Author Archives

John Irvine

Should Doctors and Nurses Be Patient Activists?

Jul 9, 2017• 24

By DANIELLE OFRI, MD

When the eminent physician Dr Cliff Cleveland wrote his memoir about his years in medical practice, he entitled his book, “Sacred Space.” Yes, it’s a bit sentimental, but he pays rightful homage to the idea that that relationship between patients and their doctors and nurses is something exceedingly precious. Medical professionals appropriately go out of their way to keep that space neutral, private and nonjudgmental, because patients are often at their most vulnerable.

A patient of mine recently told me about a genital symptom that was bothering her. She’d had it for two years, but had been too embarrassed to bring it up. We had to build up our trust bit by bit, until she felt comfortable revealing it to me. Happily, it was something easily treatable. It’s situations like these that remind me how critical it is to protect this space.

Like most doctors and nurses, I try to keep the outside world firmly outside the exam room. I don’t talk about politics, religion, money, or sports. I don’t even gripe about the mayor. Most medical professonals avoid political activism for the same reason. But could that reticence be harmful to our patients?

I grappled with this over the past few weeks, as the House passed its American Health Care Act and then the Senate put forth its Better Care Reconciliation Act. As one detail after another was revealed, I began to worry about my patients. The cuts to Medicaid would do real damage to them. I had a number of fragile patients in mind who could die if their care was disrupted.

What would I do, I asked myself, if I started to notice a dangerous side effect of a medication that my patients were taking. The answer, of course, is easy. And it wouldn’t even be a question; it would be an obligation. If I see a threat to my patients’ health, it’s in my job description to speak up.

Repeal and Replace. Repeal and Replace. Repeal …

Jul 9, 2017• 5

By BRIAN JOONDEPH, MD

Repeal and replace. Simple enough on the campaign trail. We heard this promise in 2010, when voters gave the House to Republicans. We heard it again in 2012, when voters gave them the Senate. Despite controlling Congress, Obamacare remained the law of the land. Candidate Donald Trump, along with most Republican members of Congress, promised repeal and replace last year.

Republicans now have their largest electoral majority in nearly a century, and repeal and replace is spinning its wheels, like an old Pontiac stuck in the snow.

Some think a grand bill is still possible, particularly Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Others are skeptical. Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee favor a two-pronged approach: repeal first then repeal later. Herein lies the problem. Republicans can’t agree on anything.

Democrats had no such problem in 2010 when they passed Obamacare. The Bernie coalition didn’t get a single-payer plan as they wanted. Some wanted higher Medicaid reimbursement for their states, as in the “Cornhusker Kickback.” But they came together and passed Obamacare, each Democrat getting most but not all of what he wanted.

Beyond “Repeal and Replace”

Jul 5, 2017• 8

BY DANIEL STONE, MD

The toxic polarization of Washington politics might lead even the most stubborn optimist to abandon any hope for bipartisanship on healthcare. Despite endemic pessimism, the flagging efforts to forge a Republican consensus on “repeal and replace” might set the stage for overdue efforts at compromise. Congress will be tempted to move on to more promising areas such as tax reform and infrastructure funding. That temptation should be resisted. The threat to the nation posed by the current state of American healthcare calls for Congress to resurrect the long lost spirit of bold bipartisanship.

Before considering opportunities for compromise, the obstacles confronting the GOP reform efforts are worth considering. Republicans face the same stubborn reality that confronted the framers of the Affordable Care Act (ACA): Expensive services cannot be covered by cheap insurance. The cost of U.S. healthcare has simply priced low income and even middle income individuals out of health insurance. Without subsides, they get left behind. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimated that the Ryan plan would result in 24 million losing coverage underscored the political divide: Confronted with unmanageable healthcare costs, most Republicans would opt to reduce public expense whereas Democrats plus a handful of Republican moderates prefer more extensive coverage. The effort of the GOP leadership to split the difference by preserving some residual subsidies and the structures supporting them—“Obamacare light”—remains unacceptable to many on the right. No clear middle ground has yet emerged.

Believe Them the First Time

Jul 5, 2017• 10

By NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD

I remember the first time someone threatened to kill me. It was my day off, so I was not in the clinic that day; a Children’s Hospital specialty group was working there instead, and after a staff member called the police, she notified me. A father had walked in saying he wanted to kill me for “taking his children away from him.” Wracking my brain as to this man’s identity, I drew a blank.

The police found him in a local park a short time later and judged him to be “harmless.” Somehow, I did not share their reassuring sentiment. I figured out who the man was, tracked down his mother, and promptly explained the situation. She provided a recent photograph so my staff could be trained to recognize him and contact the authorities the moment he entered our building. That photograph still hangs in our “Most Wanted” section of my front office, amongst other pictures which have been added. Occasionally, I request an updated picture to make sure we are keeping our office environment safe.

The second time a parent threatened my life was over the phone.

I was taking call on the weekend for a group of pediatricians. One of them had evaluated a child for a finger injury and had not quite done their due diligence. It sounded infected and in need of repair as the father described its appearance over the phone. I recommended he take his daughter to the local Emergency Room. He threatened to stab me instead. I called to warn the ER staff and then notified the other practice. The response was less than vigorous from my call partners, “you must have done something to upset him.” Their reaction astonished me; “blame the victim” is an unacceptable response to a colleague in this situation.

Time to Start Over!

Jun 30, 2017• 2

By STEVE FINDLAY

The CBO’s analysis of the House and Senate health bills should kill them both—permanently.

Republicans should go back to the drawing board and work with Democrats in both the House and Senate to achieve bipartisan fixes to the ACA/Obamacare marketplaces for 2018 and 2019.

That is the far and away the best thing to do from a policy and political perspective. The vast majority of Americans would stand up and cheer. Two polls out this week, for example, add to previous surveys showing deeply low public support for the Republican bills.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that just 12 percent of Americans overall support the Senate Republican plan, including only 26 percent of Republicans. Similarly, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found 17 percent in favor overall, with Republican support at 35 percent.

Just 25 percent of respondents in the latter poll say the want Congress to repeal the ACA completely—consistent with other polls since late 2016.

Trump has suggested a bipartisan path several times in recent months, although there’s no evidence he ever reached out to Democrats and he just as frequently demonized them as “obstructionists.”Continue reading…

Did “Medicus economicus” Kill Medicare Part B Reform?

Jun 28, 2017• 2

By DAVID, MATTHEWS and MAUGHN

When doctors complain about proposed changes to health care reimbursement, do they speak for patients or their pocketbooks? As the recent debate over Medicare Part B shows, even with access to publicly available billing data, it’s hard to disentangle financial motivations from more altruistic ones.

Since 2005, Medicare Part B has paid for physician-administered drugs like infused chemotherapeutics by reimbursing 106% of the average selling price (ASP) – a formula commonly referred to as “ASP+6”. In order to reduce overall spending and the program’s apparent incentive for physicians to preferentially use high-priced drugs, CMS proposed a pilot program last year to test a new payment formula that would have reduced the 6% markup to 2.5%, but added a flat per-infusion payment – effectively rewarding doctors more for choosing cheaper drugs, and reducing their profit from expensive ones.

The plan to revamp Part B reimbursement was scrapped after many groups – including professional organizations representing cancer doctors – vigorously objected. Oncologists argued that there are few cases in which a cheap anti-cancer drug is therapeutically equivalent to a more expensive one, and that the proposed change would mainly harm oncologists’ ability to provide high-quality care.

These may be valid arguments, but it’s hard to disentangle oncologists’ clinical interests from their financial ones. Many economists might reasonably view cancer doctors who object to Part B reform as the physician manifestation of “Homo economicus,” acting solely to maximize their personal gain. Neeraj Sood at the University of Southern California summed up many observers’ knee-jerk response: “Doctors are human. The fact is, this [new proposed] model changes how much money they’ll make.”

But that raises a key question: how much do oncologists make from “ASP+6,” anyway?

A Real (Living, Breathing) Health Care Reform Plan: Drop MACRA

Jun 27, 2017• 8

By STEVEN SOUMERAI

Dear Washington,

Congratulations! You have listened to the AMA and practicing physicians and made it a little easier to comply (at first) with the Medicare Quality Payment Program, part of the massive MACRA “pay for value” law.

But CMS’ announcements in The Federal Register and “fact sheet” are incomprehensible gobbledygook that will be understood by neither doctors, patients, nor the rest of society. The language personifies the complexity, unwieldiness and confused thinking in this huge national policy.

MACRA is a $15 billion boondoggle that the best research shows will neither improve quality nor control costs. Paying doctors for quality (e.g., doing a blood pressure exam) or efficiency may make sense theoretically, but it doesn’t work. Rather than making a dent in the continuing upward spiral of healthcare costs in America, it can even result in some doctors avoiding sicker patients because it affects their quality scores and income.

Early, poorly designed research suggested that paying for health or cost savings was effective, but these research designs did not account for already occurring improvements in medical practice that the policymakers took credit for. Decades of stronger, well-controlled research debunked these early findings and conclusively showed no effects of these economic policies.

So why does the Congress and administration continue to press ahead with this same tired and impotent policy?

Death and Medicaid

Jun 26, 2017• 31

By ANISH KOKA, MD

https://twitter.com/Cutler_econ/status/877976919349895168?

11. Overall, for every ~300 to 800 adults who get coverage, rigorous studies suggest we save one life per year.

— Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) June 21, 2017

I remember 7 South at the Children’s hospital very well. I remember the distinctive smell, the large rooms, the friendly nurses, and Shantel. For a brief period of time, Shantel and her little boy – a too skinny child named James – were there every time I was there with my little girl. 7 South was the GI floor – Shantel and I were there because our children had the same dastardly liver disease that, for the time being, was winning. And that was it. We had nothing else in common.

She grew up in North Philadelphia, not far from where I was finishing a residency program in Internal Medicine. She had three other children, was a single mother, and in the year that I spent shuttling to the hospital I never saw the father of her child. Shantel did not work, and relied almost exclusively on the welfare programs to make life work.

I was a medical resident, our family had a combined income north of $150,000/ year, and our health insurance was through my employer. My wife and I worked, which meant that we had the flexibility for one of us to stop working, and still maintain our benefits.Continue reading…

If Your Premiums Go Down but Coverage Gets Worse, Does Your Healthcare Matter?

Jun 26, 2017• 5

By JASON CHUNG

Picture this. Amy becomes pregnant while working as a high school teacher. Her employer’s health insurance plan pays the maternity bills and she happily raises her twins.

Fast-forward a few years. She’s decided to become an entrepreneur and runs a small business. She becomes pregnant again but, this time, finds that her $400 a month individual health insurance policy won’t cover the expenses. In fine print, she discovers that she needed to purchase a special rider to activate maternity care benefits. She’ll have to pay $10,000+ out of pocket now, putting her burgeoning business at risk.

Angry at this, Amy decides to switch insurers but, to her dismay, she finds that the four largest insurers in her area don’t cover most expenses associated with a normal delivery. Amy has nowhere to go. Also, since pregnancy is a pre-existing condition, Amy is advised by her doctor to “not become pregnant again” if she wants to get quote reasonable health insurance rates during her search.

This is not an exaggerated or dystopian situation, it’s a real example from 2010.