Quote of the Day
PNHP's Senior Health Policy Fellow Don McCanne, M.D. writes a daily health policy update, taking an excerpt or quote from a health care news story or analysis on the Internet and commenting on its significance to the single-payer health care reform movement. PNHP posts Dr. McCanne's listserv here; to subscribe to the listserv, please visit the Quote of the Day the mailing list website.
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Rep. Weiner withdraws single payer amendment - November 6, 2009
The fact that single payer got so far along in the House is a testament to the strength of our single payer movement. The huge number of calls by single payer advocates in support of single payer and the Weiner amendment in recent days have been noted by several members of Congress.Harvard Professor William Hsiao on effective reform - November 5, 2009
There is no person more qualified to discuss health system design than William Hsiao.CBO on premiums and cost sharing of the House bill - November 4, 2009
Of the many flaws in the very expensive and highly inefficient model of health care reform that Congress has selected, one of the more important is the financial impact that it will have on middle- and upper-middle income individuals and families. Let's look at the example of a family of four with a very good income: $102,100.Drew Altman on Americans affording health care - November 3, 2009
Drew Altman is a very intelligent and very well informed advocate of a health care system that works well for all of us. His only handicap is that, as President and CEO of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, he must maintain his reputation as a highly credible but impartial voice on health care reform. That requires diligently negotiating his way through the minefield of Washington politics.Expanding Medicaid to save money - November 2, 2009
The version of the House health care reform bill released last week would further expand Medicaid eligibility to individuals with incomes up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level. This expansion was prompted by the self-imposed requirement to avoid any deficit spending as a result of this legislation. It will cost the government less to enroll these individuals in Medicaid than it would cost to provide them with subsidies to purchase private health plans.CBO report on the public option - October 30, 2009
What happened to that public option that the liberals promised us when they decided not to try to enact the golden standard of a single payer national health program? You know, that government program, like Medicare, designed to be less expensive, more efficient and more equitable, and that each of us could choose in place of private health plans. Really, what happened to it?Weiner single payer amendment tanks - October 29, 2009
What the... !?The ethics of health care reform - October 28, 2009
I'll be brief because I want to make only one very simple point: An ethical health care system is designed to take care of patients. What could be more obvious? If the health care system is doing its job in taking care of patients then the health care system itself is being taken care of. Special interests legitimately involved in health care delivery will do just fine.The actuarial squeeze on low and middle income families - October 27, 2009
The best private insurance available today - employer-sponsored health plans - have an actuarial value of 80%. That means that the insurance pays 80% of the covered costs of health care and patients are responsible for the other 20%. Patients also are usually responsible for out-of-network services and for services and products that are not benefits of the plans.Is health insurers' profit 2% or 22%? - October 26, 2009
In simple accounting terms, profit represents the difference between gross revenues and the cost of producing and marketing the products or services sold. So what is the product that the private insurers are selling us? Administrative services.Kitzhaber on health care costs - October 21, 2009
The five reform bills passed by House and Senate committees will not control health care costs, and yet these are to be merged into one bill - that will not control health care costs.Insurance promotes awareness and control of chronic disorders - October 20, 2009
This study confirms that being insured not only improves the control of chronic diseases, it also improves the diagnosis in individuals who are not even aware of their disorders. Insuring the uninsured can delay or even totally prevent the disastrous complications of these chronic disorders.Dartmouth variations - looking back and looking forward - October 16, 2009
As the nation attempts to identify ways of slowing the excessive growth in our health care costs, it is only natural that we would look at the great variability in health care spending that does not seem to correlate with health care outcomes. John Wennberg and his colleagues, in producing the Dartmouth Atlas, have confirmed that these variations are very real, though more recent refinements have demonstrated that the differences are not quite as great when corrected for other factors.Regence blames the patients - October 15, 2009
How many people do you know that request health care that they know they don't need but they want to have "because it's covered"? In over thirty years of my very busy family practice, I cannot recall one single patient with such a request. Yet the thrust of this Regence BlueCross BlueShield campaign is to blame the patient for requesting too much health care.Guardian gets rid of the "dogs" - October 14, 2009
Although the individual private insurance market is infamous for discriminating against individuals with a potential for high health care costs, regulations largely prohibit group plans from singling out individuals for exclusion.What about primary care? - October 13, 2009
The report by Dr. Cooper and his colleagues, cited by Dr. Freeman, was "A Report to the President and the Congress." Since it was released only one month ago, this report likely did not influence the current legislation, but it is important because it does represent the cavalier views of all too many within and outside of the health care arena.Rodberg - Is There Any Way Out for Obama? - October 9, 2009
You hear that phrase in almost every speech made in support of the "Plan" - the reform proposal of President Obama and the Democrats in Congress. It has the implicit threat that if the Plan is not passed, we will be condemned to continue to live with the deteriorating health care mess that we now have. If we do pass the Plan, we will be condemned to live with the deteriorating health care mess that we will have - the mess that Professor Rodberg so adeptly describes.What is the right penalty to enforce an individual mandate? - October 8, 2009
The current reform proposal before Congress would encourage more uninsured individuals to purchase health care coverage by assessing a financial penalty on those who fail to do so, thus enforcing an individual mandate to purchase insurance.IBM CEO Palmisano on single payer - October 7, 2009
So IBM CEO Sam Palmisano says that single payer, government health systems have an advantage over fragmented systems (like ours in the U.S.) since they can create incentives for change. That seems counter to those who claim (falsely) that government systems suppress innovation.Bad advice from the OECD - October 6, 2009
The OECD has a mission of bringing together governments "committed to democracy and the market economy." Their release of a paper supporting a private insurance model of reform for the United States seemed to be a fulfillment of this mission. But even their paper added nothing that would refute what we already know from our efforts at reform: the private insurance model is an expensive, wasteful, inequitable, and a fairly ineffective model of ensuring affordable, high quality care for everyone.