Tag: 2012 Election

Repealed, Replaced and Expanded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22% want it repealed outright and another 18% want it replaced with a Republican alternative—a total of 40%, fewer than want to expand it or keep it as it is.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…

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…

Occupational Health In the Electronic Age

Jan 25, 2012• 1

By Sanjay Bansu, MD

When we say our products are made “in China”, what we really should say it that they’re made in Shenzhen–a city in Guangdong Province, just north of Hong Kong. Shenzhen is one of China’s “special economic zones” (SEZs)–754 square miles of industrial space in which foreign corporations are permitted unique rules and regulations, permitting them to run high-throughput factories that currently use 3.3 million people to make products for the Western consumer market. This is where Xboxes and cell phones come from, produced by Chinese contractors like Foxconn (which makes the new iPhone). There is an unusually high rate of suicide in Shenzhen, and in Foxconn factories in particular; behind these suicides are a broader set of public health issues among electronic workers–from those who make the new gadgets, to those who dismantle them after we throw them away.

A Promise Made to Be Broken

Jan 23, 2012• 8

By David Dranove

In last week’s Wall Street Journal, Princeton economist Alan Blinder exposes four myths about the federal deficit. He saves the most important myth for last. After noting that the long term deficit problem does not cut across all areas of spending, he observes that the problem is almost entirely rooted in the need to fund Medicare and Medicaid. If we base future spending projections on past trends, then Blinder is absolutely correct. Spending growth on Medicare and Medicaid nearly always outstrips the growth in tax revenues. The main contributors to spending growth – demographics, labor costs, and, especially, technology – are likely to keep this trend alive indefinitely. Blinder challenges us to focus the debate about the deficit on the key facts, which essentially means that we should focus on Medicare and Medicaid spending. Let me take up his challenge.

Let’s start with the obvious debating points. There is a lot of fat in both programs. CMS just acknowledged that as much as 10 percent of spending in Medicare and Medicaid is “improper.” This does not include spending on defensive medicine, unnecessary services demanded by fully insured patients, unwarranted variations in practice, and all the other usual suspects. Nor does it reckon with all the waste due to poor health behaviors, although eventually the grim reaper will have his say and dying is usually very costly no matter how well you have pampered your body along the way.

Newt Gingrich Reveals His Inner Democrat

Jan 22, 2012• 8

By Al Lewis

Perhaps Newt Gingrich’s book Saving Lives & Saving Money has been quietly redacted of a few lines since its original 2003 printing, because otherwise a simple read of the copies now in circulation would find a blueprint for Obamacare just like the first printing did. I dusted off my old, autographed, copy and re-read it, and am providing some highlights for THCB readers.

Much of the book does propose market-based solutions, such as the use of disease management programs to “dramatically improve outcomes.” However, the book also calls for bigger government, in the form of (1) drug coverage for seniors (since passed) and (2) a “tripling” of the National Science Foundation budget.

In addition to those two specific calls for increased government spending, the first printing contains language that might comfort Don Berwick more than Fox News, and not just because Dr. Berwick gets favorably mentioned twice.

Some samples:

P. 31: “The number of uninsured in America is a threat to our civilization.”

P. 54 “Don Berwick[has] pioneered the translation of the teachings of quality experts such as Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran to the healthcare profession.”

P 59 “It is justified to mandate the use of electronic systems to drag the medical system into the 21^st century.”

Can You Really Fire Your Insurance, Mitt?

Jan 15, 2012

By TRUDY LIEBERMAN

Romney’s remark last week about firing your insurance company apparently harmed him little in the New Hampshire primary. But as the quote has rocketed around, it might be misleading some into thinking that the Massachusetts health care reforms that Romney signed into law made it so people can willy-nilly get rid of an insurer that doesn’t pay their claims on time.

The comment deserves a second look. Can you really fire your insurance company? The answer is that it’s darn difficult even in Massachusetts—the land of Romneycare.Continue reading…

2012: A Year of Huge Uncertainty in Health Care Policy

Jan 10, 2012• 5

By Robert Laszweski

2013 may be the most significant year in health care policy ever.

But we have to get through 2012 first.

Once the 2012 election results are in there will be the very real opportunity to address a long list of health care issues.

If Republicans win, the top of the list will include “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act. If Obama is reelected, but Republicans capture both houses of Congress, we can still expect a serious effort to change the law. Then there is the granddaddy of all problems, the federal debt. The 2012 elections could well prepare the way for entitlement reform—particularly for Medicare and Medicaid. Even if Obama is reelected, the 2013 agenda will include a serious debate about Republican ideas to change Medicare into a premium support system and block grant Medicaid to the states.

If the election is a draw with neither side able to unilaterally move their agenda—likely in the form of Obama still in the White House but facing a Republican Congress, the pressure to deal with the growing costs of Medicare and Medicaid as well as nagging concerns about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will create an imperative for action in 2013.

The Wyden-Ryan Plan

Dec 15, 2011• 30

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) have embraced a Medicare reform plan that in concept borrows heavily from one championed by former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici and former Clinton budget chief Alice Rivlin.

Specifically, Wyden and Ryan are proposing to alter the earlier Ryan Medicare plan by:

Continuing to offer the traditional Medicare plan—Ryan would have eliminated it—in addition to a range of private Medicare plans offered by health insurers.
Tying federal Medicare premium support to an amount equal to the second lowest cost Medicare plan—public or private—available to seniors in each market. Ryan would have set a flat premium support amount in year-one and increased that only at the rate of inflation.
Instituting a series of consumer protections and medical underwriting rules designed to protect seniors.
Instituting an annual cap on what the federal government could pay for Medicare at an amount equal to the increase in the nation’s GDP + 1%—Ryan would have capped annual increases in the federal premium support amount at the increase in the consumer price index.

On this blog I have been arguing that the risk for health care costs rising too quickly should not be borne entirely by seniors–that the stakeholders who really run the system should be most accountable. And, that is what the Wyden-Ryan plan would do: “Any increase over that cap will be reflected in reduced support for the sectors most responsible for cost growth, including providers, drug companies, and means-tested premiums,” their plan states.
Continue reading…

Mitt Romney Treads Carefully

Nov 8, 2011• 1

By Roger Collier

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s reform plan for Medicare is just as cautious―and carefully vague on some key details―as might be expected from an politician famously sensitive to the winds of public opinion.

Romney’s proposal looks a lot like those offered by last year’s Rivlin-Domenici Debt Reduction Task Force and the 1999 National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Like those proposals, and also the plan offered by House Budget Chair Paul Ryan, Romney’s would convert Medicare into a premium support program in which beneficiaries would receive a fixed contribution towards the cost of coverage. However, unlike Ryan’s plan―received so negatively by seniors that it cost Republicans a House seat―beneficiaries would still have traditional fee-for-service Medicare as an option.

Under the Romney proposal, commercial insurers would compete with traditional Medicare in offering a basic set of benefits. Beneficiaries would choose from a “menu” of plans, paying out-of-pocket for any difference between the premium and the federal support contribution. Lower-income individuals would receive larger premium support amounts, while beneficiaries selecting options with premiums below the support amount would keep the savings. Also, as with the other similar proposals, there would be a gradual increase in the Medicare eligibility age from today’s 65 years.

Although it was immediately attacked by various liberal commentators, the Romney proposal seems on the surface to be a reasonable approach to a program that otherwise is headed for bankruptcy. How reasonable, however, will depend on numerous details that have been carefully left vague. (Interestingly, the proposal is nowhere mentioned on candidate Romney’s campaign web site.)

Christie on Obama’s “Government Takeover”

Nov 3, 2011• 2

By Trudy Lieberman

A “government takeover of health care” is back. At least it is in the mind of New Jersey governor Chris Christie. In an interview with talk radio show host Dom Giordano, the governor, who supports Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, dished out strong clues about how Republicans are going to fight the health reform law. The weapon of choice: Frank Luntz’s focus-group tested messages. On the show Christie showed he was in sync with Romney’s defense of the Massachusetts reform law, which Romney’s administration supported and which later became the model for national reform. But to distance himself from the federal law, Romney has said what was good for Massachusetts at the time may not be good for the rest of the country. And Christie has said that what happened in the Bay State “would not be good for New Jersey.”

On the show, Christie urged the president to tell the truth about the reform law. What truth would Christie tell?

I’d say to the president, in Massachusetts, we didn’t propose to raise taxes, as you proposed to raise taxes a trillion dollars to pay for a government takeover of health care…. Ninety-three percent of the people in Massachusetts had private insurance then and have private insurance now. That’s not what’s gonna happen under Obamacare. It’s gonna be a government takeover of health care.

Really, Governor? As Campaign Desk has repeatedly noted, the health reform law does not call for a government takeover of health care. The law simply brings private insurance to people who are uninsured. You know, the kind sold by those giants of the American insurance business—UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross, Cigna, and Humana—which just posted a large profit gained mostly from selling private Medicare Advantage plans to seniors.