Posted April 16, 2012, at 5:56 p.m.
LifeFlight of Maine is raising money to add an airplane to its fleet of two helicopters in response to growing demand for air ambulance services.
Adding a third aircraft is expected to allow the statewide service to treat up to 300 more patients a year by freeing up the maxed-out helicopters.
“As more and more physicians ask us to transport their most critical patients, our medical crews and helicopters are reaching their capacity,” LifeFlight of Maine Executive Director Tom Judge said in an email. “Last year, on average, we transported a patient every six hours. Adding a fixed-wing aircraft to our current resources will mean more patients have access to the care they need, when they need it.”
In 2009, LifeFlight was unable to care for 236 patients who needed air ambulance services because the helicopters already were occupied or unable to fly in bad weather.
The airplane LifeFlight is eyeing, a Beech King Air 200 twin-engine turboprop, could transport patients over longer distances more quickly and fly in weather conditions such as freezing rain and fog that the helicopters can’t handle, Judge wrote.
In a Shift, Medicare Pushes Bids
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Wednesday that it would vastly expand the use of competitive bidding to buy medical equipment for Medicare beneficiaries after a one-year experiment saved money for taxpayers and patients without harming the quality of care.
The experiment represented a sharp break from the usual fee-for-service Medicare program, under which beneficiaries can choose any supplier or provider of goods and services. In the experiment, Medicare officials invited bids and awarded contracts to 356 suppliers of medical equipment in nine metropolitan areas, including Cleveland, Dallas, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Riverside, Calif.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the pilot program had reduced Medicare costs by 42 percent, or $202 million, by securing lower prices and curbing “inappropriate utilization” of personal medical equipment in the nine markets.
The bulk of the savings came from oxygen equipment, power wheelchairs and mail-order test strips for people with diabetes.
Jonathan D. Blum, deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the switch to competitive bidding had not compromised beneficiaries’ access to the items they needed.
President’s exit stirs fears on hospital’s fate
Dorchester community leaders are worried about the future of Carney Hospital after last week’s abrupt departure - some say firing - of its president, Bill Walczak, a longtime neighborhood activist hired by Carney’s new corporate owner only 14 months ago.
Walczak took issue with a spokesman for Steward Health Care System, the parent company of Carney, who said Friday that Walczak had quit.
“I did not resign from the Carney Hospital,’’ Walczak said Wednesday. He declined to elaborate on the circumstances behind his leaving the 186-bed hospital, which has been losing money for years amid cuts in government insurance payments for lowincome patients.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/04/19/president-exit-reignites-fears-fate-hospital/BqxWoxC6n5Aotjefr6JfnM/story.htmlCT Children’s, Anthem provider pact expires
04/16/12
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut confirmed Monday morning that its provider contract with the Connecticut Children's Medical Center has expired.
The two sides have been in contract talks for more than a year but failed to come to an agreement on new terms.
Children's Medical Center is asking for higher reimbursement rates than Anthem is willing to offer. As a result, Anthem customers will be forced to pay higher, out of network rates or be forced to choose a different hospital.
The power of universal health care
By Winthrop C. Dillaway III, M.D.
The Star-Ledger (N.J.), April 18, 2012
In 2009, when President Obama began his term of office, the U.S. health care system was painfully dysfunctional. He announced an initiative for health care reform. Early on, “universal health care” garnered thought and attention. Unfortunately, with the ensuing debate and politics, the concept of universal health care faded and disappeared.
On March 23, 2010, the health care reform bill was signed into law with considerable fanfare. Genuine goodwill and effort contributed to the final product and many aspects of the law are laudable. Nevertheless, two years later, the health care system in the United States remains painfully dysfunctional. Why? What is right? What is wrong? And whatever happened to universal health care?
T.R. Reid, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the best-selling book “The Healing of America,” makes three powerful observations: First, all other leading countries provide universal health care at half the cost and higher quality than the United States does. Second, he points to the remarkable variety of health care systems in those successful countries. Third, and most important, what those successful systems have in common is universal health care. Reid states, “Every developed country except the United States has reached the same conclusion: Everyone should have access to medical care.”
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/april/the-power-of-universal-health-care
The Star-Ledger (N.J.), April 18, 2012
In 2009, when President Obama began his term of office, the U.S. health care system was painfully dysfunctional. He announced an initiative for health care reform. Early on, “universal health care” garnered thought and attention. Unfortunately, with the ensuing debate and politics, the concept of universal health care faded and disappeared.
On March 23, 2010, the health care reform bill was signed into law with considerable fanfare. Genuine goodwill and effort contributed to the final product and many aspects of the law are laudable. Nevertheless, two years later, the health care system in the United States remains painfully dysfunctional. Why? What is right? What is wrong? And whatever happened to universal health care?
T.R. Reid, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the best-selling book “The Healing of America,” makes three powerful observations: First, all other leading countries provide universal health care at half the cost and higher quality than the United States does. Second, he points to the remarkable variety of health care systems in those successful countries. Third, and most important, what those successful systems have in common is universal health care. Reid states, “Every developed country except the United States has reached the same conclusion: Everyone should have access to medical care.”
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/april/the-power-of-universal-health-care
Kucinich: Single-payer the only 'obviously constitutional' health care plan
By Sam Baker
The Hill, April 16, 2012
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is continuing to argue for a single-payer health care system, saying it would not raise the same constitutional questions that have dogged President Obama's health care law.
Kucinich on Monday highlighted a recent report that said a single-payer system would save the state of Minnesota nearly $190 billion over 10 years.
Insurers still in control in Obamacare
By Jonathan D. Walker, M.D.
The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.), April 15, 2012
Obamacare is the nickname for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA for short. It has been a target for criticisms that range from valid concerns to groundless fear mongering, and soon the Supreme Court will decide whether the mandate to buy insurance is constitutional. But there is one fundamental problem with the law that is rarely mentioned. To understand that problem, you need some background.
America’s Health Insurance Plans is the main lobbying organization for the private health insurance industry – companies such as Anthem, WellPoint and Cigna.
If you went to their website in the years preceding enactment of the PPACA, you would have found their recommendations for health care reform. Those recommendations were based on their business model: profitability largely depends on trying to cover healthy people and avoid covering sick people. The basic structure of the PPACA almost exactly matches those recommendations.
First, the companies know that most of the population is healthy and won’t cost them much, so they wanted a mandate to force people to buy their product – that guarantees them a lot of extra income. But they also knew that most people can’t afford what they sell, so they wanted taxpayers to provide subsidies so that people could actually purchase the insurance the law required them to buy. Finally, they agreed to try to cover people regardless of their health status, but they wanted to be sure that sick people could still be unloaded onto taxpayers through government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and state-run high-risk pools.
The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.), April 15, 2012
Obamacare is the nickname for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA for short. It has been a target for criticisms that range from valid concerns to groundless fear mongering, and soon the Supreme Court will decide whether the mandate to buy insurance is constitutional. But there is one fundamental problem with the law that is rarely mentioned. To understand that problem, you need some background.
America’s Health Insurance Plans is the main lobbying organization for the private health insurance industry – companies such as Anthem, WellPoint and Cigna.
If you went to their website in the years preceding enactment of the PPACA, you would have found their recommendations for health care reform. Those recommendations were based on their business model: profitability largely depends on trying to cover healthy people and avoid covering sick people. The basic structure of the PPACA almost exactly matches those recommendations.
First, the companies know that most of the population is healthy and won’t cost them much, so they wanted a mandate to force people to buy their product – that guarantees them a lot of extra income. But they also knew that most people can’t afford what they sell, so they wanted taxpayers to provide subsidies so that people could actually purchase the insurance the law required them to buy. Finally, they agreed to try to cover people regardless of their health status, but they wanted to be sure that sick people could still be unloaded onto taxpayers through government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and state-run high-risk pools.
Is health care a human right?
By Eric Salk, M.D.
Emergency Physicians Monthly, Letters, March 2012
Re “The Wrong Right” [by Dr. Mark Plaster, executive editor of Emergency Physicians Monthly]: Dear Mark, I enjoyed another of your columns for its excellent writing and unique perspective, but had to dial up my Nipride drip for what your politics do to my BP.
As the primary purveyor of the Fox News, "fair and balanced" approach to emergency medicine journalism, you have published many articles attacking health care reform and regulation, single-payer proposals, and the idea that access to health care is a right. In this most recent column, you describe your debate with a young, idealistic Ph.D. student who maintains this latter position.
Your main argument that "health care, if it is a right, involves requiring someone to do something for me, and by definition, that makes the person rendering the care a slave to the person with the right to that care," is a classic straw man argument that approaches absurdity.Emergency Physicians Monthly, Letters, March 2012
Re “The Wrong Right” [by Dr. Mark Plaster, executive editor of Emergency Physicians Monthly]: Dear Mark, I enjoyed another of your columns for its excellent writing and unique perspective, but had to dial up my Nipride drip for what your politics do to my BP.
As the primary purveyor of the Fox News, "fair and balanced" approach to emergency medicine journalism, you have published many articles attacking health care reform and regulation, single-payer proposals, and the idea that access to health care is a right. In this most recent column, you describe your debate with a young, idealistic Ph.D. student who maintains this latter position.
Funding a national single-Payer system
“Medicare for all” would save billions, and could be redistributive.
BY GERALD FRIEDMAN
“The Expanded & improved Medicare for all act” (hr 676) would establish a single authority responsible for paying for health care for all americans. providing universal coverage with a “single-payer” system would change many
aspects of american health care. While it would raise some costs by providing access to care for those currently uninsured or under-insured, it would save much larger sums by eliminating insurance middlemen and radically simplifying payment to doctors and hospitals. While providing superior health care, a single-payer system would save as much as $570 billion now wasted on administrative overhead and monopoly profits. a single-payer system would also make health-care financing dramatically more progressive by replacing fixed, income-invariant health-care expenditures with progressive taxes. This series of charts and graphs shows why we need a single-payer system and how it could be funded.
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/0312friedman.pdf
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/april/is-health-care-a-human-right
“Medicare for all” would save billions, and could be redistributive.
BY GERALD FRIEDMAN
“The Expanded & improved Medicare for all act” (hr 676) would establish a single authority responsible for paying for health care for all americans. providing universal coverage with a “single-payer” system would change many
aspects of american health care. While it would raise some costs by providing access to care for those currently uninsured or under-insured, it would save much larger sums by eliminating insurance middlemen and radically simplifying payment to doctors and hospitals. While providing superior health care, a single-payer system would save as much as $570 billion now wasted on administrative overhead and monopoly profits. a single-payer system would also make health-care financing dramatically more progressive by replacing fixed, income-invariant health-care expenditures with progressive taxes. This series of charts and graphs shows why we need a single-payer system and how it could be funded.
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/0312friedman.pdf
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2012/april/is-health-care-a-human-right
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