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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 15, 2011


Insurer in deal to curb rate hikes

Increase would slow in Partners, Blue Cross accord

By Robert Weisman 

GLOBE STAFF
  SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

September 13, 2011

Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’


By 


WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.
And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.


California poverty rate rises in 2010 for fourth year in a row

Six million residents last year had incomes below the federal poverty line of $22,113 for a family of four. Nearly 1 in 5 California residents lacked health insurance in 2010.




Census: 12.5 percent of Mainers live in poverty

By Glenn Adams, The Associated Press, The Associated Press
Posted Sept. 13, 2011, at 4:15 p.m.
AUGUSTA, Maine — The ranks of the nation’s poor have swelled to a record 46.2 million — nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday. And the number without health insurance has reached 49.9 million, the most in over two decades.


California could pose problem for Obama's healthcare reform

California, a model for healthcare reform, is seeking to impose some of the toughest limits on government-subsidized coverage. If approved, the limits could herald deep Medicaid cuts nationwide.

By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times
September 15, 2011




Campaign aims to sign up Americans for health insurance

Enroll America, a new nonprofit group, plans to publicize the expanded availability of health coverage under the new federal healthcare law and to help states make enrollment easier.

By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times



SEPTEMBER 15, 2011, 12:01 AM

Sharing the Stresses of Being a Doctor

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.
Michael Nagle for The New York TimesDr. Edgar Lichstein, chairman of medicine at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, speaks during Schwartz Rounds there.
One afternoon, a doctor friend whose clinical skills and bedside manner I’ve long admired called wanting desperately to talk about her day. Exasperated, and feeling as if she had no one to turn to at work, she reached out to me, her friend.
Earlier that day, a transplant patient had threatened to stop taking one of his medications. Proud of his looks, he had become despondent when the drug made his gums swell. “He thought he looked like a freak,” my friend said.



Pay for Caritas chief rose $1m in ’09

Compensation was highest at city’s hospitals

By Robert Weisman 

GLOBE STAFF
  SEPTEMBER 15, 2011


Medicaid use grows, threatening budget

By Mal Leary, Capitol News Service
Posted Sept. 14, 2011, at 5:40 p.m.
AUGUSTA, Maine – The volume of claims under MaineCare, the Medicaid program, are above estimates so far this budget year, raising concerns the program will need more money than budgeted to get through the year.
“There is no doubt it is an alarming issue that warrants our full attention,” Mary Mayhew, commissioner of Health and Human Services, said in an interview. “We have put into place pretty close monitoring of our week-to-week experience with claims volume to get an explanation of what is happening, what is causing the increased volume.”







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Sunday, September 11, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 13, 2011

Feds may step in as states lag on health reform

By N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post
Across the country, states are lagging in preparations to erect the health insurance marketplaces at the heart of the 2010 health-care overhaul, bogged down by a combination of partisan hostility and practical hurdles.
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/10/health/feds-may-step-in-as-states-lag-on-health-reform/print/



Medical testing gone astray?

Sounds like a deal, right?A flyer comes in the mail from Tufts Medical Center advertising life-saving stroke prevention: three tests in 30 minutes, at the discount rate of $119. The tests are not covered by insurance, but bring a friend to a screening site at the local church, and you both get $10 off.



Republican health care law already causing price spikes, fear

By Walter Kumiega, Special to the BDN
Posted Sept. 12, 2011, at 3:28 p.m.
With the summer coming to an end, many of the laws passed by the Maine Legislature will be going into effect this month. One of those laws is the majorhealth insurance overhaul Republicans pushed through a few months ago.
We are already seeing the negative effects of this health insurance overhaul. The Ellsworth America


Obama Looks for Big Health Cuts, Worrying Democrats


By 

WASHINGTON — As Congress opens a politically charged exploration of ways to pare the deficit, President Obama is expected to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in Medicare and Medicaid, delighting Republicans and dismaying many Democrats who fear that his proposals will become a starting point for bigger cuts in the popular health programs.

Number of uninsured climbs to highest figure since passage of Medicare, Medicaid

Created Tuesday, September 13, 2011

50 million uninsured shows urgency of enacting single-payer Medicare for all: national doctors group

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 13, 2011
Contact:
Garrett Adams, M.D., M.P.H.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org
Local physicians in 43 states available for comment (See historical table of uninsured by state below).
Official estimates by the Census Bureau showing an increase of about 1 million in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2010 – to a 35-year high of 49.9 million persons, or 16.3 percent of the population, under the bureau’s revised calculation method – underscore the urgency of going beyond the Obama administration’s federal health law and swiftly implementing a single-payer, improved Medicare-for-all program, spokespersons for Physicians for a National Health Program said today.
Employment-based coverage continued to decline. The bureau said 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.
In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is widely viewed as the model for the federal health law, 370,000 people remained uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2011/september/number-of-uninsured-climbs-to-highest-figure-since-passage-of-medicare-medicaid





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Friday, September 9, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 10, 2011

Texas healthcare system withering under Gov. Perry

The governor and presidential hopeful has said the state can manage on its own, without President Obama's overhaul. But more than a quarter of Texans lack insurance, the highest rate in the nation.

By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times
6:00 PM PDT, September 8, 2011
Reporting from San Angelo, Texas
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-perry-healthcare-20110908,0,4011616,print.story



US doctors earn much more than peers, study says

By Drew Armstrong, Bloomberg News
Posted Sept. 09, 2011, at 5:23 a.m.
WASHINGTON — U.S. doctors earn more than their European, Canadian and Australian counterparts, with American orthopedic surgeons outpacing their peers by a wider margin than primary-care doctors, a study found.
Primary-care doctors in the U.S. made an average of $187,000 in 2008, according to the study in the journal Health Affairs. Orthopedic surgeons made $442,000. That rate was more than double what the surgeons in Australia, Canada, France and Germany made. British orthopedists made on average about 73 percent as much as their U.S. counterparts.


Federal Court Rejects Two Challenges To Health Law




FDA Chides Pfizer For Omitting Drug Risks On Lipitor Website





September 8, 2011

A Bipartisan Move to Tackle Benefits Programs


By  and 


WASHINGTON — In a significant shift driven by bipartisan concern about the looming long-term debt, Republicans and Democrats are no longer fighting over whether to tackle the popular entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — but over how to do it.






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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 8, 2011

Campaign Desk — September 6, 2011 12:58 PM

Rate Regulation Blow-up in California

WellPoint and co. win again
By Trudy Lieberman
The big news in health reform last week was the insurance industry’s victory in the California legislature, which scotched any possibility that the state—one of twenty-four that does not have power to reject rates regulators say are too high—would actually curb the industry’s excesses. Health reform advocates and consumer groups had hoped a rate regulation bill would give California’s insurance commissioner power to reject or modify proposed increases that his department found excessive, inadequate, or discriminatory. (The commissioner can review rates but can’t stop a carrier from charging them.) In other words, under the proposed legislation, the next time WellPoint came in with a 39 percent rate hike, the state could order the company back to its actuarial models to come up with something lower.


Drug firm payments to doctors declining

Rules in Mass. restrict speeches


Total payments to doctors for promoting pharmaceutical companies’ products to their colleagues appear to be falling in Massachusetts, suggesting that new restrictions designed to distance doctors from industry are leading some to abandon the lucrative speaking circuit.



Higher Fees Paid To US Physicians Drive Higher Spending For Physician Services Compared To Other Countries

  1. Miriam J. Laugesen1,* and 
  2. Sherry A. Glied2
    http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/9/1647.abstract




Healthcare costs rose while insurance coverage fell, studies show

The changes have left nearly half the working-age population without enough protection from illness. Altogether, 44% of American adults were either uninsured or underinsured last year, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times
September 8, 2011
Reporting from Washington



  1. 1Miriam J. Laugesen (ml3111@columbia.edu) is an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, in New York City.
  2. 2Sherry A. Glied is a professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health. She is currently on leave at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she is assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. This paper was written prior to her appointment at HHS and does not reflect the official vie
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Sunday, September 4, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 6, 2011






September 3, 2011

G.O.P. Candidates’ Stances on Health Care Mask Their Records as Governors


By 


The three most prominent current or former governors running for president — Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. — are firmly united in their commitment to repealing President Obama’s health care law. But that unanimity masks a broad divergence in their approaches to the issue while in office, spanning the spectrum of Republican positioning.


Tracking Vital Signs, Without the Wires


By RANDALL STROSS


CONFINED to their hospital beds, patients can only fantasize about stripping off all the wires that connect them to monitors and bolting for the door.
Suppose, however, that all of a convalescent patient’s electrode patches were consolidated into a single, nearly invisible and weightless version — as thin as a temporary, press-on tattoo. And suppose that a tiny radio transmitter eliminated the need for any wires tethering the patient to monitoring machines.


Lessons on Health Care



Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, two of the leading candidates right now for the Republican presidential nomination, have declared themselves fiercely opposed to President Obama’s health care reform.
But what about their own records as governors addressing their residents’ health needs?

ALEC RELEASES ANTI-HEALTH REFORM PLAYBOOK FOR GOP STATE LEGISLATORS | The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy national conservative group, has released a new playbook for Republican legislators determined to undermine and repeal health care reform. “The State Legislators Guide To Repealing Obamacare” contains 14 specific recommendations officials can take to impede the Affordable Care Act, including rejecting ACA grants from the federal government. 




TEN SPECIFIC PREDICTIONS THAT INFORM FUTURE STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH
http://groups.google.com/group/equal-list/browse_thread/thread/a81c1bfaec264d9b



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Friday, September 2, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 3, 2011

The Intense Health Reform Drama in the Maine Legislature

What are its implications for the rest of the nation?
By Trudy Lieberman
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


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