The American Cancer Society is focusing all its marketing budget this year on the issue of uninsurance and is trying to get the message out in new ways to new audiences. Here’s one using rap/poet MIKE-E.
Humana’s competition for change
Health benefits heavyweight Humana Inc. (HUM – 11.5M members) recently launched ChangeNow4Health, an ambitious, optimistic coalition inviting anyone to submit ideas to fix America’s ailing health care system.
The top three entries receive a $10k prize, and the top 20 get publication exposure galore, including a spot in Humana’s forthcoming e-book, “Tomorrow’s Health Care.” The big winning concepts have a chance to secure further funding and incubation support from Humana.
Full Disclosure: Shortly after this interview was conducted, ChangeNow4Health became a sponsor of The Health care Blog. However, if you think that in any way influenced the content of this article, you don’t know the Health 2.0 folks very well…
On the second day of World Health care Congress 2008 in Washington D.C., I interviewed Elizabeth Bierbower, Humana’s Vice President of Product Innovation.
Bierbower, who has spent her career working with consumers, told me that ChangeNow4Health is looking for doable ideas that can quickly be put into play in the game as it is now, not how we wish it were.
They’re also harnessing the power of the semantic Web by partnering with Innocentive.com, an online community that posts projects from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation.
The contest has 4 categories:
- Helping Consumers Make Smarter Health Care Decisions
- Simplifying the Business of Health Care
- Preventing Sickness and Maintaining Health
- General Innovations in Health Care
The contest runs through July, and winners will be announced in August. Judges include industry experts, who are looking for “both an idea’s potential to bring about true change in a tangible way” and “feasibility for implementation now.”
Here’s a transcript of my conversation with Bierbower.
Malpractice premiums fall in Massachusetts
Bay State doctors paid lower malpractice insurance premiums on average in 2005 than 1990, according to a new Health Affairs study. The study clashes with popular beliefs frequently touted by sponsors of legislative efforts to cap damage awards.
“If you don’t find a crisis here, you’re probably not going to find one nationally,” lead author and Suffolk University Law School scholar Marc Rodwin told The Boston Globe. “Clearly there are some increases in premiums and high premiums for a small percentage of doctors in three specialty groups, but that’s entirely different for the rest of doctors.”
Malpractice settlements in Massachusetts are the fourth highest in the nation, and the American Medical Association lists it as one of 21 states being in a crisis due to high medical malpractice payments and lack of laws to cap settlements, the Globe reports.
The Suffolk study found that most Massachusetts physicians paid an average of $17,810 in premiums in 2005, slightly less than the $17,907 paid in 1990, after adjusting for inflation.
The researchers analyzed data from 1975 to 2005 provided by ProMutual Group, the insurer for about half of the state’s doctors.
Rates for specialists in obstetrics/gynecology, neurological surgery, and orthopedics involving spinal surgery increased on average from $66,220 in 1990 to $95,045 in 2005.
So is malpractice reform a distraction from real health reform debate? Probably, but it is one that must be dealt with to get docs on the side of real health care reform.
Bitter doc wants more respect for primary care
A primary doctor ranted anonymously this weekend on Kevin MD’s blog about the lack of appreciation for primary care in his small Midwestern town and predicted its future demise.
The doctor practices in a medical shortage area, where the hospital administration has failed to sufficiently recruit and retain hospitalists. Here’s a portion of what he wrote:
"Not surprisingly, the recruitment and retention problem hit the hospitalist program simultaneously. Three hospitalists are now expected to manage 24-hour coverage with no relief in sight. And instead of offering the degree of compensation necessary to bring more physicians on board, the administration exploited the sense of crisis to convince the medical staff to consider opening the doors to Advanced Practice Nurses. This was the only solution, we were told, to the hospitalist shortage. The only way to stop taking extra call for free.""At this meeting, 100% of the subspecialists voted for allowing APNs to practice in the hospital. 75% of the primary care physicians dissented. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the measure. This happened in a system where some primary care doctors are making less than they would if they took a new position in a major city, and more than a couple subspecialists make seven figures. The abandonment of the greater medical good by our specialist friends eager to expand their already-overflowing coffers has filled me with renewed vitriol."
His rant has struck a chord in the medical blogosphere.
Health 2.0 Consciousness Dawns – Even In Jacksonville, FL!
by BRIAN KLEPPER
Today, Matthew, Michael Millenson and I are converging at a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conference on public reporting of health care pricing/performance information in Amelia Island, FL, three short barrier islands north of my home in Atlantic Beach. (Always helpful, Michael suggested to the conference organizers that I should be required to walk or take public transportation, to compensate for the fact that everyone else has to come in by airplane.)
In any case, we decided that we might as well seize the opportunity and hold a short symposium on market-based transformation for the Northeast Florida health care and business communities. Dean Chally of the University of North Florida’s College of Health graciously arranged the space on their beautiful campus, and so we’re set for a 7:30AM, 2 hour conference on Friday May 16th–that’s tomorrow.Michael will talk about public reporting, Matthew will present on the consumer side of H20, and I’ll hit H2O business-to-business analytics, the emerging medical home movement, and some wellness/prevention approaches that are gaining traction. Should be a fun morning. If you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to drop by and join us.
POST-MORTEM: California health reform
The debate over why health reform failed in California sparked up again following the release of a Field Poll in late April that found that nearly three-quarters of California respondents supported Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan.
Following the poll’s release, Schwarzenegger told
the Associated Press he’s not giving up and will push his $14-billion plan forward. Despite his optimism, most
wonks in Sacramento have called it dead at least though 2009.
In a recent column, Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, diverts any blame for the reform’s failure from the vehemently opposed single-payer coalition, which she leads from her perch as chair of the all-powerful Senate Health Committee and author of the single-payer bill SB 840. Kuehl blames reform’s failure the governor’s unwillingness to challenge the insurance companies."In fact, the Governor’s plan appropriately fell," Kuehl writes, "because of the Governor’s own reluctance to make the difficult policy decisions necessary for the plan to be in any way affordable to the state as well as to businesses and individuals, but which would have stirred up strong opposition from insurance companies."
Well, not everyone agrees.
Healthy Americans Act could be the place of compromise for health reform in 2008
Health care reform will be hard to do after the November election. I’ve even called it a long-shot.
Polls clearly show the voters split evenly between the Democratic and Republican approach to health care reform. I can’t tell you who will win the presidency, but I am willing to make the bold statement that it will be a close election and neither very different approach to health care reform will enjoy any kind of mandate.
So finding common ground between these very different approaches will be more than tricky.
But we may already have an outline.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) have crafted a health care reform plan that gives both sides the most important things each are looking for.
Marrying for health care
About 7 percent of Americans recently reported in new Kaiser Health Tracking Poll that someone in their household got married so they could get health benefits. While 7 percent may be a bit high, I have no doubt some people consider health benefits when deciding the timing of their marriage.
I gave similar advice to a friend only a few months back. She had recently moved to Denver with her fiancee, and was temporarily unemployed. She wanted health insurance and could afford to buy it, but she couldn’t get it.
Except for seasonal allergies, she’s a healthy 26-year-old woman. Allergies were reason enough, however, for two insurers to deny her coverage. Her fiancee’s policy only covered spouses. My advice: get married quickly at City Hall and then again eight months later at the planned wedding. (She rejected that idea and found a job after about two months of looking that offered health benefits.)
Under John McCain’s proposed health plan, many more people like my friend may be denied coverage. His solution? Create a high-risk insurance pool. But do allergies make my friend high-risk? I don’t think so. Where do individuals like her fit in?
Over at the Health Access blog, Anthony Wright describes California’s high-risk pool, known as the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, or MRMIB. It currently has a waiting list of more than 500 people. Another example of people who want insurance but can’t get it.
The bizzaro world of McCain’s health care politics
I sometimes write two different versions of pieces, one for you wonks at THCB and one for the more general crowd at Spot-on. Well to be more accurate I write one version which gets edited heavily over at Spot-on, so today here I’m putting up the THCB version of the one that went up on Spot-on yesterday.
My 6 weeks of traveling the world on an extended honeymoon is over. Thanks very much to Brian Klepper and the cast of thousands who’ve been keeping THCB rolling excellently while with my lovely wife Amanda I’ve been diving on coral reefs, sleeping under the stars with the Bedouin, exploring 3,500 year-old tombs, watching Lions tear apart a buffalo, and tracking chimps hanging out in the rain forest. (Pictures of all this and more to come, I promise)
So what better way to return than to enter the jungle of US Presidential politics? Yesterday I sat in on 2 conference calls. One from the McCain camp on their man’s health care proposal, the other from the Campaign for America’s Future, which is promoting Jacob Hacker’s plan as the theory behind both Clinton and Obama’s policy intentions. It wasn’t pretty.
McCain’s proxies were Douglas Holtz-Eakin, sensible former CBO director, and Carly Fiorina, the fired HP ex-CEO who has been rehabilitating herself by taking credit for her successor’s success, and been hanging out on the McCain campaign as adviser for tech. Apparently she’s on the VP shortlist, and if so, we got a lot of taste of what we can expect. The choice is between free market choice, and the government telling your family which doctor it can go and see. Yes, you’re going to hear “government run heath care care” alot as if we’re all moving to the Gulag.
(Carly also made an amusing slip when she said that McCain favored importing of generic prescription drugs. Generic drugs are of course usually cheaper here—it’s re-importation of branded drugs that McCain supports, which will lose him the odd contribution from PhRMA).
But no matter competition and choice is always cheaper—trust her. But then again Carly knows all about succeeding in the free market, right?
McCain starting to talk about health care
This morning John McCain’s team will be talking about health care. There are some interesting ideas in McCain’s plan, which is the Bush tax deduction idea morphed into a tax credit, plus changes in Medicare payments. The best quick explanation is from our friends at ICYou.
Matthew Holt
