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Illinois AG: Shady AIDS Charity’s Web Campaign Broke State Law

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By CHRISTOPHER WEAVERCap_lawsuit_20090727

Four months after we first reported on a sketchy AIDS "charity" with a nationwide fundraising campaign,
authorities have begun to crack down. But the move might not have much
impact if other officials don't follow suit.

The Illinois attorney general alleged in a lawsuit Thursday that the Center for AIDS Prevention
solicited donations illegally and falsified official documents. The
group's fundraising campaign has featured ads on the Web sites of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and others for months, drawing attention to the charity's shady practices.

In March, we noted that the group promoted false health information and ineffective herbal remedies, misled potential donors with claims about its battle to "stop
AIDS," and repeatedly failed to provide a full accounting of how it
spends contributions. Its financial records show no expenses, and there
is no evidence that it has provided any services to people with AIDS,
its stated mission.

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A Health Insurance Premium Tax Would be a Chicken Tax

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By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

The Congress has looked at taxing about everyone and everything to pay for half the cost of a health care bill.

They’ve considered sugary soft drinks, beer, “millionaires,” and “gold plated” health benefits to name a few. Every time they come up with one it gets shot down by the interests it would offend.First, as I have asked on this blog before, why do we need to use at least $500 billion in new taxes to pay for half the cost of a health care entitlement expansion bill? We will spend somewhere between $35 trillion and $40 trillion on health care in this country over the next ten years. Many experts contend there is as much as 30% waste in what we spend.Advocates of a health care bill say we need it to reduce the cost of health care in this country that will otherwise bankrupt us if we don’t fix it.

With as much as $10 trillion to $12 trillion in waste, and cost containment as the stated goal, why do we need to raise people’s taxes $500 billion to pay for an expansion of coverage?But since it is clear that the Congress and the White House have all but given up on real health care reform that would really “bend the curve” they are adamant they are going to raise taxes to pay for at least half the cost.

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The Case for Home Health Care

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By GEORGE TALER, MDTaler

While Congress is debating health reform and struggling to accomplish the apparently competing goals of reducing costs while improving quality, I am part of a program that does both. As co-director of the Washington Hospital Center’s Medical House Call Program, I visit the sickest, frailest Medicare patients who consume a wildly disproportionate amount of Medicare dollars. Not only am I providing better care for my patients, I’m doing it where they want it — at home. House calls allow me to better manage their chronic conditions by seeing their medications, diet and home life and enabling me to better support their caregivers and coordinate their medical care. The math is simple: the better I do, the happier they are and the fewer times they need to visit an expensive hospital or nursing home. Shockingly, this proven approach that reduces unnecessary spending is being overlooked in the current reform debate.

Take one of our patients, Mrs. C, who has heart failure and pulmonary disease. She is chair- and bed-bound. She relies on her daughter for all her basic needs and cannot easily get to the office. Through our program, a team of doctors, nurse practitioners and social workers can visit Mrs. C at home and provide care on-site. We can manage her heart and lung problems on the spot, rather than having to wait until her symptoms are so severe that she has to go to an emergency department by ambulance. Additionally, avoiding the hospital means Mrs. C is less likely to face medical complications from a hospital visit. The accrued savings pay for a year’s worth of house calls for eight patients. Our program has shortened the hospital stays of 600 patients by a quarter, and reduced hospitalizations at end of life by 75 percent.Continue reading…

Commentology

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By ANONYMOUS

Anonymous

I'm retired now, but as a former lawyer, I simply must speak out in opposition to the various health care proposals that are being bandied about. It used to be said that what was good for GM was good for America. I submit that the more appropriate slogan in this day and age is that what's good for lawyers is good for America.

Right now the American system of health care proudly denies service to 40 to 50 million people, depending on your source. The great majority of them don't need health care anyway. Our system has always worked on the free market ideal that if you have what it takes, you'll achieve your goals. If you don't, then you can fall by the wayside. This philosophy has made this country great for over two centuries. Why change it now?

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After Nurses Investigation, Scrutiny Turns to Other California Health Boards

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By ALEXANDRA ANDREWSNurse_computer_flickr_20090721

Earlier this month, ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times published an investigation detailing the failure of the California Board of Registered Nursing to investigate and discipline nurses accused of misconduct in a timely manner. An examination of all disciplinary cases from 2002 to 2008 found that the board took an average of more than three years to investigate and close them — while the nurses accused of wrongdoing continued to practice without restriction. The day after the story was published, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced most members of the board, and its longtime executive officer resigned the day after that.

The fallout has continued. There have been a slew of follow-up editorials and articles in California newspapers. One, in the Los Angeles Times, said of the governor's response: "This time, he acted to protect patients, but where was the gubernatorial outrage when the state Board of Chiropractic Examiners, which included several of Schwarzenegger's friends, was accused in a state audit of similar failures to put consumers first?"

Another, in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggested that "Schwarzenegger shares a measure of blame too: his imposed work furloughs will slow investigations, and his administration should have been on the problem earlier."

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Op-Ed: Reform- Why have our objectives been abandoned?

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By DR. ALBERT WAXMAN

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In the campaign of 2008 and the first six months of 2009, the call for healthcare reform has been a refreshing and important theme.  It has been widely recognized that

1.    Healthcare costs are out of control.  You cannot have healthcare expenses inflating at 8% in an economy that is growing in the best of times at 4%.  (today, the current inflation rate is negative 1.3%)

2.    47 million Americans need coverage

3.    14,000 Americans lose their insurance everyday

4.    Medicare is in peril, and along with Medicaid, the combination of ever-increasing costs are the main drivers of this government’s budget deficits that threaten our economic future.Continue reading…

Commentology

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THCB reader JB wrote us to say: Commentology

"I guess you guys are probably aware of the huge backlash that is going
on with various medical societies  around the US, due to the AMA and
other physician groups endorsement of HR 3200, and the subsequent
"meltdown" of this bill??

State medical societies and
associations are "seceding" from the AMA, and threatening to further
distance themselves from AMA because their memberships massively
disagree with the purpose and positions of this proposed "healthcare
reform bill." 

State Medical Associations, specialty groups
(American College of Surgeons, American College of Physicians, American
Academcy of Pediatrics, etc.) are all in full back-pedal spin mode to
try and fend of their furious doctor constituent-members, who generally
were ambushed by their professional societies full-fledged endorsement
of HR 3200. 

This has created multiple rifts, and further
undermined support of this measure, even though Obama and Pelosi want
the public to believe this abomination of a bill is fully endorsed by
organized medicine as well as physicians in general.  NOTHING could be
further from the truth."

The Doctor Is In and Logged On.

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By RAHUL PARIKH

ParikhWow. I’ve just taken care of three patients in 12 minutes, and I didn’t do it by “churning” them through my office as if it’s some sort of factory assembly line. Rather, those patients (their parents, more specifically — I’m a pediatrician), e-mailed me over a secure network with questions and descriptions of signs and symptoms.

One mother attached a digital photo of a rash on her 3-month-old daughter’s face; it turned out be nothing more serious than baby acne (it’ll go away in a month or so). Another mom had noticed that her son was missing one of his pre-kindergarten immunizations (she had pulled up his shot records online) and requested that I order it. And the father of a 5-month-old boy told me that his son has been constipated off and on for the last month. I e-mailed him a questionnaire so I could determine whether the family should try something at home or bring the child to the office.Continue reading…

Op-Ed: The Unintended Consequences of “No Pay for Errors”

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By BOB WACHTER, MD

Hospital_bedsMedicare’s policy to withhold payment for “never events” – the first effort to use the payment system to promote patient safety – remains intriguing and controversial. To date, most of the discussion has focused on the policy itself at a macro level (including two articles by yours truly, here and here).

In the past month, experts on two of the adverse events on the “no pay” list – hospital falls and catheter-associated urinary tract infections – have chimed in. Interestingly, while agreeing that the overall policy has upsides and risks, they came to strikingly different conclusions about the wisdom of including their pet peril on the list.

Let’s begin with UTIs. Last month’s Annals of Internal Medicine article by Michigan’s Sanjay Saint and colleagues begins, quite cleverly, with a quote from Ben Franklin: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Turns out that among Franklin’s many inventions was the flexible urinary catheter (so who the hell was Foley?). The piece nicely reviews the “no pay” policy and describes the epidemiology of catheter-associated UTI (CAUTI).Continue reading…

We love Paris in the Springtime: Health 2.0 announces Europe 2010

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By Matthew Holt

MétropolitainAbbesses We’ve had great participation in Health 2.0 Conferences from Europe and across the globe, and today we’re delighted to announce that we’re going to be holding a Health 2.0 Conference in Paris on April 6–7, 2010. It’ll be at the Cite Universitaire, which is a beautiful building in the southern part of Paris, with hidden inside it a very modern conference facility.

The conference will be called Health 2.0 Europe 2010 and it will be a unique experience. We will integrate the best of European web/mobile based technologies, and compare, contrast and contextualize them with leading examples of Health 2.0 from North America. We’ll be seeing what works in the context of Europe’s evolving health care systems, whether there are commonalities across European systems that can lead to economies of scale (or not!), and what the “boundary-less” online world means for consumers and physicians working in distinct health care systems.

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