Insurance Status of U.S. Organ Donors and Transplant Recipients: The Uninsured Give, but Rarely Receive
By Andrew A. Herring, Steffie Woolhandler, and David U. Himmelstein
International Journal of Health Services
Volume 38, Number 4
In September of 2005, one of us (Herring), then a third-year medical student, cared for a previously healthy 25-year-old uninsured day laborer who arrived at [...]

Aetna, in partnership with Partners in Care, has usurped the “medical home” label to… provide us with a comprehensive primary care system? Well… No. On top of our flawed systems of financing and delivering care, they are adding “customizable product and service lines.” With our system already weighted down with an excess of egregiously wasteful administrative services, they are using the medical home label to sell us even more egregiously wasteful administrative services!

There is an important reason to present the economic data, and that is that we need to approach health care reform using highly credible factual data. Many individuals have an opinion as to why heath care costs in the United States are so high, but those views are often based on nothing more than hearsay, and often are incorrect. Reform must be based on solid facts.

What can we learn from the U.K.? Through a single payer system the U.K. has been able to build a strong primary care infrastructure with teams organized to provide high-quality coordinated care for everyone. They have done this at a fraction of the costs of U.S. health care, while compensating their primary care physicians very generously.

As the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and as a person passionately dedicated to comprehensive health care reform, we need to listen to what Sen. Max Baucus has to say. “Call to Action, Health Reform 2009″ is his white paper describing serious problems with our health care system, and includes a collection of legislative proposals to address those problems. It is an important report because it does represent what seems to be the prevailing views in Washington, D.C. on the direction for reform.

Medical groups certainly have many challenges, but one of the more important is getting paid. This survey of Medical Group Management Association members provides some important lessons.

The United States spends far more per capita on health care than any other nation, yet we are obtaining very poor value for our spending. How many times have we heard that? And it doesn’t change.

If we are truly serious about establishing an affordable system that would provide all necessary care for everyone, we have to seriously look at the Milliman Medical Index numbers. We are already spending an average of $15,609 for a family of four, with a typical family income of maybe $60,000. Those numbers no longer compute.

The AMA has selected November as the first national Heal that Claim Month. The problems that this addresses must be fairly significant if they are going to declare a special month to address them; so what are these problems?

Yes we can!