Health Care in America

The events of June 19th would provide a perfect background for looking at the single-payer or Medicare for all health systems. Some 38,000 insurance industry execs are gathering in San Francisco for their annual convention (of AHIP), and they will be greeted not just by thousands of protestors, but also by events across the country as part of a national day of action.

I have long wondered why American employees allow health insurance companies to swallow one-third of their care dollars in overhead.

How about doing an investigation of the insurance companies which I think are mostly to blame for the health care mess with their abitrary rules. You might also want to consider doing an article about the impact of very high malpractice insurance costs and lawsuits on attracting and retaining doctors in this country.

Shum and Margaret, these are two very good ideas. I think much has been written on the often arbitrary rules imposed to limit coverage and improve the profitability of insurance companies. I have long been keenly interested, however, in the overhead costs of our health care system. I've had conversations with Cathy about this very issue in the past. I think a powerful story can be reported and written on this topic.

I was reading in the HIM trade magazine On the Record about a coming hospital debt crisis, with hospitals leveraging to the hilt to build big facilities in the face of dwindling Medicare reimbursements. The article only predicts the problem but does not talk about the implications for the hospitals or the potential impact on patient care. This might be a good topic to explore.

I have yet to see substantive data on just *why* healthcare costs are rising so dramatically. It certainly has the earmarks of (yet another) bubble, in my view.

What exactly is so expensive?
Why does procedure X cost 450% more now than it did four years ago?
There's a lack of justification of these costs and I think that needs to be dealt with extensively.

Carson, as someone who recently visited the Emergency Room of a hospital, I can personally attest to the dramatic rise in health care costs. Every person I know who has had to go to a doctor and fill a prescription for one kind of drug or another has felt the brunt of health care's inflationary costs. I asked senior writer Cathy Arnst about your suggestion and here's her immediate reply: "That is a good idea. I'd never thought that much about why the cost is rising so much higher than inflation. I can start working on that next week."

Great idea. Thanks Carson!

I have been involved in health care for over 40 years. I was recently fired from LSU Medical Center in Shreveport for standing up to the administration. This is becoming a real issue in medical care, and I will be giving my insight over the next few weeks. Please go to www.lsu-unofficial.com for my series of articles on the deterioration of our system.

The U.S. is spending a mind-boggling sum of money on research on medicine and health care but it does not get desired returns. For instance, mega-research projects of R&D on AIDS have nose dived causing huge financial losses. This shows that the approach is neither pragmatic nor feasible. The US should stop squandering money on dream projects because its shattered economy can ill afford such misadventures. If the US wants to make its health care system cost effective and efficient, it should import proven inventions in medicines from countries like India that have substantial experience and expertise of R&D in medicine. I am a medical scientist and I have invented medicines that actually cure Psoriasis, Paralysis, R.A.Factor(Rheumatoid Arthritis Factor) in blood and Uric Acid in blood. These are genuine inventions verified and confirmed by clinical investigations.A nd the medicines that have cured these ailments have been tested in laboratories and found harmless. Can anyone guess the cost incurred by me in making these epoch-making discoveries in the core area of medical science? It is not more than five hundred dollars. This may sound quite incredible but it is quite true. This proves that the US is spending an unreasonably huge amount on R&D and healthcare dream projects.

A story on the ability of MLB to let the 'f' word slip into a broadcast, remove clips of it from YouTube easily while it continues to proliferate the thousands of sports related independent web sites. My clip was removed from my site, www.youtube.com/bobmantzradio even though it was used in a news story that I wrote: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/37912-chase-utley-drops-the-f-bomb-at-the-home-run-derby which is supposed to be allowed under MLB rules.

I wrote a follow-up and am awaiting MLB and YouTube's answer to my request.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/39178-i-salute-the-mlbs-ability-to-remove-chase-utley-audio-while-steroids-ran-wild

With one side in near hysteria, and the other being disingenuous if not misleading, its no wonder there is huge confusion on the subject of health care reform. However, the whole debate is less complex than it appears. One side is intent upon providing affordable health care insurance for 47 million Americans through higher taxes and deficit spending- the other side, who would shoulder a disproportionate share of the expense for universal health care, and reap fewer of the benefits, are opposed to the plan. Somehow, the concept of actually reducing the cost of health care has gotten lost.

It appears that the Tort Lawyers have successfully defended their turf, the Insurance Lobby has positioned themselves nicely to weather the controversy, and cynics might conclude that big Pharma has cut a deal that changed the focus of the debate from Healthcare Reform to Healthcare Insurance Reform- assuring that the costs of pharmaceutical drugs will continue to be higher in the United States than almost anywhere in the world. The Republicans are desperate to regain their footing, and will do just about anything to derail the Obama train, regardless of the consequences. The Democrats are similarly motivated to manufacture a mandate for a broad range of liberal initiatives from votes cast against the hugely unpopular previous administration, and to do so before the fading popularity of the new administration tank altogether.

There are a whole range of reasonable, pragmatic changes that could be implemented to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare in the United States, but thus far they have gotten overlooked, slandered, and lost in the crossfire of unsubstantiated claims, demonization, and infighting.

1. Encourage retail walk-in Healthcare Clinics, where at modes t cost, trained Healthcare Professionals (ex. RNs) could treat common ailments, recommend over the counter remedies (and limited prescription drugs) and triage more serious ailments.

2. Allow Credit Unions and/or other (Federally Insured) financial institutions to offer Healthcare Savings accounts as a service- rather than an employer-based model. These same institutions could offer Group insurance policies at a lower cost than individual policies. These might take the form of catastrophic coverage policies to coordinate with the Healthcare Savings Account reimbursements.

3. Consider funding the education of more healthcare professionals- presumably driving down the cost of routine care- and perhaps offer a work-study program or internship to offset/repay that tuition.

4. Tort reform. Plaintiffs are certainly due the compensatory damages they are awarded, but where is it written that punitive damages must be awarded to the plaintiffs and their lawyers? Punitive damages are a necessary deterrent, but if they were instead awarded to Charitable Organizations, the incentive to file spurious lawsuits would be diminished.

5. The Pharmaceutical companies need to generate profits to stay in business and continue to provide and develop medicines- but why are they allowed to charge more for those medicines in the United States than elsewhere in the world? A more universal pricing policy would reduce costs for U.S. Citizens as well as the U.S. Government.

6. Rather than legislating Healthcare, the Government could draft, publish and support “model” healthcare insurance plans, which then could become a standard against which all privately offered policies could be measured. Once the model or standards are in place, it would become much easier to comparison shop the policies as all plans that are in compliance with the model offer (at least) the same basic coverage. It might even be easier to administer the plans, as specific coverage would be common to all compliant plans. No Insurance Company, or any other entity, would be obliged to offer plans designed to be in compliance- but perhaps Healthcare Insurance Plans that are in compliance with the model AND offered by credible, responsible institutions could offer the plans nationally- by private companies. Such plans could be endorsed by, and offered through. the SBA. This would result in a co-op that could offer small companies access to the same healthcare programs (and rates) larger companies enjoy today.

7. Excessive and possibly unnecessary testing procedures are often mentioned as one of the components of spiraling healthcare costs. Healthcare professionals explain that performing these tests is necessary to protect themselves from possible litigation. It may also be that many of these same Healthcare Professionals have financial interests in the facilities that perform these tests, providing an incentive to proscribe testing procedures that may not be necessary in terms of diagnosis. Greater scrutiny and transparency is required.

If the “public option” were eliminated, and the penalties associated with “pay-to-play” removed from the proposals under consideration, we could have a reasonable health care reform bill passed by October- unless the far right and far left are successful in an odd conspiracy to kill Healthcare reform altogether.