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Tag: Policy/Politics

The Health Industry’s Achilles Heel

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By BRIAN KLEPPER and DAVID C. KIBBE

“You never want a serious
crisis to go to waste.”

– Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff

ALP_H_BK_0010 Timing matters. The health industry has demonstrated steadfast
resistance to reforms, but its recently diminished fortunes offer the Obama
Administration an unprecedented opportunity to achieve meaningful change. The
stakes are high, though. The Administration’s health team must not miscalculate
the industry’s goals, or waver from goals that are in the nation’s interest.
The two are very different.

Aligning the forces of reform will be the first challenge. The White House and Congressional Democrats appear to be
collaborating to develop a unified reform design. Even so,
the effort is hardly pure. Lawmakers have been receptive to industry influence.
The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics
reports that, in 2009, health care interests have already spent $128 million on
Congressional lobbying contributions, more than any other sector.
The tide now turned, most of that largess has gone to Democrats.

Continue reading…

Alex Drane — Engage with Grace

By Matthew Holt

Alex Drane is at AHIP in San Diego and she’s talking not about Eliza, or health plans, but is talking about Engage with Grace. It’s a wonderful interview, although Alex knows that associating end of life care with reducing costs makes me very nervous. BUT the point is, talk about it, give people the tools to make the choice. And people’s choices will as she says dovetail in general with less rather than more care at the end-of-life. And if they want more rather than less, that’s fine—so long as it’s a purposeful decision.

Listen to Alex describe the movement, and what the topic’s meant to her family. And then visit the web site at Engagewithgrace.org.

Click here to watch the interview.

By the numbers, on single payer the Democrats are wussies

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By Matthew Holt

Matthew HoltNow before I explain why I say the Democrats are girlie-men, let me say three quick things.

1. I am not a supporter of Medicare-for-all, or Canadian style, single-payer (or anything primarily based on fee-for-service payment) although they are both clearly superior to the American status quo. (I am in favor of real universal insurance, but that’s different and less limited than just single payer).

2. It’s still only 50–50 that we’ll get any reform this year, and what we will get will basically be an expansion of one of the worst-designed government programs—Medicaid—mixed with some very modest regulation of the worst behavior of the private insurance companies. And with the exemptions to the individual mandate and for small business at best we’ll get to around 95% coverage—and that’s not counting the undocumented immigrants, who are about another 3–5% of the population and who will still get care and thus still have to be paid for somehow. And the likely Kennedy/Baucus compromise plan has no sustainable insurance payment structure that I can see.

3. The data is a little murky and all sides kinda cheat with polling data (and bankruptcy data too).

But imagine for a moment that Dick Cheney & George W. Bush had 60 votes in the Senate, a disgraced  opposition, and carte blanche to do what they liked because of a real national crisis (In other words a much better political situation than they faced in 2001 & 2003).

And imagine that there was a policy that their party’s supporters overwhelmingly favored.  Do you think for a moment that they’d be looking for compromise even if what they were doing was egregiously and clearly wrong in both terms of public policy and fairness? For instance, cutting tax rates on dividends to less than half what poor suckers who work for a living have to pay, even though the benefits went largely to millionaires and billionaires. Or even worse eliminating estate taxes, when the benefits went only to millionaires and billionaires.

Actually we don’t have to imagine. We know what Cheney/Bush did. They passed the legislation they wanted, and damn the rest of us. And then did it with way less political clout than Obama has—Bush didn’t even win the election after all in the way most of us understand (err…by getting more votes than the other guy).

Now imagine that there’s a policy that polls show at least 35% and (depending who you believe) perhaps up to 60% of all Americans want, and that the same polls show that a vast majority of Democrats want it. And of course Obama’s political situation is way stronger than the Cheney Administration’s was.

In that situation and if they had a different political philosophy, wouldn’t the Cheney Administration just ram through single payer?

So by the numbers, in not even considering the single payer option (not even Kennedy’s plan comes close), the Democrats are proving themselves to be wussies.

CODA: I changed one letter in one word of this piece so that the humorless crowd in the comments didn’t detract from the real offensive stuff going on here–50 million un and under-insured with no political will to do anything serious about it. But if the comments don’t make sense, my original defense is in there too.

Michael Porter–seduced, converted, or bludgeoned into accepting reality?

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By Matthew Holt

6a00d8341c909d53ef0105371fd47b970b-320wi What a difference a few years makes. Michael Porter is the Harvard Business School prof who charged into health care a few years back. He (with Elizabeth Teisberg) wrote a book called Redefining Health Care which suggested how all kinds of changes on the delivery side of health care would solve all of our problems. Those changes were not exactly secrets to people who, say, read Michael Millenson’s Demanding Medical Excellence—a much better book written ten years earlier which explained why radical change on the delivery system side wasn’t going to happen. The answer?

It’s the Incentives, stupid.

Continue reading…

The Great $2 Billion Cost Cut “Promise” Meets Another Obstacle

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By ROGER COLLIER

Roger collier

It turns out that the hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical organizations who announced with great  fanfare a couple of weeks ago their plan to cut/maybe think about cutting* $2 trillion/maybe nothing* from their costs may have been even more devious/disingenuous/stupid* than was apparent at the time.  [*choose one]

The New York Times pointed out yesterday that any such organized effort to reduce prices could face antitrust charges. In the Times’ words: “Antitrust lawyers say doctors,  hospitals, insurance companies and drug makers will be running huge legal risks if they get together and agree on a strategy to hold down prices and reduce the growth of health spending.”

The drug manufacturer lobbyists who so eagerly participated in the May 11 meeting with President Obama should have been especially aware of the issue. Back in 1993, it was their trade group that, in an effort to soften the threat of Clintoncare, offered to limit pharmaceutical price increases to the CPI rate, then were told by the Justice Department that this would violate antitrust laws.

And, again according to the Times, it was the AHA who complained recently to the Federal Trade Commission that antitrust laws make it difficult for providers to collaborate and lower costs.

So, first these organizations promise to cut costs by $2 trillion, then they say they didn’t really mean it, and now it turns out that it would probably be illegal (which they should have been fully aware of, anyway). Who’s trying to fool whom?
Roger Collier was formerly CEO of a national health care consulting firm. His experience includes the design and implementation of innovative health care programs for HMOs, health insurers, and state and federal agencies.  He is editor of Health Care REFORM UPDATE [reformupdate.blogspot.com].

I’m not sure that’s how Uwe meant it!

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By Matthew Holt

The AP has a puff piece on the greatness of Karen Ignagni. Well greatness if greatness is defined as doing anything it takes to screw the nation on behalf of her organization’s members, all the while telling bold face lies about their activities. But the lies of Karen Ignagni have been well documented here on THCB and we don’t need to rehash them now.

But then the AP reporter Erica Werner quotes Uwe Reinhardt and has this somewhat remarkable passage:

"Whatever AHIP pays her, it's not enough. She's unbelievably effective," said Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt. "It's just amazing what she's achieved for them against all odds." Ignagni's total compensation, according to AHIP's most recent filing from 2007, was $1.58 million, which includes $700,000 in base salary, $370,000 in deferred compensation and a bonus. Ignagni won't say how many hours a week she works. The number's so high it's embarrassing, she said.

Among successes cited by Reinhardt and others is helping persuade the Bush administration to develop private insurance plans within Medicare that are producing unexpectedly high payments for private insurers. When Congress was considering expanding a children's health insurance program in 2007 by taking money from the private Medicare Advantage plans, Ignagni worked successfully to stop it. Those private plans are being targeted again by Obama, who wants to squeeze them to pay for his health care agenda. Ignagni's industry group is organizing older people to defend the plans.

There’s lots of more puffery about how she’s good at building consensus among the diverse interests in her group. My take on that is “we’ll see”.

Continue reading…

Money-Driven Medicine—N.Y. Premiere of Film, June 11

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By MAGGIE MAHAR

At last, Money-Driven Medicine is finished.  This  90-minute documentary was produced by Alex Gibney, best known for his 2005 film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room  and his 2007 Academy Award Winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side.The film was directed by Andy Fredericks, and is based on my book, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper Collins).The Century Foundation and the New York Society for Ethical Culture are co-hosting the New York premiere on June11,  7p.m.  at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street at Central Park West. Doors open at 6:30.  Admission is free.  If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP  Loretta Ahlrich, ahlrich@tcf.org or (212) 452-7722 so that we can have a rough idea of how many people will be coming.

Alex Gibney will be there to talk about the film, and following the screening, I’ll take questions from the audience about healthcare and healthcare reform.

About the Film: Money-Driven Medicine explores how a profit-driven health care system squanders billions of health care dollars, while exposing millions of patients to unnecessary or redundant tests, unproven, sometimes unwanted procedures, and over-priced drugs and devices that, too often, are no better than the less expensive products they have replaced. As I have said on this blog, this isn’t just a waste of money. It’s ‘hazardous waste’—waste that is hazardous to our health.In remarkably candid interviews both doctors and patients tell the riveting, sometimes funny, and often wrenching stories of a system where medicine has become a business. “We are paid to do things to patients,” says one doctor. “We are not paid to talk to them.”Patients,and physicians star in the film. They include Dr. Don Berwick, author of Escape Fire and founder of the Institute for Health Care Improvement , and Dr. Jim Weinstein, Director of Dartmouth’s  Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.  ( Dr. Jack Wennberg,  the founder of what I often refer to as “the Dartmouth Research” passed the torch to Weinstein  in 2007.)Lisa Lindell, a HealthBeat reader, patient advocate and author of  108 Days, also appears in the documentary, talking about her husband’s experience in a Texas hospital after he was seriously burned in a freak industrial accident.

How Physicians Inspired Money-Driven Medicine: I narrate the film, and in the course of the narration, recall how the story began:“When I started writing the book, I began phoning doctors, explaining the project, and asking for interviews. To my great surprise the majority  of them returned my calls.  In most cases, I didn’t know them. I expected responses from perhaps 20 percent. Instead, four out of five called back.“‘We want someone to know what is going on,’ explained one prominent physician in Manhattan. ‘But please don’t use my name. You have to promise me that. In this business, the politics are so rough—it would be the end of my career.’”They were right. Everyone needs to know.

Maggie Mahar is an award winning journalist and author. A frequent contributor to THCB, her work has appeared in the New York Times, Barron’s and Institutional Investor. She is the author of  “Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Why Healthcare Costs So Much,” an examination of the economic forces driving the health care system. A fellow at the Century Foundation, Maggie is also the author the increasingly influential HealthBeat blog, one of our favorite health care reads, where this piece first appeared.

Bringing Patients into the Health IT Conversation About “Meaningful Use”

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6a00d8341c909d53ef01157025976b970b-pi By DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER

The Obama health team at HHS and ONC are gradually establishing the rules that will determine how approximately $34 billion in ARRA/HITECH funds are spent on health IT over the next several years. But there is a “missing link” in these deliberations that, so far, has not been addressed by Congress or the Administration: how the patient’s voice can be “meaningfully used” in health IT. After all, we, the taxpayers, will pay for all this hardware, software, and associated training. There are many more consumers of health care than doctors or health care professionals. Shouldn’t we have a say in what matters – in what is meaningful – to us?

It may have been an oversight, but patients and consumers have been left very much on HITECH’s sidelines. The attention and the money is squarely aimed at the health care providers – doctors, clinics, and hospitals. The Act’s intention is to create “interoperable” electronic health records that, in the future, will be more accessible to them: doctors, clinics, and hospitals.  This is a policy that is tied unnecessarily to an outdated vision. It is provider-centered, paternalistic and top-down. But it could be re-imagined to take advantage of the new ways millions of consumers, patients, and care giving families are using information and communications technologies to solve problems, form online communities, and share information and knowledge.

Continue reading…

Disgusting, and another reason why marriage needs to be re-defined

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By Matthew Holt

Tara Parker-Pope reveals two cases where discrimination kept a partner, and in one case the dying woman’s children, away from their loved one while they were dying in hospital.

One hospital involved is Jackson Memorial in Miami, a massive recipient of Federal dollars. In 1965 then un-integrated hospitals in the south were forced by the Federal government to take black patients as part of the new Medicare program. It’s high time that an executive order was made by Obama that hospitals receiving Federal dollars immediately change their visitation policies in this respect.

But beyond that, those bigots (including the ones who have commented on THCB) who continue to maintain that not changing the legal definition of marriage doesn’t hurt anyone should consider the stories of the people Tara reports about, and they should feel very guilty.

Connecting finance to coverage

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By Matthew Holt

Repeating his message that Health Costs Are the Real Deficit Threat OMB Director Peter Orszag goes into the not exactly friendly territory of the WSJ Opinion pages and explains that practice variation is unnecessary and wasteful, comparative effectiveness research is a good idea. and that changing financial incentives for providers is necessary if we are ever to get health care costs under control.

The question is, how much of this gets included in the woffling coming out of Sen Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee? Here’s the press release on the options they’re considering. It’s a little like Stalin in 1930 saying, ‘the people are starving, we may collectivize the Kulaks, or we may rent them their farms back, or we may do nothing, or all of the above”. OK you may think I’m kidding but they give four different options for what a public plan may look like, six different approaches to small group and individual market reform (none of which deal with the smallest employers), and nothing about Orzsag’s concept of “changing financial incentives for providers”. Apparently that’s unrelated to insurance reform. (Yes yes I know they’ve floated some trial balloons about that too….)

What worries me is that because of the downturn and Orszag shining the light on the finance issue, we may have the chance to both fix coverage and finance. But I don’t see this all happening together.

So far I haven’t seen anything to change my mind about what’s going to come out of this process. So to bore all of you still reading I’m going to repeat what I said when I reviewed Tom Daschle’s (remember him?) book Critical.

So my guess is that the Federal Health Board, if it gets established, will get defanged by lobbyists immediately. The consequence of that is that the mish-mash of an “expand what we got now” system will cover a few more people at a lot more cost (as has been the Massachusetts experience). That’s OK because suddenly we’re rich (or at least suddenly the government is pretending it is!). But in a few years the stimulus will end and health care costs will have kept going up. Then we’ll realize that due to more cuts in Medicaid & subsidies for the working poor, and continued cream skimming and bad behavior by private-sector health plans, enough people have fallen through the cracks of the incremental expansion that we’ll be back where we are today again.

CODA: Click here to have some fun as to what happened when Baucus lined up 13 Democratic economists to talk about health care to his Committee and somehow couldn’t find even one who was in favor of single payer…