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THCB Gang Episode 97, Thursday June 30

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday June 30 were THCB regular writer and ponderer of odd juxtapositions Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); Principal of Worksite Health Advisors Brian Klepper (@bklepper1); futurists Ian Morrison (@seccurve); and fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey). Lots of discussion of the Dobbs ruling and also of the CAA regulations which have gotten somewhat less play in the press. Quite the impassioned discussion !

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Quantifying Caregiving: ARCHANGELS CEO Alexandra Drane on The Caregiver Intensity Index

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

“Being an unpaid caregiver is the epicenter of Life Sucks Disease,” says Alexandra Drane, Co-Founder & CEO of ARCHANGELS, “but it’s also one of the most glorious, one of the most magnificent jobs we’ll ever have.” So, what’s the trick to managing the “sucky” side of caregiving? Data.

Alex’s company ARCHANGELS has invented the Caregiver Intensity Index, which she describes as a “two-and-a-half minute Cosmo quiz” that helps caregivers quantify the intensity of their caregiving experience and identify the top two things driving that intensity and the top two things alleviating it. The score coming out of this helps caregivers validate the intensity of their experience, offers a framework for communicating about it, and, as Alex puts it, delivers “data that gives them permission to believe” that the stress they are feeling is real. ARCHANGELS then uses the info to crosswalk caregivers to existing resources that can help them manage those intensity-driving challenges – whether they be related to financial stress, workplace stress, relationship stress or otherwise.

Knowing that health plans and employers are starting to “see the light” when it comes to caregiving and its impact on their workforce, Alex and I talk about just how much payers are really willing to contribute to supporting the resources needed to support caregivers and how the data ARCHANGELS is providing is helping demonstrate need and connection to health and well-being. Lots of interesting data points on caregiving in this one – particularly when it comes to mental health and how things have changed through the pandemic. Watch now!

We Have a Right to Privacy…Right?

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BY KIM BELLARD

Well, they did it.  We had a warning they were going to do it, from the leaked opinion in May, but it still was a blow to well over half the country when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It didn’t rule that abortion was unconstitutional – as Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “On the question of abortion, the Constitution is therefore neither pro-life nor pro-choice” – but, rather, left it to the “voters,” i.e., the states, to decide.  And, boy, the “pro-life” states have been deciding and are ready to do a lot more deciding.  

There has been lots of outrage, many protests, and calls for the Senate to pass a federal law explicitly granting a right to abortion (although that would require changing the filibuster rules).  Aside from the fact that the Democrats probably don’t have the votes to do that, even if they did, as soon as the Republicans retook Congress and the White House, they’d just repeal it and perhaps pass a law outlawing abortion everywhere.  So it goes.

There are going to be many fights about abortion in Congress and in the states, but I think it’s time for a new strategy.  It’s time to amend the Constitution.  

Continue reading…

Getting Sick and Going Broke – CVS, Credit Cards, and Crippling Medical Debt

BY MIKE MAGEE

The Medical-Industrial Complex is swarming with grifters. This is to be expected when you build a purposefully complex system designed to advance profitability for small and large players alike. The $4T operation payrolling 1 in 5 American workers is, in large part, a hidden economy, one built by professional tricksters, designed by Fortune 100 firms with mountains of lobbyists, but reinforced as well by friendly doctors and hospitals engaged in petty and small scale swindling who justify their predatory actions as entrepreneurial, innovative, and purposeful means of necessary financial survival.

Continue reading…

American health care leaders are not blameless today

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By MATTHEW HOLT

It is a very sad day for America. Roughly 30% of our country is part of a quasi-religious cult. In general these people reject science and the enlightenment. This week the Jan 6th committee has shown they are prepared to use and support any tools or tactics–up to and including the overthrow of the government, in order to get what they want. 

The overturning of Roe vs Wade is the most visible artifact of a 40-year campaign. The campaign was funded by business leaders like the Koch brothers who want to revoke all environmental, labor and rational restrictions on their activities. Using dark money and the passion of religious zealots who want to control women’s bodies and discriminate against anybody who doesn’t believe what they believe, they have turned this nation back to the 18th century, using the Supreme Court as their vehicle.

The biggest of those dominos has now fallen and women’s right to control their own bodies has been taken away in most states. We can assume a nationwide ban (such as happened in Poland) will be coming here soon, maybe as soon as 2025 if the Republicans win the 2024 elections. And note that the rolling coup described by the witnesses at the Jan 6 hearings show that the Republicans are already blatantly taking over the supposedly neutral election process.

But the American health-care system is not blameless. Abortion and other reproductive health services are clearly part of health care. Yet uniquely in this country the provision of the services has not been from mainstream health care institutions. The leaders of our health care organizations, in particular our major hospital systems, have completely avoided delivering these services. They have been more than happy to allow Planned Parenthood and other specialist organizations to provide reproductive care, and have just looked the other way in the debate. 

Worse, many of our religiously affiliated institutions,  particularly those with a Catholic heritage which represent an enormous amount of hospitals in this country, have banned not only abortion but many other forms of reproductive health care such as female sterilization. The Hyde Amendment, ironically named after a religious bigot who was an appalling adulterer and hypocrite to boot, bans Federal funding for abortions. That means that private Medicaid plans which now cover most births in this country have never offered a full suite of reproductive health care.

Even in recent weeks when the fate of Roe became clear I have heard nothing from major leaders of hospital systems or health plans about this. Some of the newer provider organizations focusing on women, such as Maven and Tia, have been outspoken, as have many non health care-related employers. But the general silence from all major health care organizations in America on this topic has been deafening.

Today there is plenty of shame and blame to go around.

An Upside Down Future for Healthcare

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BY KIM BELLARD

I find myself thinking about the future a lot, in part because I’ve somehow accumulated so much past, and in part because thinking about the present usually depresses me.  I’m not so sure the future is going to be better, but I still have hopes that it can be better.  

Two articles recently provided some good insights into how to think about the future: Kevin Kelly’s How to Future and an except from Jane McGonigal’s new book Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today that was published in Fast Company.

I’ll briefly summarize each and then try to apply them to healthcare.

Continue reading…

Matthew’s health care tidbits: Is Covid over for the health care system?

Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt

I am beginning to wonder, is COVID over? Of course no one has told the virus that it’s over. In fact infection rates are two to three times where they were in the post-omicron lull and new variants are churning themselves out faster and faster. We still have 300 people dying every day. But since we went past a million US deaths, no one seems to care any more.

For the health care system, COVID being over means a chance to get back to normal, and normal ain’t good. Normal means trying to get rid of that pesky telemedicine and anything else that came around since March 2020.The incumbents want to remove the public health emergency that allowed telemedicine to be paid for by Medicare, re-enforce the Ryan Haight act which mandates in-person visits for prescribing controlled Rx like Adderall for ADHD, and make sure that tortuous state license requirements for online physicians are not going away. This also means restrictions on hospital at home, and basically delays any other innovative way to change care delivery. Well, it was all so perfect in February 2020!

But there is one COVID related problem that doesn’t seem to be going away. People. They’re just not going back to work and nurses in particular are resisting the pull of the big hospitals. I don’t know the end game here, but there is a clue in the “return to office” data. Basically every large city is below 50% of its office space being occupied and companies are having to figure out a hybrid model going forward, no matter how much Elon Musk objects.

Hospitals aren’t going willingly into the night. The big systems still control American health care, and are prepared to fight on all fronts to keep it that way. But like office workers, nurses and doctors want a different life. The concept of virtual-first, community-based, primary care-led health care has been around for a long while and been studiously ignored by the majority of the system.

If hospitals can’t get the staff and keep losing money employing the ones they have, there will be new solutions being offered to clinicians wanting a different life-style. We just might see a different approach to health care delivery rising phoenix-like from the Covid ashes.

#HealthTechDeals Episode 36| Sana Health, Sesame, Bardavon, Peerwell, Aidoc

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It’s the scandal inside the scandal, and we’ve got the scoop! Check out this episode of Health Tech Deals to learn more about Facebook, health data, and American Hospitals. Is someone stealing someone else’s activity and not getting rewarded for it? What about HIPPAA violations? All these questions and more are answered, along with some new deals: Sana Health raises $60 million; Seasme raises $27 million; Bardavon Health Innovations buys Peerwell; AIdoc raises $110 million.

-Mathew Holt

THCB Gang Episode 96, Thursday June 16

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday June 16 were medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); Queen of all employer benefits Jennifer Benz (@jenbenz); and Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune), who these days also hosts the Is It Serious podcast. We got into mental health, patient safety, drug advertising and whether the Jan 6 committee will make a difference.

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

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