Category: Uncategorized

What Mitt Romney Should Say

Jan 31, 2012• 1

By David Dranove

Preface: In the past few weeks Governor Romney has received withering criticism for his support for the Massachusetts Health Plan and his seemingly hypocritical opposition to Obamacare. Frankly, his responses to this criticism have not been stellar. I sometimes wonder if he realizes that he is on firm ground here. So as a favor to the Governor, I offer this prepackaged statement:

My fellow Americans. Not a day goes by when some of my colleagues in the Republican Party accuse me of hypocrisy for supporting the Massachusetts Health Plan when I was governor of that great state, while opposing Obamacare. I cannot respond to this accusation in a simple sound bite. So please lend me your ears for five minutes while I explain my position.

My job as governor was to implement policies reflecting the wishes of the people of Massachusetts. By approving the Massachusetts Health Plan, I did what my constituency elected me to do. I am proud to have signed the legislation authorizing the Massachusetts Health Plan, but this does not mean that I support Obamacare.

My critics point out two similarities between the two plans. Both plans mandate health insurance purchase and both create health insurance exchanges. Both features were right for Massachusetts. Health insurance markets do not work perfectly; that is why there isn’t a single state, red or blue, that does not heavily regulate them! Many individuals are shut out from buying health insurance. If they get sick, they face financial ruin. And if they are unable to pay for their medical care, providers shift the costs onto the rest of us.

The health insurance exchange levels the insurance playing field and assures that everyone can purchase insurance at affordable rates. Every health economist with whom I have spoken tells me that the exchange will not work without a purchase mandate. Once everyone is buying insurance, the cost shift will end; this will hold down health insurance costs for everyone.

One Doctor’s View of Personal Science: You Won’t Learn Anything.

Jan 31, 2012• 10

By Seth Roberts

Bryan Castañeda, who lives in Southern California, told me this:

The law firm I work at specializes in toxic torts. We represent people who have been occupationally exposed to chemicals and are now sick, dying, or dead. Most of our clients have been exposed to benzene and developed some kind of leukemia. We sponsor various leukemia charities, walks, and other events. [On January 21, 2012] in Woodland Hills, CA, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society held its first annual Blood Cancer Conference. Although the speakers were mainly doctors, it was a conference meant for laymen. The chair was an oncologist from UCLA Medical Center.

After introductory remarks and the keynote speaker, there were several breakout sessions. I attended a session on acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia. The speaker was [Dr. Ravi Bhatia,] a doctor specializing in leukemia from City of Hope in Duarte, CA. His talk was almost exclusively about new drugs and clinical trials. Very dry and dull. Things got more interesting during the question period. At one point, [Dr. Bhatia] told an attendee not to experiment on his own because “you won’t learn anything and others won’t learn from it, either.”

I would have liked to ask Dr. Bhatia three questions:

1. What’s the basis for this extreme claim (“you won’t learn anything and others won’t learn from it”)? Ben Williams, a psychology professor at UC San Diego, wrote a whole book (Surviving “Terminal” Cancer, 2002) about taking an active approach when faced with a very serious disease (in his case, brain cancer). Likewise, the website Patients Like Me is devoted to (among other things) learning from the experimentation of its members. Lots of forums related to various illnesses spread what one person learns to others. MedHelp has many forums devoted to sharing knowledge.

Repealed, Replaced and Expanded

Jan 31, 2012• 4

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

Last week’s State of the Union speech was notable because the President hardly mentioned the new health care reform law.

Avoiding what is supposed to be the centerpiece domestic accomplishment of President Obama’s first term stuck out like a sore thumb.

He said almost nothing because the Obama team simply doesn’t know what to say.

The fact is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is generally unpopular, and its best-known provision, the individual mandate, is wildly unpopular.

Two years after passage and, the implementation of the law’s first steps all designed to build support, the public’s opinion of the law is unchanged and not good. The just out January 2012 Kaiser Health Tracking Poll leaves no doubt:

Only 37% of those surveyed have a favorable view of the law.
44% have an unfavorable view of the Affordable Care Act.
But even some of those who don’t like it don’t like it because it didn’t go far enough—31% of all of those surveyed want to expand the current law while 19% want to keep it in its current form. That’s a total of 50% that want to keep or expand it.
22% want it repealed outright and another 18% want it replaced with a Republican alternative—a total of 40%, fewer than want to expand it or keep it as it is.
On the individual mandate, 67% have an unfavorable view of requiring everyone to buy coverage, while 30% have a favorable view of the requirement.
While a total of 50% of those surveyed think the law should be kept or expanded, 54% say the Supreme Court should throw the mandate out, while only 17% say they think the mandate should be upheld.

So, let’s summarize. Only 37% have a favorable view of the law and 67% don’t like the mandate. But 50% think the law should be kept as it is or even expanded. No wonder Obama and his political team can’t figure out how to play this.Continue reading…

Treating Heart Failure on a $100 Budget

Jan 30, 2012• 2

By Molly Kantor

As a third year medical student, I spent one afternoon each week at a health clinic at a community hospital affiliated with my medical school. This health clinic was focused on primary care for patients with HIV, and many of our patients were poor, homeless, immigrants, or uninsured. Many were also living with their diagnosis in secrecy and had to hide their medications and medical bills from family members.

One of my patients, who I will call Clara, was a 65 year old Haitian immigrant who diabetes, heart failure, and depression, along with HIV. Due to her medical conditions, she was unable to work. She had two grown children, but they did not live nearby and did not know about her medical problems, especially her HIV. Her husband, unfortunately, was very ill and lived in a nursing home. Clara somehow managed on her own, but her lack of insurance, poor medical literacy, and limited English proficiency made it difficult for her to stay healthy, and she was constantly coming to clinic for help.

At one visit, Clara seemed unusually tired and revealed that she had been feeling short of breath at home. In my mind, this raised many questions—Could this be a heart attack? Worsening heart failure? A blood clot in her lungs? Pneumonia?

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma

Jan 28, 2012• 7

By Lisa Suennen

Last week Steve Case wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post called Give entrepreneurs room and they will grow the economy. For those not familiar with him, Case was the original founding CEO of AOL and he has been an active healthcare investor, among other things, for the past 7 years. My firm, Psilos Group, is a co-investor with Case’s Revolution Health Fund in a health services company called Extend Health.

Anyway, it was a very good editorial and one of the statistics within it particularly stood out to me in light of my venture capital role: firms less than five years old have produced 40 million American jobs over the past three decades–accounting for all of the net new jobs created in that period. That is a pretty stunning fact and also one that really makes a person scratch their head about current U.S. policy towards start-ups. It is worth watching this Kauffman Foundation 3 minute video which is very instructive about start-ups and job creation.

Nowhere is this issue more relevant than in the healthcare industry, which conveniently happens to be the only thing I know anything about. In a world where there is no way out of the healthcare crisis except through the innovation of new ideas to solve our healthcare problems, young companies are the golden ticket to new employment.

Medical Records Supporting San Francisco’s Universal Care Add Millions to Official Cost

Jan 27, 2012• 3

By Angela Hart

The San Francisco Department of Public Health says it is ahead of the curve in rolling out databases that keep tabs on tens of thousands of patients across a citywide network of clinics and hospitals. The rollout is needed not just to make a local form of “universal health care” work, but also to meet a 2014 deadline under national health reform.

And the city says it spent just $3.4 million on new patient-tracking technology. Not bad for an unprecedented charity care initiative whose total budget has grown to $177 million just this past year.

But while clinics and hospitals across the city are now linked up to a common intake tool that eliminates overbilling and duplicated medical appointments, that is only the first step in making the Healthy San Francisco program successful, directors of local health centers and technology experts say.Continue reading…

Now you have healthcare data. So where does it go?

Jan 27, 2012• 4

By Paul Grundy, MD

In the next 10 years, data and the ability to analyze the data will do for the doctor’s mind what x-ray and medical imaging have done for their vision. How? By turning data into actionable information.

For instance, take Watson, IBM’s intelligent supercomputer. Watson can analyze the meaning and context of human language, and quickly process vast amounts of information. With this information, it can suggest options targeted to a patient’s circumstances. This is an example of technology that can help physicians and nurses identify the most effective courses of treatment for their patients. And fast: in less than 3 seconds Watson can sift through the equivalent of about 200 million pages, evaluate the information, and provide precise responses. With medical information doubling every 5 years, advanced health analytic systems technologies can help improve patient care through the delivery of up- to-date, evidence-based health care.

Demonizing The Demonization Of Physician-Industry Relationships

Jan 27, 2012• 3

By DAVID SHAYWITZ

Monday’s WSJ (online now) features an exceptionally important and courageous op-ed by Harvard professor (and frequent co-author of mine, although not in this case) Tom Stossel, discussing a rule within recently enacted healthcare legislation with the Orwellian title, “The Physician Payment Sunshine Act,” focused on physician/industry relationships.

Taking its name from the assertion that “sunshine is the best disinfectant,” the Act apparently aims to help disinfect physicians who might be contaminated by industry contact, an interaction the Act seems to assume is intrinsically corrupting — in stark contrast, one suspects, to the many other activities in which physicians engage, and the many other factors in their environment that might influence their behavior, as Stossel and I previously discussed here and here; see here and here as well.

To restore physicians to their baseline state of virginal professional purity, the Act mandates a stultifying series of reporting requirements, impacting amounts as little as $10. While such reports may be a Pharmascold’s wet dream, they are a logistical nightmare for the physicians involved, and serve to create an enormous compliance bureaucracy for everyone.

My recent experience at an innovation symposium at Duke University, as well as my frequent informal conversations with academic physicians at other leading institutes, suggest the increasing bureaucratic hurdles confronting university physicians seeking to strengthen the essential translational relationship between academia and industry are a particularly unfortunate problem, and are having the presumably intended effect of stifling these interactions. Young physicians worry that the burdensome requirements are overwhelming, while senior leaders seek desperately to avoid the inevitable media takedowns predictably led by the NYT, public radio, and the rest of the usual suspects. (Not infrequently, these stories seem to originate with material selectively provided to a sympathetic journalist by a plantiff attorney — but of course, nothing cozy or sketchy here….)

What I Learned from Listening to a Patient

Jan 26, 2012• 8

By Peter Pronovost, MD

I was reminded again recently of how important it is to sometimes just sit back and listen to what our patients have to say. Every month, as part of our hospital-wide patient safety efforts, I meet with staff and interview patients, seeking to learn how we can improve the care we provide to them.

A young patient shared two stories with me, one telling me how we get it right and one reminding me how we sometimes get it wrong, even without realizing it. She was nervously awaiting a procedure in Interventional Radiology when a nurse sensed her anxiety and called in a child life specialist. The specialists came and significantly helped relieve the patient’s suffering. She listened to the patient, offered a comforting touch, and provided her age-appropriate reading material and Sudoku puzzles, a brilliant though infrequently used intervention. If anything could take your mind off of your illness, it is Sudoku.

What was amazing was that after all the patient had been through―weeks in the hospital, countless procedures, scores of clinicians―what she remembered was the nurse’s act of kindness by caring enough to call the specialist. The patient reminded me that though we can cure disease sometimes, we can relieve suffering always, often with nothing more than a kind word, a gentle touch or a warm smile.

As I listened, the patient, along with her mother, went on to tell me more. They told me how the patient has complex allergies and that her mom knew her disease better than any clinician. They had lived with the disease for a decade. Yet at times, neither the patient’s mother nor the patient felt they were being heard by the doctors. The mom expressed frustration that clinicians often dismissed her concerns and discredited her knowledge.

How Doctors Are Trapped, Part II

Jan 26, 2012• 13

By JOHN GOODMAN

Of all the people in the health care system, none is more central than the physician. Fundamental reform that lowers costs, raises quality and improves access to care is almost inconceivable without physicians leading and directing the changes. Yet of all the actors in modern health care, none are more trapped than our nation’s doctors. Let’s consider just a few of the ways your doctor is constrained, unlike any other professional you deal with.

No Telephone. Sometime in the early part of the last century, all the other professionals in our society — lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers, etc. — discovered the telephone. It’s a handy device. Ideal for communicating with clients. Yet even today I find that I can rarely talk to a doctor by phone. Why is that?

The short answer is: Medicare doesn’t pay for telephone consultations. Medicare has a list of about 7,500 tasks it pays physicians to perform. And talking by phone isn’t on the list — at least in a way that makes it practical. Private insurance tends to pay the way Medicare pays. So do most employers.

At a time when doctors feel like they are being squeezed on their fees from every direction by third-party payers, most become very focused on which activities are billable and which are not. And most are going to try to minimize their non-billable time.Continue reading…