Thanks, Cubit. I’ll listen. As you posted that, I was listening to Bill Moyers interview Wendell Potter (former higher-up exec at the #4 health insurance company). The interview takes place a little before the vote on HCR. Potter is the most ‘inside’ person I’ve heard speak on the subject, and he’s very articulate.
wahoo
3182
Interesting report from CMS on health care.
My takeaway is this: There is no way the Medicare productivity cuts take place. The CMS estimates that 15% of Medicare Part A suppliers will be driven into non-profitable status if those cuts take place. And Baumol’s cost disease indicates that these “savings” are a pipedream from this initiative.
This is one of the big reasons that I think the health care bill will be much more expensive than is projected. The bill authors are engaging in wishful projections of how to achieve savings as compared to reality.
Irony alert: I’ll just note that the biggest opponents of Medicare cuts lately have been - drum roll please - the Republicans. Let’s not forget the Party of Small Government But Just Say No to Socialized Medicine expanded Medicare in 2003 with Part D, which cost just under $50B in 2008. [EDIT: maybe it doesn’t count as socialized medicine if they don’t allocate any money to pay for it?] Truly, we live in interesting times…
In short, wahoo, I actually agree with you: we will never see significant cuts in Medicare (or Social Security) spending, because both parties are too spineless to cross the geezers.
This reminds me; someone on NPR the other day mentioned that including the medicare cuts in the cost estimate of the bill makes no sense because…the cuts aren’t in the bill. They’re already pre-existing law. Is this incorrect?
JeffL
3185
I’ll have to dig for the references, Jason, but I think that is incorrect. The reason CMS and CBO and everyone includes examining those cuts as part of the costs of the bill is due to their inclusion as a way to pay for other parts of the bill.
The CMS report is at least tentative confirmation of my opinion all along: costs are not going to go down with this bill, they will go up. But I supported it because I believe the results are worth it. (If you found a way to make the insurance companies become non-profit organizations without the bill, I’d have second thoughts.)
So… anyone still care about healthcare reform? New Commonwealth Fund Report ranks US healthcare versus Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, using data collected from 2007 to 2009.
Unsurprisingly, America has the worst access to and income equity of healthcare. More interestingly, the report also finds poor quality and efficiency:
On measures of quality the United States ranked 6th out of 7 countries. On two of four measures of quality – effective care and patient-centered care – the U.S. ranks in the middle (4th out of 7 countries). However, the U.S. ranks last when it comes to providing safe care, and next to last on coordinated care. U.S. patients with chronic conditions are the most likely to report being given the wrong medication or the wrong dose of their medication, and experiencing delays in being notified about an abnormal test result.
On measures of efficiency, the U.S ranked last due to low marks when it comes to spending on administrative costs, use of information technology, re-hospitalization, and duplicative medical testing. Nineteen percent of U.S. adults with chronic conditions reported they visited an emergency department for a condition that could have been treated by a regular doctor, had one been available, more than three times the rate of patients in Germany or the Netherlands (6%).
On measures of healthy lives, the U.S. does poorly, ranking last when it comes to infant mortality and deaths before age 75 that were potentially preventable with timely access to effective health care, and second to last on healthy life expectancy at age 60.
jeffd
3187
There’s nothing really new in that report - go back through this thread and you’ll see those points made time and time again. :)
.
The primary data for the Commonwealth Fund Report is from telephone surveys of patients and written surveys from primary care physicians (i.e. opinions from surgeons, radiologists, endocrinologists, pathologists, cardiologists, emergency room physicians, intensive care specialists, nephrologists, neurologists, just to name a few important specialists weren’t included).
The US system’s deficiencies have been much more convincingly demonstrated by thorough chart review studies, and by review of Medicare/private payor insurance claims which actually show an investigator what is happening in the trenches.
Doing research by telephone when you should be looking at the primary data is just sloppy, in my opinion.
Maybe the investigators in this study did actually do chart review, but if they did, if so, my error. But I can’t find that in this current report. They do refer to that more solid data, which I think creates some risk of misreading the reader. The new data they are reporting is largely composed of results of telephone calls to patients.
The results might be accurate, but I think it has more to do with coincidence than with a smart methodology. Telephone surveys of patients are just lousy with bias.
Well, that didn’t take very long. The ink has barely dried on the HCR bill and the federal government has already set aside funding for taxpayer-funded abortions in Pennsylvania.
Unfortunately I can’t post the link because of my fail post count, but its on cbsnews.
Tldr; $160M in the form of a high risk pool.
Of course this violates the president’s executive order. The same order that breathed life into this bill having a chance of passing. Several centrist Dems in the house and senate only got on board after the executive order was issued.
Of course anyone with a constitutional knowledge understands that executive orders don’t carry the force of law, and can be revoked by whoever is occupying the office at the time.
Naturally Sebelius and the president did not reply to Boehner’s letter asking for clarification on this issue.
I can’t find what you’re referring to, I assume it’s not this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/14/ap/health/main6678524.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;2
(which seems a crying shame)
Also, reading abortion news is goddamn depressing, since it seems a showcase of sadistic assholes imposing further obstacles on women in the difficult position of seeking abortion (one of the most common procedures that women do).
Why do they need government funding to make lemonade…?
wahoo
3192
Big Health reform vote this week. The actual bill was never meant to become a law but instead be fixed in conference/etc. So there’s a ton of major screwups in the legislation.
There’s a vote in the House about the fact that the bill accidentally excludes many big pharma companies from Medicaid (Pfizer, Az and others). Big test vote b/c no one has the will to go back and fix all the problems. But Pfizer is a lobbying powerhouse so it will be interesting to see if this slips through.
Paulus
3193
Hello all,
This is very unfortunate, to say the least:
Major health insurance companies in California and other states have decided to stop selling policies for children rather than comply with a new federal healthcare law that bars them from rejecting youngsters with preexisting medical conditions.
Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others will halt new child-only policies in California, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut and elsewhere as early as Thursday when provisions of the nation’s new healthcare law take effect, including a requirement that insurers cover children under age 19 regardless of their health histories.
The action will apply only to new coverage sought for children and not to existing child-only plans, family policies or insurance provided to youngsters through their parents’ employers. An estimated 80,000 California children currently without insurance — and as many as 500,000 nationwide — would be affected, according to experts.
.latimes.com/health/la-fi-kids-health-insurance-20100921,0,799167.story
Unbelievable.
When are we finally going to wake up to the need for nationalized or at least robust single-payer healthcare?
WarrenM
3196
Yeah, fuck everybody who was against government run healthcare. Enjoy what you’ve sown.
Linoleum
3197
Frankly, until a mandate is in effect, I don’t see how you can blame them. This is the poster child (ha) case for why you need to have mandates even in a private system.
Linoleum
3198
I would blame the people who crafted legislation that tried to put some goodies in before adding the stick that would help pay for them.
Jazar
3199
Conservatives will only argue that this was brought out by the reform.
Linoleum
3200
You’re suggesting this policy change was completely unrelated to regulatory changes in the healthcare reform bill?
