If the old political adage “as goes Maine, so goes the nation” has any currency these days, health insurers may have lost last year’s battle—but they’re winning the war. The intense drama in the Maine legislature the last few weeks shows that the political power of the insurance industry has not diminished one bit. Gov. Paul LePage and his fellow Republicans rammed through a law that eliminates rate regulation in the individual and small group health insurance markets and effectively deregulates Anthem Health Plans, the state’s biggest carrier and a subsidiary of WellPoint, the nation’s second largest insurer.


Don’t write off the Canadian health care system

Denver Lewellen, medical anthropologist, Canadian Studies Program | 8/31/11 | One comment | Leave a comment
The principles of the Canadian, single-payer health care system are not likely to be broadly applied in the US. This is due to deep historical, economic and ideological differences between the two countries. There are, however, many reasons we should look to Canada for the purpose of reciprocally transferring knowledge of successes and problems in their health care system as well as in our own.


latimes.com

Putting a price on prolonging a doomed life

Doctors, not health insurers, should decide how much can and should be done to extend the lives of the terminally ill.

David Lazarus
9:30 PM PDT, September 1, 2011


Mainers worried about health care, survey shows

The Associated Press
Posted Aug. 29, 2011, at 2:55 p.m.
PORTLAND, Maine — A new public opinion survey shows increasing worries among Mainers about the cost and availability of health care coverage.
Market Decisions of Portland said the survey was conducted July 13-30. Twenty-six percent of those responding reported they or someone in their family had problems paying for medical bills during the past 12 months. That’s up from 22 percent a year earlier.
Twenty-one percent said they were concerned about losing health insurance in the next 12 months, up from 18 percent last year. While 12 percent said they did not get needed medical care from a doctor, or surgery, it was down from 22 percent last year.


Partners-Neighborhood Health: An odd couple that could click


September 3, 2011
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/09/03/partners_neighborhood_health_an_odd_couple_that_could_click/



Will physicians lead us through reform?

By Dr. Erik Steele
Posted Aug. 22, 2011, at 4:52 p.m.
The young patient was dying right before our eyes, and most of us around him in the ER that day who had a clue as to what was wrong had the wrong clue. Amongst all of the frantic chaos was one cool head belonging to a family doc in training who reached for the biggest needle he could find and drove it through the patient’s upper chest wall. Air from the chest hissed out of the needle, decompressing the punctured lung and struggling heart underneath, and saving the patient.



NHS among developed world's most efficient health systems, says study

Report in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine finds health service second only to Ireland for cost-effectiveness