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Above the Fold

Making (sh)it up as they go along

Dec 9, 2009• 9

By Matthew Holt

So today’s news is that the gang of ten have come up with something. (If you haven’t been following along, the gang of ten are the five “liberal” Democrats and the five DINOs asked by Harry Reid to come up with something to break the deadlock and get some type of compromise that will pass the Senate). More details are here from Brian Beutler at TPM

So it might vanish like a Clinton-era trial balloon, or it might be a stayer, but the core of the new concept is to allow the 55–64 crowd to buy into Medicare, and to ask/allow/mandate a non-profit insurer(s) to provide a substitute public option. Exactly what the second point means is unclear to me. It may turn out to be some collapsing of Kent Conrad’s notion of the cooperative with an extension of the Federal Employees’ Plan (presumably minus the for-profit carriers) and somehow cramming that into the exchange. Of course providing something like the choice among private plans that Federal Employees now get was at the heart of Ron Wyden’s plan. We’ll see if it can last a couple of days scrutiny, or the wrath of the House Democrats.

The Medicare buy-in seems both sensible politics and half-decent policy.

Pelosi’s Hidden Tort Bomb — an Alternative View

Dec 8, 2009• 17

by Charles Silver & David A. Hyman

We once thought Democrats would accept tort reform to win Republicans’ support for national health care legislation. Now, however, Democrats have dispensed with bipartisanship. Perhaps they think they can ram health care legislation through without any Republican backing. Perhaps the price required to obtain even a few Republican votes was too high. Perhaps Democrats received too much pressure from the trial bar. Whatever the reason, neither the bill passed by the House nor the bill pending in the Senate contains any of the tort reform provisions Republicans want. To the contrary, the House health care bill is anti-tort reform.

Not only does it reject the entire slate of lawsuit restrictions Representative John Boehner put forward in the Republican alternative to the Democrats’ bill; it contains a provision that will reward states for scrapping damages caps and other tort reforms many already have in place. This provision flew beneath the radar during the House debate, but the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal condemned it after the vote took place. Describing the provision as a “hidden Pelosi tort bomb ,” the Journal editors predicted that “[i]f it passes in anything like its current form, we are going to be cleaning up the mess for decades to come.”

Most predictions that the sky will fall are wrong. This one is wrong as well.

Abortion Should Not Imperil Health Care Reform

Dec 8, 2009• 9

By MELISSA REED

The House vote to establish near-universal health-care coverage came at a steep cost to women. That cost, issued as an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), eliminates abortion coverage by private insurance companies even when women are paying for all or most of the premium.

Stupak’s amendment is a cynical attempt to push an anti-choice agenda that imperils badly needed reform. His amendment restricts women’s access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market as well as in a “public option,” undermining the ability of women to purchase private health plans that cover abortion. It reaches much further than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited public funding of abortion in most instances since 1977.Continue reading…

Genetic Testing, Fact or Fiction: You Be the Judge

Dec 8, 2009• 11

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Which of these two events is fact and which is fiction?

Organizations representing employers and health plans call for a moratorium on implementation of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, asserting that the new rules could have a “significant and adverse impact…on wellness and prevention efforts” in the workplace.

One of the largest companies in America begins matchmaking its employees based on their genetic compatability, hoping to save on the health insurance bills associated with imperfectly bred children.

Answer: No. 1 is a Dec. 2 press release from the Disease Management Association of America. No. 2 is a description of the Dec. 8 episode of the ABC-TV comedy, “Better Off Ted.”

Coincidence? You be the judge.

2009: A Year of Surprises and Change for the EHR Technology Market

Dec 6, 2009• 21

By DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER

2009 began with a bang for legacy Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors, promising strong sales and windfall profits on the heels of stimulus package incentive bonuses initially worth more than $19 billion to doctors and hospitals. But things changed dramatically along the way.

Here ten surprises and notable events that have impacted the EHR market:

Payment for Meaningful Use of EHR technology, not for the software and hardware itself.

The idea that using EHR technologies ought to produce improvements in quality of care, better communication with patients, enhanced safety, and better public health reporting — and that these outcomes ought to be monitored and providers held accountable for their achievement — was itself a surprising innovation in 2009. It has to be counted among the best 10 health care ideas to come out of government in the past generation.Continue reading…

Four grumpy lefties with Laura Flanders

Dec 4, 2009• 1

By Matthew Holt

Maggie Mahar, Jon Cohn, Jon Nichols and Olga Pierce hang out with Laura Flanders on the amusingly titled GRITtv and discuss how screwed up the politics of health care are in the Senate. Twenty minutes of amusing chat without a “moderate” or a Rpublican in sight. (Can’t get the video to embed here, so sneak over there).

Health Journos Protest FDA Interview Rules

Dec 4, 2009• 4

By MERRILL GOOZNER

The Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and 9 other scribbler groups have asked the Food and Drug Administration to lift its requirement that agency officials first get permission from the public relations office before speaking with reporters. The demand came in a letter sent to Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, who is running the FDA's Transparency Task Force.

Good idea. In fact, it should be extended to every government agency.

Deb Peel–Good Grief

Dec 3, 2009

Healthcare journo Neil Versel almost defends Deb Peel as she rants inanely about PHR vendors. What she and her gang of nutjobs want is to hide behind privacy to prevent potentially lifesaving used of health data because they hate “the government”. More of my disparagement here