A suggestion from e-Patient Dave after his treatment at our hospital last year prompted us to start offering Carepages to our patients. The idea is to make it easy for people to create and update a private and personalized web page where they can share their latest news with friends and family and receive messages of support. There is no charge to the patient for this service.
Similar services had been available to patients if they made an effort to find them, but Dave was right to suggest that we offer it directly. For some reason, we were a bit behind the times on this matter, and I am glad he pointed it out to us.
Proving again that patients really have good ideas about how to make life better for patients. Duh!
King of the Serengeti
While we’re on the theme of the health care jungle, here’s one more for you. This young lion and his buddy spent the night feasting on this buffalo.
While I was away….
I met this little baby cheetah….
Meanwhile, over at Spot-on I’m up discussing the McCain health care plan and some of the Democratic reactions to it.
My six weeks of traveling the world on an extended honeymoon is
over. 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.
What better way to return than to enter the jungle of U.S. Presidential politics? MORE As ever come back here to comment.
John McCain and The Politics of The Uninsured
John McCain spoke about health care in Tampa on Tuesday and tried to
answer many of the questions that have been raised about his health
care reform plan.
The most pressing question is how would people with preexisting
conditions get health care coverage in his plan? The worry is that his
plan emphasizes tax incentives for consumers to purchase coverage in
the individual health insurance market that relies so heavily on
upfront medical underwriting.
Here is how his website explained his answer to that question:
John
McCain Will Work With States To Establish A Guaranteed Access Plan. As
President, John McCain will work with governors to develop a best
practice model that states can follow – a Guaranteed Access Plan or GAP
– that would reflect the best experience of the states to ensure these
patients have access to health coverage. One approach would establish a
nonprofit corporation that would contract with insurers to cover
patients who have been denied insurance and could join with other state
plans to enlarge pools and lower overhead costs. There would be
reasonable limits on premiums, and assistance would be available for
Americans below a certain income level.
I am frankly amazed he offered this as a "solution."
After A Short Stay In the US, Michelangelo’s David Returns To Florence
Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)
Highly Credible Poll of the Day: Seven percent of Americans marry for health insurance.
WSJ Health Blog: In wake of celebrity snooping cases UCLA officials say "new system will make employees list their connection to the patient
and will warn them if they’re entering “an especially protected chart."
Calif. Gov will try to push through health care plan in Sacramento after defeat last year. Schwarzenegger to AP: "We’ll try again. We will continue on, keeping
the stakeholders together, fine-tuning it and seeing if we can improve
on it since we have the time now, then be back again. We feel very
confident."
Relatives of U.S. victims testify to Congress in tainted heparin case.
FDA: Contamination "probably intentional."
National Review: "incident exposes the ugly little secret about drug importation as a
means to lower the cost of medicine. Substandard and counterfeit drugs
proliferate in many countries in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere."
Surrendered to the void: LSD inventor Albert Hoffman dead at the age of 102.
NIH Joins Newly Formed International Cancer Genome Consortium
Washington Post: Two Research Teams Reverse Congenital Blindness Using Genetically Altered Viruses
Seattle Times: Targeted Genetics Introduces Gene Therapy
Washington Post: Mining Cancer with Nano Gold in Maryland
MedPage: Pretty Pictures – French Develop Next-Gen, Graphical Medical Communications System
Open Call to MedBloggers- Join Blogging Against Disablism Day May 1st
Healthcare stocks. What’s the prognosis?
Health Plans vs. Banks – Who is trusted more?
People trust health insurance companies to hold their health spending information more than they trust banks, according to a survey from Medavante.
In Cure the Confusion: The Consumer Experience of Online Healthcare, Medavante found that consumers perceived that health plans have less bias than financial institutions. Yet, 80 million Americans bank online.
Still, trust in online banking is eroding. Earlier this month, Bankrate’s survey asserted that Americans are very concerned about identity theft. This is beginning to impact their online behavior with banks.
This is a new finding. Other data sources assert that consumers lack trust in health plans when it comes to data. Forrester’s recent research discovered that consumers don’t necessarily trust health plans to keep personal health information private.Furthermore, Bruce Temkin’s excellent Customer Experience Index work at Forrester found that health plans rank in last place in customer experiences. With the growing role consumers are playing in personal health financing, banks are launching an initiative to play a major role in managing personal health information. The Medical Banking Project (MBP) was founded in 2001 as a rallying point for financial services institutions who were carving out a role in health care. Since then, the MBP has grown its membership and mission beyond driving paper out of health care. Its sights are set on "medical banking convergence:" the integration of medical information with health financial data.
But will consumers slow this convergence given their potential concerns about banks managing health information found by Medavante?
Jane’s Hot Points: It is possible that consumer trust has eroded in banks’ handling of personal information given more press and concern about identity theft, privacy gaffes, and potentially, the impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on the consumer psyche. At the same time, Medavante’s poll shows that consumers may have more trust in health plans — which would be big news for the industry.
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
Election no big deal for health industries
McCain to talk about healthcare costs this week …
Health industry executives have few reasons to worry about the so
called health care reforms, or health insurance industry reforms, being
proposed by the presidential candidates.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, is focusing his attention on heath care cost containment this
week, but a report in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal shows that he
doesn’t understand the problems any better than Senators Clinton and
Obama. Americans need regulatory changes (no laws are “reforms") that
make health insurance something consumers can use to protect themselves
against catastrophic losses and let individuals buy their policies
directly from insurers instead of buying policies selected by their
employers. And consumers should pay for their primary care and
preventive care services out of their pockets, or, at the least, buy
unbundled insurance for those services instead of buying bundled
insurance that is unaffordable for so many.
The real question is how much could a President McCain do about
health insurance costs with a Congress controlled by Democrats, and
would he pay much attention to the problem if it were clear that
Congress would mark his proposals dead on arrival?
Fortunately, the presidential candidates’ wild and undeliverable
promises of comprehensive health insurance reforms and universal health
insurance are being questioned by Congressional Democrats
as well as by the policy wonks quoted by the wsj.com. No wonder health
industry executives aren’t worried about who’s elected in the fall.
They apparently have decided it won’t make a difference for them or
their stocks.
The State of Employer-Sponsored Coverage – Brian Klepper
A detailed new study from the Economics Policy Institute confirms what many of us suspect but haven’t had the data to easily nail down. This weightily-titled report by Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz – A Decade of Decline: The Erosion of Employer-Provided Health Care in the United States and California, 1995-2006 – provides more granular information about the enrollment dynamics over time in employer-sponsored health coverage than we’ve seen in a while. Based on an analysis of the March 2007 Current Population Survey, the numbers reported here are mostly in sync with (but deeper than) similar studies that have attempted to size the enrollment and erosion characteristics of the employer-sponsored coverage market. Strap yourself in; this isn’t pretty.There are two important points here. The first is that, in the six years between 2000-2006, the percentage of American workers with employer-sponsored coverage fell from 51.1 to 48.8 percent, a 2.3 percent absolute or 4.5 percent relative drop. 6.4 million workers (and presumably, another 7.6 million of their family members) lost their health coverage in the process. These losses exceeded gains made between 1995-2000, when the percentage of workers with coverage rose from 49.6 to 51.1 percent.
