Tag: Policy

The problem with astroturf

Sep 15, 2008• 5

By Matthew Holt

….is that sometimes real weeds might sneak in and mess up the nice green carpeting you’re laying down.

To wit, here’s an exchange between an SEIU member and AHIP President Karen Ignagni at the AHIP astroturf meeting in Ohio. When asked why Wellpoint’s CEO is still talking about profitability (and going off message to the political world when going on message to Wall Street), Ignagni starts off about “No Margin, No Mission”.

Err … Karen, that’s the line used by non-profits that (theoretically) have a mission to do some social good. The mission of investor-owned companies like Wellpoint, Healthnet, Aetna, United, et al is to make a profit. Your opponents can show you lots of “insurance companies” that do a pretty good job (or at least as good as your members and usually better) and don’t make a profit. Hint: one’s called Medicare, another is the VA.

And at another astroturf forum a different AHIP spokesman also showed a lack of comprehension of basic economics when he apparently said that it is necessary for the insurance industry to make profits to cover costs. Err no, you have to cover your costs to cover your costs — profit is on top of that!

Has Steve Poizner gone soft?

Sep 12, 2008

By Matthew Holt

California’s de facto health insurance commissioner Lisa Girion reports on California’s actual Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner’s agreement with Healthnet. After all that fuss, the deal is that Healthnet pays $14m in canceled medical bills, reinstates around 1,000 canceled policy-holders and pays a $3.6m fine. Poizner agreed to this despite all his tough words of not too long ago.

How is it that the punishment fine is less than the cost of the offense? So let me see. Don’t pay $14m in medical bills you’d agreed to insure, and either get away with it, or run the slight risk of not getting away with it and pay $18m several years later. That’s a deal any self-respecting egregious booty capitalist would take. And let’s face it being one of those is a requirement of the job to run a health plan these days.

Of course, the separate $9m fine Healthnet has already seen in one case alone—handed down by an arbitrator whose decisions cannot be overturned later—gives a clue to what the real damages will be in the courts should these cases get there.

So no wonder Shernoff and the trail lawyers are pissed that this settlement may undercut their case. And why has Poizner rolled over?

UPDATE: Darrel Ng, Press Secretary at the CA Department of Insurance is working late on Friday and responded to this post "One of the highlights of the settlement is that by accepting the payments and health insurance, patients do not have to forgo future litigation. So while I know critics have made the assertion that their case may be undercut, I’m not sure why they would believe that’s the case." Darrel didn’t explain why the fine for one case in arbitration was three times the fine for 1,000 cases from the DOI.

Grim economic outlook

Sep 10, 2008• 2

By Sarah Arnquist

Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag is playing a role he admittedly hates: the grim economist. The CBO released the annual summer update to its Fiscal Outlook for 2008 to 2018.

On the "Director’s Blog," Orszag explains the economic report and gives it context, including what the takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac means for the federal budget. The blog, in my opinion, is a great resource and worth a regular read.

Here are some bullets from the update — note health care costs nearly top the list of the nation’s fiscal concerns:

CBO estimates that the deficit for 2008 will be $407 billion higher than last year’s $161 billion. As a share of the
economy, the deficit is projected to rise to 2.9 percent of GDP this
year, up from 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007.

Over the longer term, the fiscal outlook continues to depend mostly on
the future course of health care costs as well as on the effects of a
growing elderly population. CBO estimates that federal spending on
Medicare and Medicaid will grow to 6 percent of the GDP in 2018 and 12
percent of the GDP by 2050.

Another state gov’t. misses the boat on patient-centered care and HIT

Sep 4, 2008• 2

By Joshua Seidman

Amid more data released that consumers are not using personal health records (PHRs) or don’t even know what they are, the state of West Virginia has launched a Web site designed to convince consumers of the merits of health information technology (HIT).

As best I can tell from eHealthWV Web site, here’s the plan: “To ensure consumer input and involvement in the process of health information exchange and electronic health records, WVMI and its partners launched a new phase to the project in mid 2007. It involves educating consumers about electronic health records and health information exchange.”I’m sure they mean well, but it would be helpful if one of these state efforts “ensured consumer input and involvement” by actually soliciting their input before designing their outreach. Right now, most states and health information exchange activities are focused on addressing consumers’ fears about data rather than their needs about health care.

Health care lessons from the Titanic

Sep 3, 2008• 4

By Sarah Arnquist

The U.S. Health Care system is like the Titanic — a big, fancy,
expensive ship that unequally doles out limited resources depending on class
status and is destined to hit an iceberg and sink.

A professor used this analogy recently to provoke students to look
more deeply into the complex and intractable factors that determine health status. Biology
and genetics surely are important, he said, but one cannot ignore the environmental,
social and economic factors that influence an individual’s
susceptibility to disease.

Comparing the U.S. health care system to the Titanic is an analogy as hackneyed as saying the system is in crisis. Yet, it remains useful.

Is John Goodman joking or just mean?

Aug 28, 2008• 34

By Matthew Holt

The uninsured numbers went down a touch because in 2007 Medicaid expanded. In 2008 they’ll go up as unemployment increases and S-CHIP coverage is cut. Really this doesn’t change too much.

Right-wing nut jobs all over the Internet are saying that uninsurance doesn’t matter. It’s surprising that one of the more sensible right-wingers has joined in and now says that the uninsured don’t exist.

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care).

Cost-containment missing piece of Mass. health reform

Aug 28, 2008• 5

By Niko Karvounis

Niko Karvounis tracks the health care system for the Century Foundation. This post first appeared on the HealthBeat blog, one of our favorite health care reads.

The Massachusetts experiment in health care reform is all about expanding access. But it doesn’t try to control costs. This, in a nutshell, is why it’s running into trouble.

The plan didn’t reform health care delivery, just coverage. Granted, in terms of bringing more people in under the tent, it’s been a success: Since the plan went into effect in 2006, 439,000 people have signed up for insurance — a number that represents more than two-thirds of the estimated 600,000 people uninsured in the state two years ago. This surge in coverage has reduced use of emergency rooms for routine care by 37 percent, which has saved the state about $68 million. (Going to the ER for routine care drives up health care costs by creating longer wait times and tying up resources that can be used to help patients who are critically ill).

Health Reform Prospects Fade as Presidential Campaign Enters Homestretch

Aug 27, 2008• 13

By Jeff Goldsmith Ijeff

Jeff Goldsmith is President of Health Futures, Inc, and a professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia.

As presidential aspirants geared up their issue analyses last fall, health reform ranked as the number one domestic policy item the next President should address in many national public opinion polls. As the campaign season draws to a close, however, health reform has virtually disappeared from the headlines, supplanted by concern about gas prices, home mortgage foreclosures, soaring food costs and, most recently, the "Soviet" invasion of Georgia. Though you will hear campaign rhetoric from both parties at their upcoming conventions, health reform has been demoted to the second tier of campaign issues. Their platforms and campaign pledges on health reform seem increasingly unlikely to decide who is the next president of the United States.

As previously argued in this space, "health reform" really meant doing something about "health costs for my family" to most voters, not reducing inequity in access to coverage. Ninety-three percent of the voting public has health insurance of some kind. It is clear now that voter concern last fall about health reform was really a leading indicator of anxiety about the deteriorating economy and their own household economic insecurity. As Brian Klepper pointed out a few months ago in THCB, the purchasing power in real dollars of the American paycheck moved into negative territory last September, thanks to the rising price of energy, food and the resetting of home mortgages to higher rates. All these problems have worsened materially in the ensuing year

A few socialist musings for Monday

Aug 25, 2008• 1

By Matthew Holt

I just watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics, and the word is that state sponsorship of little known or cared about sports like swimming, gymnastics and cycling gets more medals and so should be encouraged. Bob Costas told me that China spent $40 billion on the games, even if London is going to spend less than half that. So it got me thinking about socialism.

Kevin Pho, blogger of KevinMD fame, and usually reliably anti-government in his views, asks for more socialism, at least directed in the direction of him and his fellow MDs. In this USA Today op-ed he suggests rightly that cutting doctors fees in itself saves little in health costs..

Merck’s Marketing for HPV Vaccine Trumps Science

Aug 22, 2008• 7

By MAGGIE MAHAR

I first wrote about Gardasil on The American Prospect online in the summer of 2006, just weeks before the Merck vaccine designed to protect against cervical cancer went to market.

There, I noted that “the hullabaloo began in June when the FDA approved Gardasil, a vaccine widely described as ‘100 percent effective’ in preventing cervical cancer, a disease that kills some 233,000 women worldwide each year. The drumbeat grew louder last month when a federal panel recommended that all American girls and women ages 11 to 26 should be inoculated. And now there is talk that states may mandate the vaccine for all school-age children.

“But before prescribing for the entire population,” I suggested, “it’s worth asking a few questions: Why does the vaccine cost $360 for a three-shot regimen? How much do we know about the new product? And is this a cost-effective use of health-care dollars?”