Tag: Uncategorized

Presidential candidates’ health plans

May 12, 2008• 6

By THCB Staff

As a service to our readers, we’ve compiled all the presidential candidates’ health plans in one place for you to easily access. Soon, we’ll have a section of the TCHB devoted to the presidential race and health reform.

Click on the candidate to see his or her full plan for health reform.

As the race carries on, we’ll bring you updated analysis from the candidate’s health advisers, left – and right-leaning wonks and THCB contributors.

Also here is the Kaiser Network’s side-by-side comparison of the current candidates’ plans for quick reference.

Robert Laszewski’s nonpartisan analysis of each candidate’s plan previously posted on THCB are here:

If you’re interested in seeing health reform plans of the candidates who dropped out of the race, here’s the Kaiser Network’s side-by-side comparison.

Searching for the price of one appendectomy

May 6, 2008• 18

By Sarah Arnquist

This month’s Philadelphia Magazine ranks the city’s top physicians — a fad nearly all major city magazines have adopted because it attracts great advertising dollars.

Tom

But tucked amid the pages of smiling surgeons and OB-GYNs is a gem of a story by the magazine’s executive editor, Tom McGrath, in which he takes readers through the maze he encountered while trying to decipher the hospital and insurance bills following his daughter’s appendectomy.

After his five-year-old daughter had her appendix out at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), McGrath set out to learn why it was so impossible for him to understand how much his daughter’s surgery and hospital stay cost, how much the insurance company was paying, and how much he owed.

"I discovered two things: first, that much of the cost of our health care is determined behind smoked glass, where patients are never invited to look," McGrath wrote. "And second, that in trying to make sense of a single simple case where everything went right, you can learn a lot about what’s wrong with health care in America."

Around the Web in 60 Seconds

May 6, 2008• 1

By THCB STAFF

NYT Lying – Giving Ourselves The Psychological Push We Need to Reach Future Goals? Or Just Good Old-Fashioned Twisted Fun?

LAT: Food 2.0 – What to eat while Googling

Microsoft: Health 2.0 could eventually "expand Web 2.0 concepts to the entire health
ecosystem of payors, providers, employers, consumers, life sciences entities and even the government."

Wired Science: ""With the world teetering on the edge of a full-blown food crisis, it may be time to cut back on biofuel, said Barack Obama yesterday."

MIT Tech Review: The Candidates on Tech

HealthTech: "A Pan-European eHealth Infrastructure Could Revolutionize Healthcare."

SF Chronicle: Medical Tourism is Big…

WSJ: Medical Tourism is Not So Big…

Can “consumerism” work in health care?

May 6, 2008• 14

By Brian Baum

“Consumerism,” — free market, open competition – regardless of the term used to describe this market behavior, can the concept of “natural market forces” exist in health care? It seems as though observers of the health care “market” fall into two distinct points of view:

POV 1: Consumerism in health care is a train that has already left the station.POV 2: Health care is different and true market forces can never prevail because the players’ roles are so polarizing, and the “buyer” and the “consumer” are so disconnected.

I suspect that for anyone reading this, you have already checked off your respective point of view. (While the merits of this topic are worth debating, ultimately, time and events will answer this question.)

In the meantime, let’s consider the following:

THCB’s own correspondent in India

May 6, 2008• 1

By Sarah Arnquist

Less than a month ago, I quit my job as a newspaper health care reporter and moved to India. No, I wasn’t fleeing the dismal atmosphere permeating traditional newsrooms these days (not entirely at least). This was a premeditated step to travel and learn about health care in the world’s largest democracy before starting Johns Hopkins Masters in Public Health Program this summer. Oh, and in the meantime, I joined the staff of THCB.

After 16 days in Hyderabad (located in the south-central state of Andhra Pradesh), I’ve adjusted to the heat, spicy food and traffic, and am now ready to begin some real reporting. Over the next month or two, I’ll share what I learn on THCB. I’m particularly interested in the exploding private health sector, the emerging health insurance markets, maternal and child health, and the wide gaps in care between the haves and the have-nots.

If you have any contacts in Hyderabad or suggestions for posts, please feel free to contact me at *******@***il.com“>sa*******@***il.com or in the comments section.

Two quick Health 2.0 “on tour” conference appearances

May 5, 2008

By Matthew Holt

Today, Health 2.0 co-founder Indu Subaiya will be moderating a panel at Consumer Health World in Las Vegas (from the Transmarx folks) while tomorrow I’ll be on a panel at the Consumer Connectivity & Web Empowerment Conference (put on by the World Congress) in Boston.

And of course there’ll be a few more sprinkles of Health 2.0 friends and family around the country in the lead up to the Fall meeting in San Francisco, October 22 & 23.

Marrying for health care

May 5, 2008• 4

By Sarah Arnquist

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

May 2, 2008• 4

By Matthew Holt

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?

Seventh Annual Information Therapy Conference

May 1, 2008• 2

WIxRED: Next Generation Patient-Centered Care As we engage in a national debate about the directions of health care reform, many experts agree that patient-centered care and health information technology (HIT) are critical elements of our future delivery system. The 2008 Information Therapy (Ix®) Conference at the sensational new Newseum will provide a fabulous venue for a national dialog on the intersection of patient-centered care and HIT. On June 12-13, the 7th annual Ix Conference will challenge health care leaders to seize the opportunity for enhanced patient-centered care and system redesign by integrating Ix initiatives into HIT implementation. Click here to learn more.

Who the Health Cares?

May 1, 2008

By Matthew Holt

After the hotties from Rocketboom, now politics has a daily quickie from another cutie called Lindsay Campbell (the site Moblogic.tv is run by CBS rather than some indie company), but this episode, Who the Health Cares?, points out very sensibly that the Democrats in Congress aren’t really interested in health reform the way that Clinton and Obama say they are.

Lindsay thinks that all the Dems should sign onto the Conyers single payer bill….