Do we need to gut MaineCare?
Posted Jan. 19, 2012, at 1:30 p.m.For more than a month, the Legislature has been focused on the governor’s proposal to cut $221 million from the Department of Health and Human Services budget by revoking Medicaid eligibility for about 65,000 low-income and disabled Mainers. His proposal has generated controversy, including marathon hearings, state house rallies, articles in many of Maine’s papers as well as a petition that garnered more than 8,000 signatures in less than two weeks, all opposing the cuts.I hope our legislators are enjoying this exercise in democracy because, even if they are able to satisfactorily resolve the immediate crisis, they can look forward to a repeat performance in a year or two unless they have the courage, wisdom and bipartisanship to attack the fundamental flaws in the ways we finance and deliver health care services. Maine’s very real problems with MaineCare are only symptoms of defects in our overall health care system. The most visible signs are out-of-control costs and diminishing access to quality health care.For the past few decades, insurance companies have been systematically pushing the least healthy off their rolls. As a result, many people have been forced to turn to public programs such as Medicaid, swelling its roles, or to their own inadequate resources. Predictably, the amount of uncompensated care facing hospitals and other providers is growing. The Maine Hospital Association recently sounded the alarm, warning that layoffs and further reductions in service would result from the proposed MaineCare cutbacks.
For more than a month, the Legislature has been focused on the governor’s proposal to cut $221 million from the Department of Health and Human Services budget by revoking Medicaid eligibility for about 65,000 low-income and disabled Mainers. His proposal has generated controversy, including marathon hearings, state house rallies, articles in many of Maine’s papers as well as a petition that garnered more than 8,000 signatures in less than two weeks, all opposing the cuts.
I hope our legislators are enjoying this exercise in democracy because, even if they are able to satisfactorily resolve the immediate crisis, they can look forward to a repeat performance in a year or two unless they have the courage, wisdom and bipartisanship to attack the fundamental flaws in the ways we finance and deliver health care services. Maine’s very real problems with MaineCare are only symptoms of defects in our overall health care system. The most visible signs are out-of-control costs and diminishing access to quality health care.
For the past few decades, insurance companies have been systematically pushing the least healthy off their rolls. As a result, many people have been forced to turn to public programs such as Medicaid, swelling its roles, or to their own inadequate resources. Predictably, the amount of uncompensated care facing hospitals and other providers is growing. The Maine Hospital Association recently sounded the alarm, warning that layoffs and further reductions in service would result from the proposed MaineCare cutbacks.
MAINE COMPASS: Our health care system needs to stop being an illness care system
January 17Thomas G. Bartol
Maine's Department of Health and Human Services is in crisis, and it has been proposed that health care coverage be cut to some 65,000 people in Maine.
Cutting services is an easy solution but one that is short-sighted. It's as if you have a hole in your car's gas tank and you decide to fill your tank less often to save money. The hole is still there draining precious fuel.
http://www.kjonline.com/opinion/columnists/our-health-care-system-needs-to-stop-being-an-illness-care-system_2012-01-16.html
Four years ago, doctors at Chesapeake Urology Associates started ordering the most expensive kind of prostate-cancer therapy for many more of their patients.
Before 2007, the large, multi-office practice was prescribing the treatment, known as intensity modulated radiation therapy, for 12 percent of its prostate-cancer patients covered by Medicare, according to data compiled by a Georgetown University researcher. But starting in mid-2007, Chesapeake Urology's referral rate for IMRT more than tripled, rising to 43 percent of the Medicare cases.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-bz-hancock-chesapeake-urology-20120114,0,4241674,print.column
Why Doctors Can’t Predict How Long a Patient Will Live
By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.Constantini/Getty ImagesIs it possible to predict when a patient will die?
Slender, in her 60s and possessing the stoicism of someone who had single-handedly raised children in the toughest section of the city, our patient faced a difficult challenge of the medical kind. She had diabetes and such severe peripheral vascular disease that even the strongest antibiotics could not heal a long-standing foot infection. She needed an operation.
This grandmother who regularly held court in her hospital room with her extended brood also suffered from high blood pressure and heart disease, and all of us on the surgical team knew that operating would be no easy feat. We could amputate her infected foot, a relatively quick operation that would carry few risks, but she would never walk again. Or we could do an arterial bypass, a more complex operation that would save her leg but that might disable or even kill her before her surgical scars ever healed.
baltimoresun.com
Four years ago, doctors at Chesapeake Urology Associates started ordering the most expensive kind of prostate-cancer therapy for many more of their patients.
Before 2007, the large, multi-office practice was prescribing the treatment, known as intensity modulated radiation therapy, for 12 percent of its prostate-cancer patients covered by Medicare, according to data compiled by a Georgetown University researcher. But starting in mid-2007, Chesapeake Urology's referral rate for IMRT more than tripled, rising to 43 percent of the Medicare cases.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-bz-hancock-chesapeake-urology-20120114,0,4241674,print.column
DHHS cuts painful, but necessary, Commissioner Mayhew tells Husson crowd
Posted Jan. 19, 2012, at 2:39 p.m.
BANGOR, Maine — Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew took a break from Augusta Thursday to defend controversial cuts to her agency’s budget in Bangor.
Mayhew has spent many hours in recent days before lawmakers, explaining Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to close an estimated $220 million shortfall in the DHHS budget by overhauling MaineCare. On Thursday, attendees at a breakfast event at Husson University quizzed Mayhew on many of the cuts also drawing attention in Augusta.
“As I’ve said about so many of the proposals that we have within the supplemental budget, these are painful decisions; there are consequences,” Mayhew said.
Republican lawmakers urge action on LePage’s MaineCare cuts
Posted Jan. 19, 2012, at 7:21 p.m.
AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers sparred Thursday over Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to close an estimated $220 million budget gap at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Some Republicans lamented what they called an unwillingness by Democrats to nail down savings, while Democrats bristled at the prospect of cutting services for the needy while tax cuts are on the table.
“We have to start looking for how we’re going to pay for this,” said Rep. Kenneth Fredette, R-Newport. “Quite frankly, I think it’s time you step up to the table to address that.”
Patients With Normal Bone Density Can Delay Retests, Study Suggests
By GINA KOLATA
Bone loss and osteoporosis develop so slowly in most women whose bones test normal at age 65 that many can safely wait as long as 15 years before having a second bone density test, researchers report in a new study.
The study, published in Thursday’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, is part of a broad rethinking of how to diagnose and treat the potentially debilitating bone disease that can lead to broken hips and collapsing spines.
