law debuted in 2013 — also has gone considerably more smoothly.
The federal HealthCare.gov website and similar state-based sites experienced no catastrophic meltdowns. Wait times at call centers around the country have been far shorter.
And marketplaces in states such as Hawaii, Maryland and Massachusetts, which barely functioned last year, have signed up tens of thousands of consumers since the current enrollment period began Nov. 15.
Despite the gains, coverage for millions remains in jeopardy, as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a challenge to the law's system for providing government subsidies to offset consumers' insurance premiums.
Back-end problems with data systems continue to make the enrollment process cumbersome for insurers. Some consumers may be facing stiff premium hikes if they automatically re-enrolled in their current plans, rather than selecting new, lower-priced options.
And with tens of millions of other Americans still uninsured, Obama administration officials and other proponents of the law are scrambling to get as many people as possible into health plans.
"We want those numbers to go higher," Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell told supporters at a medical ministry in North Carolina last week. "Once Feb. 15 comes, open enrollment is over and folks will have to wait until next year to enter into the system."
In California, the push has taken on particular urgency as state officials try to hit an ambitious target of 1.7 million, about half a million more people than the final 2014 total.
A new year, largely the same inferior Obamacare alternative
By The BDN Editorial Board,
When Republicans in Congress next vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they’ll be able to point to a substitute for President Obama’s health care reform law.
Except that the alternative they can point to has, by and large, already been circulating in Congress for a year, and it hasn’t gotten very far — even among Republicans.
Congressional Republicans are starting to confront the reality that it’s on them to develop an alternative to Obamacare if they continue to insist on repealing and undermining it. But an alternative put forward last Wednesday by GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch and Richard Burr and U.S. Rep. Fred Upton is inferior to the law that’s been on the books for almost five years.
Called the Patient CARE Act, it’s a replacement that guarantees a lower level of coverage from plans purchased on the individual market and relies on low-income consumers to pick up more of the cost of care. At the same time, it attempts to retain some of Obamacare’s more popular provisions.
We believe the Obamacare debate should move beyond talk of its repeal and replacement to a more productive discussion about how the law can be genuinely improved to ensure parts of it are less complicated to administer (such as the employer mandate) and plans’ provider networks are more transparent. But members of Congress clearly aren’t at that point yet, so let’s evaluate the Obamacare replacement before them.
It relies on a similar mechanism as Obamacare to insure those with low incomes: financial support to make coverage through individual market plans more affordable. But the help would be less generous, and it would be available to fewer people. Plus, the Republican bill dumps the Medicaid expansion designed to cover those with very low incomes. The bill even transitions Medicaid to a system that caps funding to the states — a change that potentially leaves state budgets entirely on the hook for major, unpredictable expenses.
Burr, Hatch and Upton’s alternative also dumps Obamacare’s federal online exchange, healthcare.gov, and it largely guts the standards Obamacare has required from individual market plans to ensure they offer a reasonable level of coverage without charging exorbitant deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. Rather than keeping Obamacare’s essential health benefits — such as no-cost preventive care — in place, the GOP alternative returns most regulatory power over insurance plans to the states, which could choose to keep such standards in place or change them. It also allows insurers to charge older consumers up to five times more than younger consumers; Obamacare allows insurers to charge older consumers three times more.
When Republicans in Congress next vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they’ll be able to point to a substitute for President Obama’s health care reform law.
Except that the alternative they can point to has, by and large, already been circulating in Congress for a year, and it hasn’t gotten very far — even among Republicans.
Congressional Republicans are starting to confront the reality that it’s on them to develop an alternative to Obamacare if they continue to insist on repealing and undermining it. But an alternative put forward last Wednesday by GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch and Richard Burr and U.S. Rep. Fred Upton is inferior to the law that’s been on the books for almost five years.
Called the Patient CARE Act, it’s a replacement that guarantees a lower level of coverage from plans purchased on the individual market and relies on low-income consumers to pick up more of the cost of care. At the same time, it attempts to retain some of Obamacare’s more popular provisions.
We believe the Obamacare debate should move beyond talk of its repeal and replacement to a more productive discussion about how the law can be genuinely improved to ensure parts of it are less complicated to administer (such as the employer mandate) and plans’ provider networks are more transparent. But members of Congress clearly aren’t at that point yet, so let’s evaluate the Obamacare replacement before them.
It relies on a similar mechanism as Obamacare to insure those with low incomes: financial support to make coverage through individual market plans more affordable. But the help would be less generous, and it would be available to fewer people. Plus, the Republican bill dumps the Medicaid expansion designed to cover those with very low incomes. The bill even transitions Medicaid to a system that caps funding to the states — a change that potentially leaves state budgets entirely on the hook for major, unpredictable expenses.
Burr, Hatch and Upton’s alternative also dumps Obamacare’s federal online exchange, healthcare.gov, and it largely guts the standards Obamacare has required from individual market plans to ensure they offer a reasonable level of coverage without charging exorbitant deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. Rather than keeping Obamacare’s essential health benefits — such as no-cost preventive care — in place, the GOP alternative returns most regulatory power over insurance plans to the states, which could choose to keep such standards in place or change them. It also allows insurers to charge older consumers up to five times more than younger consumers; Obamacare allows insurers to charge older consumers three times more.
What Is the Purpose of Society?
Maine Health Insurance Co-op Achieving Success as Other Co-ops Struggle
By PATTY WIGHT • 13 HOURS AGO
LEWISTON, Maine - Health insurance co-ops were created under the Affordable Care Act as a way to increase competition and lower prices.
But in January, rating agency A.M. Best expressed concerns about co-ops' financial viability, with 22 out of 23 co-ops around the country reporting net losses through the third quarter of 2014, and one co-op facing liquidation.
The only co-op not considered a concern is Maine Community Health Options.
One of the things that makes Maine Community Health Options, or MCHO, unique is how you find out about it. You'll find outreach reps at industry meetings and trade shows that have nothing to do with insurance - like the Fishermen's Forum, the Agriculture Trade Show, and, on this day, the Landscaper's Trade Show in Augusta.
"Hi! Would you like a bag? Have you heard of our company?" asks Outreach Specialist Malory Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy stands behind a table with a stack of free tote bags and baskets filled with all-natural chap sticks and hand sanitizers to help lure the curious.
Shaughnessy says it's part of MCHO's mission to reach those who've had trouble accessing affordable insurance in the past, grassroots style.
"We find it's important to go to where people are to make sure they get the information," she says, "rather than sitting back and just assuming they're going to come find us and find that information. People are busy. They don't have time."
Current MCHO member Jackie Gallagher stops by. She's a 50-year-old, previously uninsured landscape gardener who bought a plan last year. The reason she chose MCHO? "I reviewed everything online, and that had best options that I was looking for," she says, "and for the price."
Maine Community Health options does boast some of the lowest-priced plans on the online marketplace. It captured 83 percent of Maine enrollees last year. CEO Kevin Lewis says while price is important, members are attracted to MCHO for more than just cost.
"People really do take stock of our brand, and the fact that we are a non-profit co-op, as important decision points for them in making a choice," Lewis says.
Steven Kassels: Drug addiction is a medical issue, not a political issue
Steven Kassels
We, as a society, have arbitrarily differentiated between acceptable and unacceptable drug addictions. Why else would our politicians enter into medical decision making?
After 50 years of accepted science, we know that the cost of not treating opiate addiction is up to 12 times greater than the cost of the treatment itself (National Institute of Health). Likewise, the benefits of having multiple medications available to treat various illnesses (patients respond differently to treatment regimens) has been well documented.
So why do some politicians want to insert themselves into the medical world and make arbitrary decisions about which medications to pay for when it comes to the disease of addiction, particularly when the political decisions fly in the face of medical science?
For those who want to believe addiction has no biological, psychological or sociological components (like the disease of diabetes), surely you will agree that abusing substances can cause disease. It is commonly accepted that Vice President Dick Cheney smoked way too many cigarettes (nicotine addiction) and Hall of Fame baseball player Mickey Mantle drank way too much beer (alcohol addiction). To one we gave a mechanical heart, followed by a heart transplant, and to the other we gave a new liver. They had “acceptable” addictions.
But how about the Vietnam veteran who came home addicted to heroin? Or young men and women who become addicted to painkillers after suffering some type of accident? Are there really “good addictions” and “bad addictions”? Is there really a difference between addictions?
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