Cut Health Care Costs? Easy. Cut Care.
Politics and Media News Headlines 6/16//09
Sebelius explains to Matthews that private insurers already deny care "every day" (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommends denial of care as a model (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Report: Medicare Expansion Would Not Solve Problems "To illustrate what it might take to save Medicare, the commission describes how primary-care doctors, specialists and hospitals could be reorganized into 'accountable care organizations' whose members would receive bonuses if the organizations met quality and cost targets. To ratchet up the incentives, health-care providers who fail to meet cost and quality targets could be penalized, the report says." If we do not speak out the health insurance parasites denial of care model will be legitimized under the pretext of cost control.
Analysis: Doctors' boos show Obama's tough road (AP)
Barack Obama isn't used to hearing boos. For all the young president's popularity, the response he got Monday from doctors at an American Medical Association meeting was a sign his road is only going to get rockier as he tries to sell his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system. The boos erupted when Obama told the doctors in Chicago he wouldn't try to help them win their top legislative priority -- limits on jury damages in medical malpractice cases... Instead, Obama left the door open to some kind of compromise on malpractice...
Not long ago, doctors' decisions were rarely questioned. Now they are being blamed for a big part of the wasteful spending in the nation's $2.5 trillion health care system. Studies have shown that as much as 30 cents of the U.S. health care dollar may be going for tests and procedures that are of little or no value to patients...
[Obama] promised that Washington would not dictate clinical decisions. And he asked the doctors to imagine a world in which nearly every patient has insurance coverage and they can devote their full attention to the practice of medicine. "You did not enter this profession to be bean-counters and paper-pushers," Obama said. "You entered this profession to be healers -- and that's what our health care system should let you be." That line got him an ovation.
So let's get out our calculators, shall we? If 30% of health care costs are attributable to unnecessary tests (see above), and another 30% of health care costs are attributable to profits, fat salaries for insurance company CEO, and paying clerks to deny coverage and claims (see here), that means ALMOST 60% OF HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURES ARE UNNECESSARY. Quite an eye opener, isn't it?
So now are they going to tell us that if some of those testing companies close their doors, it will mean lost jobs? And that we're just as obligated to keep them in business doing unnecessary tests as we are to maintaining insurance company profits and overhead? That it's our duty?
You wouldn't know it from news reports, but most doctors support national health care (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
In the comments section of my column about media coverage of the AMA, a reader writes: "Do you think you are fooling people? In this entire article, you never once address what the FAR MAJORITY of Doctors believe. They believe that a nationalized program will be the downfall of coverage and care as we know it... Do your job as a jornalist..." Well. I'm no journalist; I'm a media critic. But the reader is correct that responsible reporters should report the facts. And the facts are that, despite what media reporting about the AMA's recent comments would lead you to believe, most doctors support national health care.
On Dobbs, Pilgrim falsely suggests AMA represents "the nation's doctors" (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
The AMA Does Not Represent Us (Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris, members of Physicians for a National Health Program)
[T]he AMA represents less than one-third of America's physicians, and half of those are retired. [Emphasis added.] In fact, the American Medical Student Association endorses universal health care reform. The AMA's longstanding opposition to every effort to change health care financing, including Medicare in the 1960s, has resulted in decades of needless and countless morbidity and mortality. Sixty people die every day in this country simply for lack of access to health care. And instead of being an advocate for the only solution that accomplishes the goals of universal coverage and fiscal viability, the single-payer option, the AMA continues to be primarily a trade association looking out for the financial interests of its members... The AMA does not represent us.
Dean On Conrad's Co-op Plan: Insurance Industry Licking Its Lips (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
Sen. Kent Conrad's proposal for a cooperative approach to health insurance coverage has created a unique challenge for progressive health care advocates who don't object to the idea but find it inadequate... "This is a big mistake," former Gov. Howard Dean told the Huffington Post. "These co-ops will be very weak. Many won't have the half-million members that most experts think is necessary to influence the market... Insurance companies will be licking their lips."... Added SEIU President Andy Stern through his active twitter account: "Health Care Co-op is distraction from need for real competition and cost control. Good idea and attempts to avoid important debate on costs."
A health care flashback (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
Look what I came across while researching my column about media coverage of the American Medical Association (note the date): "...August 25, 1994... America's corporations - the biggest buyers of health benefits - have been forcing reforms on their own for years. [Emphasis added.] Regardless what happens in Washington they'll keep cutting costs, reducing chances that drug companies, hospitals and other medical providers would seek to sharply raise prices." Just something to keep in mind the next time you see a news report offer industry-friendly spin that things won't be that bad if comprehensive health care reform doesn't happen.
On CNBC, David Goodfriend notes that conservatives have been calling health care reform "socialism" since the 1930s (County Fair, Media Mattes for America)
Obama to single-payer advocates: "go fuck yourselves" (by vastleft at Corrente)
Naturally, he wasn't talking directly to us "liberal bleeding hearts." Instead, he delivered the message to the AMA: "'What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system,' he said. I'll be honest. There are countries where a single-payer system may be working. But I believe -- and I've even taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief -- that it is important for us to build on our traditions here in the United States.'"
Yes, well, slavery was once a tradition here in the United States, President Obama.
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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Very good information here Carolyn. I like the idea of a public option. But I'm confused about how that works. Does that mean I would pay Uncle Sam a monthly premium and get my health insurance from the state or would I just sign up like a Medicaid customer would and get free bennies?
June 16, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Caro doesn't know the answers; she just posts a bunch of negative ads about Obama. If you want answers, go elsewhere. I have never even see her deign to respond to comments, but who knows when she will start?
Her entire schtick is to find every negative Obama cite and post it without even a paragraph of her own. Never one single word of her own. She is a drive-by blogger, so what is the point? She is the equivalent of blogosphere graffiti -- just leave a bunch of negative shit on the wall and move on.
June 17, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
DCblogger is quite correct. The proposals to "trim" Medicare and Medicaid, and to give a revamped Medicare Commission power to, with no congressional/public oversight, make cuts in payments to providers and hospitals on an "accountability" basis--all this is simply healthcare rationing by another name. The people who want a public-option healthplan to be paid for by cuts in Medicare and Medicaid(that is, insurance company investors and wealthy persons to lose some tax exemptions to let other people stay healthy) are trying to fool us into thinking that those now on Medicare/Medicaid and the 45 million now uninsured can, without losing quality of benefits, share the current Medicare/Medicaid pool of healthcare funding (plus a bit more gained from taxing workere' healthcare benefits and from tiny extra tax monies from the rich). Somethow, cutting Medicare payments to hospitals will force them to be more effective; somehow, pay cuts to doctors will make them more effective too. And for heaven's sakes, let's get rid of all those medical device purchases, especially those used for testing, right? And visits to specialists--yes indeed. After all, the Dartmouth Health Atlas showed that patients whose records were studied for their last two years of life did indeed, whether they received more or less costly treatment (specialist visits, tests, etc.) all die at the end of those two years; Mr. Orszag, and now Mr. Obama say HEY this shows that costly, intensive treatment's no better than the cheap kind. --But of course the study's parameters were that the patient records studied were exactly of their last two years of life; they could have had voodoo medicine done, or genuine miracles, and it wouldh't have effected the outcome--the outcome was predicated by the study. Yet this is the basis--this is the "expert research--on which is claimed that Medicare/Medicaid can be cut 9 percent without harming patients. I think it is time to tell Mr. Obama Don't give us bogus figures--confront the insurance companies and pay for increased medical coverage not by hurting our old and disabled but by removing insurance company profits from our health budget. We need single-payer, single-tier coverage now.
June 16, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
You might take a look at the book, Overtreated, I think the author posted here for awhile, her point is that more treatment doesn't always make people healthier. Sometimes it seems that single payer advocates miss that part.
Health care in the U.S is very expensive and at least art ofthe problem is that specialists steer people to more expensive and in some cases less effective treatments. Just making sure everyone has access to ineffective treatments is not the answer and I would like to hear single payer advocates discuss this part a little more.
June 17, 2009 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a good point. I do think there will need to be 'protocols' in diagnosis and treatment that are based on verifiable and statistically significant studies. Too much of our treatment today is based on a 'smoke and mirrors' approach that is driven by the pharmaceutical industry, and also physicians with fiduciary interests in various testing facilities. Here is a great and extensive article by Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine detailing many of the ways drug companies shift treatment to newer, more expensive drug therapies that show little or no statistical advantage over existing ones. This argument is one that will be distorted to drum up resistance to a siingle payer system/option by the vested interests. I would suggest that this is an area where private insurance can fill any perceived need for such coverage with supplemental health insurance.
June 17, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink