Tag: Health Care Reform

The Health Reform (Almost) Everyone Loves

Oct 18, 2010• 32

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Come with me to the land of happy health reform. It is a place where Republicans and Democrats find common ground, a place where physicians, hospitals and health insurers sit together as partners, a place where criticism is respectful, not rancorous. It is the world of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).

What are ACOs, and why have they escaped the general onslaught of opprobrium from Obamacare opponents?

The term Accountable Care Organization was originated by Elliott Fisher of the Dartmouth Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, picked up by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and then enshrined in Section 3022 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as health care reform). The language is explicitly designed to use financial incentives to change the health care delivery system.

ACOs are defined less by form than by function. A group of physicians, possibly with a hospital, agrees to manage the full spectrum of care for a defined population of at least 5,000 Medicare beneficiaries for a minimum of three years. If the ACO meets certain targets for quality and cost-effectiveness, it gets to keep part of the savings.

Republican Economics as Social Darwinism

Oct 14, 2010• 27

By ROBERT REICH

John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.”

Actually, those weren’t Boehner’s words. They were uttered by Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon, after the Great Crash of 1929.

But they might as well have been Boehner’s because Hoover’s and Mellon’s means of purging the rottenness was by doing exactly what Boehner and his colleagues are now calling for: shrink government, cut the federal deficit, reduce the national debt, and balance the budget.

And we all know what happened after 1929, at least until FDR reversed course.

The Massachusetts Connector: Success or Just a PR Coup?

Oct 11, 2010• 13

By ROGER COLLIER

With the passage of insurance exchange legislation in California, and the release of a template for state exchange statutes by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, many state eyes are turning towards the only existing exchange comparable to that required by PPACA: Massachusetts’ Connector.

The Connector, which offers Commonwealth Care subsidized coverage for those with incomes below 300 percent of FPL but not eligible for Medicaid, and Commonwealth Choice private plans for other families and individuals and small employer groups, has been touted as a major success by current and former Commonwealth officials and many national reform advocates.

But, after four years of operation, just how successful has the Connector really been? Has it simplified health plan choice and enrollment, increased the number of insured, reduced marketing costs, created competition, or driven down premiums? It turns out that the answers are far less positive than the Connector’s boosters have admitted.

HAS THE CONNECTOR SIMPLIFIED PLAN SELECTION AND ENROLLMENT?

For some, at least.

For the 33,000-enrollee unsubsidized CommChoice program the answer is yes. Health plan selection and enrollment for the seven plans (with six levels of benefits each) is directly available via the Connector website, with simple well-designed screens and navigation, and easy comparison of alternatives. Even so, only half of thepost-reform non-subsidized insured have chosen coverage via CommChoice.

The Madison Avenue Approach to Health Policy

Oct 7, 2010• 23

By JOHN GOODMAN, PhD

Can you sell health reform the way you sell toothpaste? Can you stop health reform the way you sell soap? A lot of people apparently believe so.

I would guess that in the 10 months leading up to the vote on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), proponents and opponents spent more than $200 million on TV, radio and newsprint advertisements.

These ads were produced by agencies that basically knew nothing about health care. The clients of these agencies were groups that often knew nothing about health care. The funding often came from donors who knew nothing about health care.

By “knew nothing” I mean they did not understand health care as a complex system. That means they had no idea how you could solve real problems — like controlling costs, raising quality and improving access to care. To add insult to injury, most of the people who engaged in the ad wars knew very little about what became known as “ObamaCare.”

But this lack of knowledge didn’t slow anyone down. The abiding sine qua non for ad wars is the conviction that facts, knowledge and truth are irrelevant. It is the belief that people can be manipulated and conned into believing that what’s good for them is bad and vice versa.

What Good are Health Insurers?

Sep 9, 2010• 12

By BILL KRAMER

As the health reform effort moves into the final stages, everyone seems to be taking a whack at health insurers. Some of the insurers’ wounds are self-inflicted, such as WellPoint’s announcement of 39% premium increase for individual policies in California. Some of the attacks are calculated to build public support for health reform, since every good crusade needs a good enemy. Some of the criticism has even suggested that we don’t need private health insurers. Michael Hiltzik asked the question in a recent column “What do we need health insurers for anyway?” James Surowiecki – usually a careful and thoughtful observer of business and economic issues – said the following in a recent article in the New Yorker:

Congress [in its health reform bills] is effectively making private insurers unnecessary, yet continuing to insist that we can’t do without them. The truth is that we could do just fine without them: an insurance system with community rating and universal access has no need of private insurers.

Surowiecki goes on to comment on what the world would look like without private health insurers:

In fact, the U.S. already has such a system: it’s known as Medicare. In most areas, it’s true, private companies do a better job of managing costs and providing services than the government does. But not when it comes to health care: over the past decade, Medicare’s spending has risen more slowly than that of private insurers. A single-payer system also has the advantage of spreading risk across the biggest patient pool possible. So if you want to make health insurance available to everyone, regardless of risk, the most sensible solution would be to expand Medicare to everyone.

Not so fast. I would feel more optimistic that this would work if we had a different political system. One of the limitations of this approach is that Medicare’s spending is ultimately determined through the political process. The U.S. political system – for better or worse — allows the health care industry (or any other well-funded interest group) to use its financial resources and lobbying power to increase the flow of government funds into the health sector. The idea that Medicare has a “hammer” to force providers to accept lower payment rates is largely an illusion. In the current system, Medicare can do this only because there is a safety valve, i.e., a large private insurance segment that pays much higher rates to providers. If Medicare gets larger or replaces private insurance altogether, there will be less opportunity to use the safety valve, so providers will step up their efforts to use political pressure to increase payment rates in Medicare. I simply don’t see a strong countervailing political force that would exert sufficient political pressure to hold down costs.Continue reading…

Health Reform Without Apologies

Aug 27, 2010• 23

By JOHN GOODMAN, PhD

Have you ever seen a fair, unbiased, evenhanded explanation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? Have you ever seen anything that even appeared to be objective? I haven’t.

So to fill the gap, my colleagues and I have produced “What Does Health Care Reform Mean To You? A Consumer’s Guide,” which explains how the new health care overhaul works, in a question-and-answer format. You can also get a pamphlet version— ideal for doctors’ offices, clinics, work places and everywhere else that people meet and socialize.

That it’s the first effort anyone has made to even try to be objective is in itself rather amazing. See if you agree on whether we succeeded and give us your comments.

During the nine-month period leading up to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Americans were subjected to more than $200 million worth of TV, radio, newsprint and Internet ads. Almost all of these — pro and con — were pure propaganda.Continue reading…

Will Comparative Effectiveness Research Really Make a Difference If the Public Doesn’t Want It?

Aug 13, 2010• 8

By KENT BOTTLES, MD

Not long ago I was lucky to be invited to a New England Healthcare Institute discussion entitled “From Evidence to Practice: Making Comparative Effectiveness Research Findings Work for Providers and Patients “ in Washington, DC.

How to disseminate and implement Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) so that patient care is really improved was the first topic tackled by the expert panel and the moderator, Clifford Goodman of The Lewin Group.

The target audiences for CER findings include: patients, disabled patients, providers, policy makers, health plans, medical device companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospital administrators, academic researchers, community physicians, professional societies, and regulators.

Michael McGinnis, MD, of the Institute of Medicine, offered clusters as a way to organize these different targets: Cluster 1 (patients, providers, policy makers), Cluster 2 (control levers like payers, purchasers, system managers, professional societies, regulators) and Cluster 3 (researchers and those concerned with methodology).

Seth Frazier, Vice President of Transformation at Geisinger, was the first of many to point out the gap between the academic literature of CER and what patients and providers need at the point of care. He noted that providers need actionable recommendations that can be integrated into the flow of the clinic and hospital and that much of the evidence-based medicine product is not usable in this practical way. This observation reminded me of the gap between the public and the health care experts that Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation documented so effectively and the Kristen Carmen Health Affairs survey that said patients regard evidence-based medicine as a barrier to what they want.

Public Is More Savvy than Harris Polltakers

Aug 4, 2010• 17

By JOHN C. GOODMAN, PhD

Are the nation’s polltakers part of a surreptitious plot to convince us that what’s good for us is bad and what’s bad is good? A new Harris poll is the third in the space of a week claiming that the public (or some subset of it) is badly misinformed about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This follows on the heels of similar polls commissioned by Kaiser and the National Council on Aging (which I have criticized at my blog).

Yet the people responding to these polls appear to have a much better understanding than those asking the questions. Consider this tidbit from Harris:

Eighty-two percent think the bill will result in rationing of health care or that it might (it won’t).

Really? Well, what would a reasonable person expect to happen if (a) 32 million newly insured people try to double their consumption of health care, (b) 70 million or so additional people are moved into much more generous insurance than they have today, (c) most of the remaining 200 million people are promised preventive services without the deductibles and copays they face today and (d) almost nothing is done to increase the supply of providers?

Do you think health services are going to magically emerge from thin air? Or is it more reasonable to anticipate significant rationing?

A Reply to the Cato Institute

Jul 16, 2010• 82

By MAGGIE MAHAR

This week, the Cato Institute released a 52-page report on health care reform titled: Bad Medicine: A Guide to the Real Costs and Consequences of the New Health Care Law.

The tract was written by Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Institute, and it rests on the thesis that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is both Unaffordable and Unfair. Inevitably, Tanner’s claims about affordability are shaky; in truth no one can project how much reform will cost over ten years—and how much it will save. There are too many variables involved. Nevertheless, Tanner seems sure: the legislation will add to the deficit, he asserts, and force insurance premiums higher. Moreover, he stamps the legislation “unjust”: it would turn private insurance companies into regulated “public utilities,” forcing them to insure sick people, while “redistributing income” from families earning “over $348,000” to families earning “$18,000 to $55,000.” Ultimately, he argues, reform represents yet another step toward turning the U.S. into a “Nanny State.”

Why a 52-page report on health care reform now? Tanner makes his purpose clear in the Introduction where he suggests that conservatives will make the new health care legislation the “centerpiece of Republican campaigns this fall,” as they lobby for repealing the Affordable Care Act, or at the very least, replacing it. Bad Medicine is meant to serve as a playbook for those who hope to kill reform.

With that in mind, The Century Foundation decided that the document deserves scrutiny. In the weeks ahead, I will be analyzing and rebutting the report’s many arguments against individual and employer mandates, insurance regulation, subsidies, reductions in Medicare spending, and the CLASS Act, a much-needed national long-term care program.Continue reading…

The Power of Negotiated Prices

Apr 8, 2010• 15

By MERRILL GOOZNER

A lot of health care is wasted because it’s not very effective. David Leonhardt of the New York Times returned to that theme in a useful article in today’s paper. But when will economics writers with broad reach like Leonhardt begin writing about the bigger problem behind skyrocketing health care costs, and the one that’s more easily fixed — unjustified high prices for drugs, devices and procedures?

One need only review the past decade’s history of the pricing of drug-eluting stents, which are used during percutaneous coronary interventions to prevent further arterial blockages, to get a window onto the problem. They were introduced around 2003 at a price point — about $5,000 a stent — that was five times the bare metal stents they replaced.Continue reading…