PNHP

John Geyman explains the ‘new normal’ we urgently need in health care

John Geyman explains the ‘new normal’ we urgently need in health care

Common Sense: Medicare For All

Foundation of a ‘New Normal’ In U.S. Health Care

By John Geyman, M.D.

Note to the Reader: In his famous pamphlet, Common Sense, written for the people of the Thirteen Colonies in 1775-1776, Thomas Paine made a strong case – based on simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense – to gain independence from England.

In this pamphlet, I also offer simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense about today’s triple crises impacting U.S. health care – the coronavirus pandemic, the resultant economic downturn on the scale of the 1930s, and the uprising against systemic racism and police brutality that is sweeping across our country. Together, these crises have exposed the failure of our present health care system to meet the needs of ordinary Americans.

As the costs of health care in our corporatized, unaccountable non-system continue to spiral upward and become less affordable for much of our population, and as the rolls of the unemployed without health insurance grow unabated, much of the population can no longer gain access to our health care “system” based as it is on the ability to pay, not medical need. The stakes have been further raised by the risk of becoming exposed to the coronavirus while seeking care in ERs, hospitals and clinics. It has become the leading cause of death in the U.S. while patients are postponing or foregoing care for other major medical problems.

We have a long history in this country of failed incremental attempts to reform health care for the benefit of patients and their families. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) made some progress, but is no solution to the tens of millions of Americans without health care. It did not contain health care costs, and has ended up as just one more failed incremental attempt. This was predictable, since armies of well-funded lobbyists succeeded in protecting the profits of stakeholders in the medical-industrial complex.

Health care is once again a leading issue in this turbulent election season. Three major reform alternatives are being debated: (1) building on the ACA; (2) one or another variant of a public option; and (3) single-payer Medicare for All.

This pamphlet is intended to inform the debate, drawing on traditional American values, and our experience over the years. It is targeted to legislators in Congress, opinion leaders, grassroots activists, and everyone seeking to better understand the issues.

This pamphlet has six parts:

I. How the ‘old normal’ of U.S. health care is breaking up

II. The inadequate response to the pandemic by the Trump administration

III. Why the ‘old normal’ should be replaced

IV. The case for and against three major reform alternatives

V. What the ‘new normal’ will look like after replacing our dysfunctional, largely private health insurance industry with a not-for-profit single-payer financing system with the mission to extend universal coverage for health care to our entire population

VI. Useful resources

Common Sense: Medicare For All

Foundation of a ‘New Normal’ In U.S. Health Care

Paperback: https://www.lulu.com…

Ebook: https://www.lulu.com…

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

We are facing the worst health care crisis in a century. The impact is so severe that we are also facing the worst economic crisis in a century. John Geyman’s pamphlet could not be more timely.

We can do something about it. We have three choices to begin to immediately address this crisis – (1) building on the ACA; (2) one or another variant of a public option; and (3) single payer Medicare for All – and only one will work.

Our presidential election is right around the corner. One major party candidate has selected two of the approaches – build on ACA and add a public option – but rejects the one reform that will work – single payer Medicare for All. His choices only tweak our complex, expensive but grossly inadequate health care financing system that has left tens of millions exposed to financial hardship while failing to provide adequate access to the health care that they desperately need.

The other major party candidate is currently in office and has been bumbling around in a display of the greatest incompetence that this nation has ever seen in its leader. He has promised “phenomenal” health reform, though nearing the end of his current term in office, he has never revealed what that reform is, no doubt because he does not have an effective proposal. (Lest this comment be criticized for being political rather than being limited to a discussion of policy, it has to be acknowledged that the prevailing process has been so highly political that it has created almost impenetrable barriers to reform – barriers that we must overcome.)

We desperately need a major reset, and it is the third option that would establish policies that will effectively begin to address the combined health and economic crises that we face: the single payer model of Medicare for All. True, we will need to be doing much more, but we cannot begin until we have the health care financing infrastructure that will organize us and start to move us in the direction in which we need to be headed.

We need a movement of the people – a movement that will bring us a Congress that will do the right thing by, in turn, forcing the president who will be in office in 2021 to do the right thing for all of us. John Geyman’s latest in his series of Common Sense pamphlets can be very helpful as a valuable tool for sending us in the right direction. His common sense description of where we are, the three directions that we could take, and the one that will actually achieve success – single payer in all its simplicity – can be used as a basis for moving the process.

This edition of Common Sense has already been sent to every member of Congress. It is now the job for us, the people, to be sure that every member of Congress, along with their staff members, familiarize themselves with this straightforward action – single payer Medicare for All – and then enact it and require the president to implement it, even if a veto override is required.

Congress and the president aren’t fixing this thing now. We, the people, have to make them do it. To the streets!

And, yes, for the loudest voice of all, we need to make sure that everyone votes!

PNHP does not endorse any political candidates nor any political party, and any suggestion here otherwise represents the independent views of the author of the comment.

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WARNING: Elliott Fisher wants to switch from ACOs to PHOs

Team proposes "single system solution" for US healthcare system

By The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Medical Xpress, August 5, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the numerous weaknesses in the U.S. healthcare system. Millions have lost their health insurance and millions more can barely afford it. Racial, ethnic, economic, and geographic disparities in health are widening as death rates from COVID-19 rise. And the financial solvency of hospitals and physician practices is at risk. At some point soon, health care reform will be high on the political agenda.

In the lead article for the current issue of NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, Elliott Fisher, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and health policy at Dartmouth, and one of the policy leaders who developed the concept of Accountable Care Organizations, lays out a path to reform that would provide universal coverage, real-time data and performance measures, and more robust payment models that would enable the market to improve care for all through informed choice of population health organizations (PHOs), providers, and treatments.

“There is a real risk that policy makers will get stuck in a fruitless debate between ‘single payer’ and ‘multi-payer’ approaches to achieving universal coverage,” said Dr. Fisher. “If we get another crack at major reform after the upcoming elections, we should address the underlying reasons that healthcare in the United States is so expensive and unequal.”

Responding to a pre-publication copy of the paper, Representative Peter Welch (D. VT), said: “Dr. Fisher helped develop the ACO model that has garnered strong bipartisan support. He has now clarified why costs nevertheless continue to rise and how we could do better. Dr. Fisher’s recommendations about how to empower the market to improve care and lower costs for all deserve serious attention. I look forward to working with my colleagues across the aisle—as we did with ACOs—to explore these ideas.”

The concept at the heart of the proposal—Population Health Organizations—is intended to address the limitations of the current ACO model, under which primary care focused provider organizations are responsible for the quality and total cost of care for their assigned patients and receive a share of any savings they achieve if they continue to meet quality standards. More than 30 million Americans now receive care under this payment model. “We should celebrate the broad bipartisan support and high levels of adoption seen for ACOs and other value-based payment models,” Dr. Fisher said. “And we must admit that while these models appear to achieve some savings, their overall impact has been less than what we hoped for.”

In his Catalyst paper, Dr. Fisher explains why the U.S. continues to see the inexorable increases in costs that have made healthcare unaffordable for so many. “Fragmented delivery, payment, and insurance systems have long been recognized to pose serious challenges to care coordination,” he writes. “Fragmentation also weakens incentives, discourages innovation, and makes it easy for providers and insurers to avoid efforts to control costs.” ACOs, for example, can be rewarded for lowering costs for the patients in their ACO contract while at the same time increasing costs to others. “Our current system can be seen as a balloon: push on one part and the expansion simply continues somewhere else.”

The solution is to shift from thinking of ACOs as a contract to seeing them as organizations paid under capitation to manage the health of all of their enrolled primary care patients—as Population Health Organizations. Fisher recommends that all Americans get to choose their PHO on statewide insurance exchanges where uniform benefits, limited cost-sharing, and transparency on quality would enable market forces to drive meaningful improvement in both cost and quality.

Other key elements of the “Single System Solution” include:

  • A single, unified health information system, ensuring that clinicians have all of their patients’ health records when needed and where comprehensive quality and outcome measures empower consumer choice of treatments, providers, and PHOs;
  • Universal coverage under which everyone would have access to the same basic benefit packages and choice of PHOs on statewide exchanges, which is the single best way to reduce disparities and eliminate the sense of exclusion experienced by those now relegated to the “safety net.”
  • Administrative simplification and a uniform fee schedule, with common benefits (instead of an infinite number of plan designs), a single billing system, and a national fee schedule that would not only reduce the influence of monopoly pricing but reduce the violence done to physicians’ professional values in a system that encourages providers to discriminate on the basis of patients’ ability to pay.

https://medicalxpress.com…

Reforming Health Care: The Single System Solution

By Elliott S. Fisher, M.D., M.P.H.
NEJM Catalyst, September-October 2020 (Released August 5, 2020)

Full article (behind paywall):
https://catalyst.nejm.org…

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

The policy community and politicians have gone out of their way to protect the private insurance industry from enactment and implementation of a national health program, especially the single payer model of Medicare for All.

The Affordable Care Act was designed specifically to maintain a role for private insurers both by protecting the private employer-sponsored plans and by establishing an exchange of competing private plans in the individual market.

Although the managed care revolution and its HMOs suffered from a backlash, it was decided that the concept of competing integrated health systems could be perpetuated by creating accountable care organizations (ACOs). Under this model health care professionals would be provided incentives to be accountable for both the quality and costs of the care provided.

Although the ACO experiment continues, it has largely failed to accomplish its goals of higher quality at lower costs. Elliott Fisher and his Dartmouth colleagues were primary architects of the ACO model. Now even he concedes, “their overall impact has been less than what we hoped for.”

There were some very significant design defects in the ACOs that caused a few of us to predict their failure. Fisher now proposes changes to correct the perceived defects (though he misses the fundamentals). His primary proposal is a switch to Population Health Organizations (PHOs). The concept is that the PHO is a “single system solution” (perhaps a rhetorical takeoff on the popularity of single payer reform?). All PHOs would provide the same benefit package, paid under capitation, while having a uniform national fee schedule, and share a unified health information system. The PHOs would be offered through exchanges that would operate as “active purchasers” (required to meet certain standards to qualify for listing) where they would compete based on quality and performance, but not prices.

It is ironic that the Dartmouth release touts PHOs as follows, “Administrative simplification and a uniform fee schedule, with common benefits (instead of an infinite number of plan designs), a single billing system, and a national fee schedule that would not only reduce the influence of monopoly pricing but reduce the violence done to physicians’ professional values in a system that encourages providers to discriminate on the basis of patients’ ability to pay.” Those are characteristics of single payer Medicare for All more so than they would be of a market of competing PHOs with all of their administrative complexity.

But is a market of competing PHOs really a single system solution? Each PHO would have a separate network of hospitals, physicians and other health care professionals. With the entire health care system fragmented into competing silos, health care choice would certainly be limited, perhaps severely so if enough entrepreneurial-oriented PHO managers are competing in a small space.

Where this proposal really breaks down is that Fisher says that we should not waste an opportunity for reform by “arguing about single payer, multi-payer, or repeal and replace.” He states, “the single system approach — if implemented in a multi-payer model that preserves a role for private insurers — should satisfy the core interests of all key stakeholders: better, less expensive care for consumers; better support, information, and working environments for clinicians; and a continued important role not only for hospitals, but for insurers, too. Conflict is also likely to arise between advocates of single- or multi-payer approaches. I believe this is a false choice. It is certainly possible that a streamlined and well-regulated private insurance system could be as effective as government agencies that have been captured by provider interests — as is plausibly the case under Medicare” (referring to private Medicare Advantage?).

So the policy community is still fixated on the market concept of competition as a means of controlling costs. Competing private insurers have been responsible for much of the excesses, fragmentation and especially the profound administrative waste of our current health care financing system. It is not competition but rather cooperation that best serves the interests of patients. Instead of a fragmented system of competing PHOs, if we had only one single “population health organization,” composed of the entire health care delivery system, then patients and their health care professionals would have complete free choice in obtaining the best care possible. Of course, Medicare for All makes the entire health care delivery system a de facto single health organization for the entire population – the only “PHO” that you would need, though we wouldn’t call it that.

In a recent Quote of the Day we noted that Stuart Butler, an architect of the Affordable Care Act, wants us to “improve” ACA by moving private Medicare Advantage plans into the exchanges. Elliott Fisher, an architect of ACOs, now wants us to “improve” ACOs by converting them to PHOs. Both are recommending changes because of the failures of their own models. Please. No more failures. Let’s move smartly into the model that will work well for all of us: single payer improved Medicare for All.

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The health insurers designed our financing system, and it works for them

Major U.S. Health Insurers Report Big Profits, Benefiting From the Pandemic

By Reed Abelson
The New York Times, August 5, 2020

Some of the largest companies, including Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, are reporting second-quarter earnings that are double what they were a year ago.

Anthem’s net income soared to $2.3 billion for the second quarter, from $1.1 billion in 2019, while UnitedHealth reported net earnings of $6.7 billion, compared to $3.4 billion for the same three months last year.

Although many hospitals have been overwhelmed by the coronavirus outbreaks raging from state to state, insurers have shelled out billions of dollars less in medical claims in the last three months because expensive, elective surgeries have been postponed in many places. Moreover, people have steered clear of doctors’ offices and emergency rooms in fear of contagion.

The companies’ staggering pandemic profits stand in stark contrast to the scores of small medical practices and rural hospitals that are struggling to stay open. And the earnings are putting a spotlight on the big insurance companies at a time when government officials in many states are facing massive budget shortfalls as businesses collapse, unemployment rises and tax revenues plummet.

But the companies may have even higher profits than is apparent. Some, like UnitedHealth, have large networks of doctors and other health care businesses, in addition to owning giant pharmacy benefit managers. There are no limits on how much these units can make, and many of the units sell their services directly to the insurer.

And in this presidential election year, the companies’ overly buoyant position could also reignite a discussion among Democrats about “Medicare for all,” a proposal that would replace the current private health care system with a government one that guarantees coverage for all U.S. residents.

“We’re looking at the fact that health care can’t be regulated by the marketplace,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Washington State Democrat who is a strong proponent of Medicare for all.

“Who knows what’s going to happen by January?” Ms. Jayapal asked. “It’s entirely possible that everything shifts on health care, within weeks or months after the election.”

https://www.nytimes.com…

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

So how is our health care financing system working? For patients, many are losing their health insurance and others are facing financial hardship in spite of being insured. For small medical practices and rural hospitals? They are struggling and many are having to shut down. And for the large private insurers? Record profits!

If we had a single payer Medicare for All program, patients would have no financial barriers to care, and the health care delivery system would be adequately funded to be able to provide all essential services. And the expensive, private, for-profit insurance giants? Gone!

Reject the presidential candidates’ statements in opposition to Medicare for All. The down-to-earth conditions cry out for intensifying our advocacy for single payer Medicare for All. We must give the victors in the November election no choice but to accept the will of the people. No more health care coverage designed of, by, and for the private insurers. No more!

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The health care scare

I sold Americans a lie about Canadian medicine. Now we’re paying the price.

By Wendell Potter
The Washington Post, August 6, 2020

In my prior life as an insurance executive, it was my job to deceive Americans about their health care. I misled people to protect profits. In fact, one of my major objectives, as a corporate propagandist, was to do my part to “enhance shareholder value.” That work contributed directly to a climate in which fewer people are insured, which has shaped our nation’s struggle against the coronavirus, a condition that we can fight only if everyone is willing and able to get medical treatment. Had spokesmen like me not been paid to obscure important truths about the differences between the U.S. and Canadian health-care systems, tens of thousands of Americans who have died during the pandemic might still be alive.

In 2007, I was working as vice president of corporate communications for Cigna. That summer, Michael Moore was preparing to release his latest documentary, “Sicko,” contrasting American health care with that in other rich countries. (Naturally, we looked terrible.) I spent months meeting secretly with my counterparts at other big insurers to plot our assault on the film, which contained many anecdotes about patients who had been denied coverage for important treatments. One example was 3-year-old Annette Noe. When her parents asked Cigna to pay for two cochlear implants that would allow her to hear, we agreed to cover only one.

Clearly my colleagues and I would need a robust defense. On a task force for the industry’s biggest trade association, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), we talked about how we might make health-care systems in Canada, France, Britain and even Cuba look just as bad as ours. We enlisted APCO Worldwide, a giant PR firm. Agents there worked with AHIP to put together a binder of laminated talking points for company flacks like me to use in news releases and statements to reporters.

Here’s an example from one AHIP brief in the binder: “A May 2004 poll found that 87% of Canada’s business leaders would support seeking health care outside the government system if they had a pressing medical concern.” The source was a 2004 book by Sally Pipes, president of the industry-supported Pacific Research Institute, titled “Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer.” Another bullet point, from the same book, quoted the CEO of the Canadian Association of Radiologists as saying that “the radiology equipment in Canada is so bad that ‘without immediate action radiologists will no longer be able to guarantee the reliability and quality of examinations.’ ”

Much of this runs against the experience of many Americans, especially the millions who take advantage of low pharmaceutical prices in Canada to meet their prescription needs. But there were more specific reasons to be skeptical of those claims. We didn’t know, for example, who conducted that 2004 survey or anything about the sample size or methodology — or even what criteria were used to determine who qualified as a “business leader.” We didn’t know if the assertion about imaging equipment was based on reliable data or was an opinion. You could easily turn up comparable complaints about outdated equipment at U.S. hospitals.

(Contacted by The Washington Post, an AHIP spokesman said this perspective was “from the pre-ACA past. We are future focused by building on what works and fixing what doesn’t.” He added that the organization “believes everyone deserves affordable, high-quality coverage and care — regardless of health status, income, or pre-existing conditions.” An APCO Worldwide spokesperson told The Post that the company “has been involved in supporting our clients with the evolution of the health care system. We are proud of our work.” Cigna did not respond to requests for comment.)

Nevertheless, I spent much of that year as an industry spokesman, my last after 20 years in the business, spreading AHIP’s “information” to journalists and lawmakers to create the impression that our health-care system was far superior to Canada’s, which we wanted people to believe was on the verge of collapse. The campaign worked. Stories began to appear in the press that cast the Canadian system in a negative light. And when Democrats began writing what would become the Affordable Care Act in early 2009, they gave no serious consideration to a publicly financed system like Canada’s. We succeeded so wildly at defining that idea as radical that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), then chair of the Senate Finance Committee, had single-payer supporters ejected from a hearing.

Today, the respective responses of Canada and the United States to the coronavirus pandemic prove just how false the ideas I helped spread were. There are more than three times as many coronavirus infections per capita in the United States, and the mortality rate is twice the rate in Canada. And although we now test more people per capita, our northern neighbor had much earlier successes with testing, which helped make a difference throughout the pandemic.

The most effective myth we perpetuated — the industry trots it out whenever major reform is proposed — is that Canadians and people in other single-payer countries have to endure long waits for needed care. Just last year, in a statement submitted to a congressional committee for a hearing on the Medicare for All Act of 2019, AHIP maintained that “patients would pay more to wait longer for worse care” under a single-payer system.

While it’s true that Canadians sometimes have to wait weeks or months for elective procedures (knee replacements are often cited), the truth is that they do not have to wait at all for the vast majority of medical services. And, contrary to another myth I used to peddle — that Canadian doctors are flocking to the United States — there are more doctors per 1,000 people in Canada than here. Canadians see their doctors an average of 6.8 times a year, compared with just four times a year in this country.

Most important, no one in Canada is turned away from doctors because of a lack of funds, and Canadians can get tested and treated for the coronavirus without fear of receiving a budget-busting medical bill. That undoubtedly is one of the reasons Canada’s covid-19 death rate is so much lower than ours. In America, exorbitant bills are a defining feature of our health-care system. Despite the assurances from President Trump and members of Congress that covid-19 patients will not be charged for testing or treatment, they are on the hook for big bills, according to numerous reports.

That is not the case in Canada, where there are no co-pays, deductibles or coinsurance for covered benefits. Care is free at the point of service. And those laid off in Canada don’t face the worry of losing their health insurance. In the United States, by contrast, more than 40 million have lost their jobs during this pandemic, and millions of them — along with their families — also lost their coverage.

Then there’s quality of care. By numerous measures, it is better in Canada. Some examples: Canada has far lower rates than the United States of hospitalizations from preventable causes like diabetes (almost twice as common here) and hypertension (more than eight times as common). And even though Canada spends less than half what we do per capita on health care, life expectancy there is 82 years, compared with 78.6 years in the United States.

When the pandemic reached North America, Canadian hospitals, which operate under annual global budgets — fixed payments typically allocated at the provincial and regional levels to cover operating expenses — were better prepared for the influx of patients than many U.S. hospitals. And Canada ramped up production of personal protective equipment much more quickly than we did.

Of the many regrets I have about what I once did for a living, one of the biggest is slandering Canada’s health-care system. If the United States had undertaken a different kind of reform in 2009 (or anytime since), one that didn’t rely on private insurance companies that have every incentive to limit what they pay for, we’d be a healthier country today. Living without insurance dramatically increases your chances of dying unnecessarily. Over the past 13 years, tens of thousands of Americans have probably died prematurely because, unlike our neighbors to the north, they either had no coverage or were so inadequately insured that they couldn’t afford the care they needed. I live with that horror, and my role in it, every day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com…

Life expectancy is longer in states with more liberal policies

US State Policies, Politics, and Life Expectancy

By Jennifer Karas Montez, Jason Beckfield, Julene Kemp Cooney, Jacob M. Grumbach, Mark D. Hayward, Huseyin Zeyd Koytak, Steven H. Woolf, Anna Zajacova
The Milbank Quarterly, August 4, 2020

Abstract

Policy Points

  • Changes in US state policies since the 1970s, particularly after 2010, have played an important role in the stagnation and recent decline in US life expectancy.
  • Some US state policies appear to be key levers for improving life expectancy, such as policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment.
  • US life expectancy is estimated to be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all US states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies, which would put US life expectancy on par with other high‐income countries.

Context: Life expectancy in the United States has increased little in previous decades, declined in recent years, and become more unequal across US states. Those trends were accompanied by substantial changes in the US policy environment, particularly at the state level. State policies affect nearly every aspect of people’s lives, including economic well‐being, social relationships, education, housing, lifestyles, and access to medical care. This study examines the extent to which the state policy environment may have contributed to the troubling trends in US life expectancy.

Methods: We merged annual data on life expectancy for US states from 1970 to 2014 with annual data on 18 state‐level policy domains such as tobacco, environment, tax, and labor. Using the 45 years of data and controlling for differences in the characteristics of states and their populations, we modeled the association between state policies and life expectancy, and assessed how changes in those policies may have contributed to trends in US life expectancy from 1970 through 2014.

Findings: Results show that changes in life expectancy during 1970‐2014 were associated with changes in state policies on a conservative‐liberal continuum, where more liberal policies expand economic regulations and protect marginalized groups. States that implemented more conservative policies were more likely to experience a reduction in life expectancy. We estimated that the shallow upward trend in US life expectancy from 2010 to 2014 would have been 25% steeper for women and 13% steeper for men had state policies not changed as they did. We also estimated that US life expectancy would be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies.

Conclusions: Understanding and reversing the troubling trends and growing inequalities in US life expectancy requires attention to US state policy contexts, their dynamic changes in recent decades, and the forces behind those changes. Changes in US political and policy contexts since the 1970s may undergird the deterioration of Americans’ health and longevity.

From the Discussion

The changing policy contexts of US states since the 1970s may have played a sizable role in shaping US life expectancy. Indeed, this study’s findings are consistent with the proposition that changes in state policy contexts have contributed to the growing gap in life expectancy across states since 1980 and suppressed overall gains in US life expectancy. This is particularly striking during the last five years of our study period (2010‐2014), in which we estimated that the shallow upward trend in US life expectancy would have been 25% steeper for women and 13% steeper for men had state policies not changed as they did.

The causal mechanisms linking state policies to life expectancy are complex. For example, environmental laws can shape exposure to toxic substances that damage respiratory and cardiovascular function, affect gene expression, disrupt endocrine function, and increase the risk of death. Civil rights laws may help protect individuals from the pernicious mental and physical health effects of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. Living in a US state with weak protections for lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations may elevate rates of generalized anxiety disorder, post‐traumatic stress disorder, and dysthymia among these populations. Labor policies such as higher minimum wage and paid family leave can improve economic well‐being, health behaviors, birth outcomes, and access to prenatal care, and can decrease mortality rates. Tobacco control policies, such as higher excise taxes and indoor smoking bans, have reduced the prevalence of smoking. Restrictive abortion policies have been linked with women’s poverty, reduced employment, anxiety, poor physical health, and violence from the man involved in the pregnancy. And finally, access to firearms in the home is associated with greater risks of gun‐related homicide (particularly for female victims, thought to reflect partner victimization) and suicide. Collectively, these studies indicate that the mechanisms are numerous and complex and shape nearly all aspects of people’s lives.

From the Policy Implications

Although the importance of any specific domain in our study should be interpreted cautiously, the overarching conclusion is clear: states that have invested in their populations’ social and economic well‐being by enacting more liberal policies over time tend to be the same states that have made considerable gains in life expectancy.

Conclusions

Americans’ opportunities and constraints for living a healthy life are strongly shaped by structural conditions. Other factors such as individual behaviors and medical care are also important and must be part of a comprehensive strategy to improve population health and reduce inequalities; nevertheless, as McCartney and colleagues argued, “there should be no pretense or illusion that health inequalities can be eliminated, or even meaningfully reduced, without a primary focus on structural factors.” This study focused on US state policy contexts as an increasingly important structural factor. Our findings underscore that progress in understanding—and reversing—the troubling trends and growing disparities in US life expectancy requires attention to state policy contexts, their dynamic changes in recent decades, and the forces behind those changes.

The full article, well worth reading, is open access:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com…

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

This meticulously researched study demonstrates that “states that have invested in their populations’ social and economic well‐being by enacting more liberal policies over time tend to be the same states that have made considerable gains in life expectancy.”

Policy matters. Those states that get policy right contribute to the health of their populations. Those states that are successful in enacting and implementing beneficial liberal policies that are health-enhancing are those states that get their politics right.

If the policies aren’t right and the politics are a barrier, then change the politics so that you can fix the policies. Simple.

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US doctor in Canada: Medicare for All would have made America’s COVID response much better

America needs a health care system that puts public health ahead of profits. I know we can do better. I see it everyday in Canada amid the coronavirus.

By Khati Hendry, M.D.
USA Today, August 5, 2020

I’m a family physician who moved to Canada from California 14 years ago, largely because of Canadian Medicare, the country’s national health insurance program. I’ve been much happier practicing medicine where my patients have universal coverage. It frees up doctors like me to focus on patient care and frees patients to focus on their health, instead of worrying about how to pay for it.

But I have never felt more grateful to work in a universal health care system than during the COVID-19 pandemic. My heart aches for the millions of Americans who have fallen ill and then have had to worry about how they will pay for tests and treatment, who have gone to work while sick for fear of losing their health coverage or who have lost not only their jobs but their insurance, leaving them at risk for financial ruin.

While no country is immune from COVID-19, Canada has been able to mount a much more effective response. Canada’s infection rate is a tiny fraction of that of the United States, and trending downwards. Its health system has two big advantages when fighting the pandemic: universal health coverage and an administratively simpler system.

Canadian Medicare is good for patients

Canada’s publicly financed single-payer system covers everybody, regardless of age, health or job status. No one loses coverage due to COVID-19. Canadian Medicare covers services like hospital and emergency care, doctor appointments and lab tests—without copays, deductibles or medical bills. Everyone is in a single “network,” so there are no artificial limits on which hospital or health provider a patient can see. As a result, Canadians are much less likely to delay testing or treatment for COVID-19, or for the chronic medical conditions that increase the risk of severe illness and death from the virus.

Canada’s universal system also has made it easier for medical and public health professionals to respond quickly — and together — without the administrative headache of multiple insurance companies.

In my province of British Columbia, our ongoing history of collaboration between physicians and the provincial health system made it easier to coordinate responses from hospitals, primary care clinics and long-term care facilities. From the start, emergency response committees held daily meetings to address challenges of hospital capacity, distribution of supplies and protective equipment, testing procedures, staffing policies, telemedicine, COVID-19 protocols and the safety of health care workers. The British Columbia public health officer gives regular updates and guidance as we move through pandemic phases.

Instead of primary care practices shutting down and forcing patients to go without care, as reported in many parts of the United States, we have been able to work together through our province’s longstanding “Divisions of Family Practice.” Most of us work in private practice, but we get help to coordinate with other family doctors to make sure that on-call shifts are covered, our practices are safe and our patients get the care they need during the pandemic. I have not had to care for a patient with COVID directly yet, but I have been part of the extensive planning process.

America should follow

As health care shifted from in-person to virtual practically overnight, Canadian health authorities put systems in place for more provincial phone triage, patient self-assessment protocols, virtual care software and better internet access to remote areas. The province made investments to support the needs of vulnerable populations, such as aboriginal communities, and those who are homeless, live in rural areas, travel for agricultural work or struggle with mental illness or addiction — groups that have suffered disproportionately from COVID-19 in the United States.

Many of my American colleagues tell me that they’re burned out from administrative demands and anguished from seeing patients not get the care they need because of cost. Now it is worse, as the number of uninsured has soared with the pandemic. My message for them is this: I know we can do better, because I see it every day. It is worth fighting for a system that puts public health ahead of profits: Medicare for All.

Dr. Khati L. Hendry is working in private practice in British Columbia and has served on Ministry of Health-physician collaborative committees and the local hospital staff. She worked as a family physician and medical director associated with community health centers in Oakland, California until 2004.

https://www.usatoday.com…

“Single payer provides better care to more people for less money”

Interview with Dr. Samuel Metz

Joan Esposito Live, Local & Progressive, WCPT Radio, August 4, 2020

PNHP-Oregon leader Dr. Samuel Metz pushed back against public option proponents who claim improved Medicare for All isn’t necessary to achieve the goals of health care reform.

“We cannot have an optional single-payer plan,” he said, “because that means there are other payers and we lose the vast administrative efficiency and cost savings of having just one payer for all of health care. That’s how single payer provides better care to more people for less money.”

The interview with Dr. Metz begins at 22:10 and goes until 46:16 in the media player above, or at the link below.

https://soundcloud.com…

PNHP-Oregon also ran the following :60 ad alongside Dr. Metz’s interview; the ad was produced by Mad as Hell Doctors and performed by Bob Wickline.

https://wicklinefamilyandfriends.bandcamp.com…

CMS plans to cut Medicare payments by 10.6%

Proposed Policy, Payment, and Quality Provisions Changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for Calendar Year 2021

CMS.gov, August 3, 2020

On August 3, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule that announces and solicits public comments on proposed policy changes for Medicare payments under the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS), and other Medicare Part B issues, on or after January 1, 2021.

Since 1992, Medicare has paid for the services of physicians and other billing professionals under the PFS.

Payments are based on the relative resources typically used to furnish the service. Relative value units (RVUs) are applied to each service for physician work, practice expense, and malpractice. These RVUs become payment rates through the application of a conversion factor. Payment rates are calculated to include an overall payment update specified by statute.

CY 2021 PFS Ratesetting and Conversion Factor

We are proposing a series of standard technical proposals involving practice expense, including the implementation of the third year of the market-based supply and equipment pricing update, and standard ratesetting refinements to update premium data involving malpractice expense and geographic practice cost indices (GPCIs).

With the budget neutrality adjustment to account for changes in RVUs, as required by law, the proposed CY 2021 PFS conversion factor is $32.26, a decrease of $3.83 from the CY 2020 PFS conversion factor of $36.09.

https://www.cms.gov…

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

Each year, in their efforts to privatize Medicare, CMS has used innovative accounting maneuvers to increase the payment rates for the private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, while neglecting the traditional Medicare program. This has allowed the MA plans to charge lower premium rates and to provide extra benefits which then gives the private plans an unfair competitive advantage over the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program (FFS). The resulting marketing advantage has been effective in increasing enrollment in the private MA plans.

Once enrollment increased in the private plans it was assumed that CMS would decrease funding of the traditional FFS Medicare program causing it to wilt on the vine (or be drowned in a bathtub, in the words of Grover Norquist). It looks like we are entering that phase.

One innovative accounting maneuver for FFS Medicare available to CMS is making a “budget neutrality adjustment.” Imagine the variables that they can conjure up to make these adjustments. Whatever they did, they are rationalizing a 10.6 percent reduction in FFS payments beginning in January – this in a system that many complain is already chronically underfunded.

What do you suppose physicians will do five months from now when they see a ten percent reduction in their FFS Medicare payments? That’s on top of the stresses of a pandemic and a recession. And the private insurance sector and their Wall Street barons are going to have the answers? We may be headed for more disruption, and not the good kind.

A well designed, single payer Medicare for All program could salvage our health care system, but we have to elect public stewards who are dedicated to the best interests of patients. Supporting the system through adequate funding is in the best interests of patients.

Stay informed! Visit www.pnhp.org/qotd to sign up for daily email updates.

Gaining freedom by escaping the unfreedom of the workplace

A rebranding of 'freedom'?

University of Chicago Press Journals, American Association for the Advancement of Science EurekAlert!, July 31, 2020

According to recent Gallup polls, socialism is now more popular than capitalism among Democrats and young people, and support for “some form of socialism” among all Americans is at 43% (compared to 25% in 1942). Policies that went unmentioned or were declared out-of-bounds in elections four years ago–a federal jobs guarantee, single-payer health care, free college, massive tax hikes on the rich, and the Green New Deal–are commonplace in Democrats’ 2020 campaigns.

However, in “Freedom Now,” a new paper published by Alex Gourevitch and Corey Robin in Polity’s May Symposium on the Challenges Facing Democrats, there is still no clear, unifying idea behind this political shift. “One has not heard anything on the order of Franklin Roosevelt’s Commonwealth Club speech or Reagan’s story of the free market,” the authors write. If these policies are to have a chance of breaking through, they will need a grounding principle, or ideology name the enemy, organize the policies, orient the actions, state the destination, and provide the fuel for the movement.

Gourevitch and Robin propose that that idea is freedom. “While the left once understood freedom as emancipation from the economy, the right spent the twentieth century neutralizing and appropriating the idea of freedom by reinventing the economy as the true site of freedom.”

To reclaim freedom as a value of the left, the authors believe the first place to start is the unfreedom of the workplace. “In nearly every capitalist country, one of the leading elements of the legal definition of employment is subordination to the will of a superior.” That can mean that employees must urinate–or are forbidden to urinate. It can mean that they should be sexually appealing–or must not be sexually appealing. They may be told how to speak, what to say, whom to say it to, where to be, where to go, how to dress, when to eat, and what to read–all in the name of the job. “But isn’t the worker free to leave a bad boss? Formally speaking, yes,” the authors write. “But even if they are free to exit this workplace, they are not free to exit the workplace.”

Reclaiming “freedom” names the problem that an increasing number of people face today: systemic unfreedom in the neoliberal economy. By confronting that unfreedom, the left can do more than identify, in a coherent and cohesive way, the myriad problems that individuals are currently facing. The authors find the seeds of that idea in Bernie Sanders’s rhetoric about being “organizer in chief,” and in proposals from the Warren and Sanders camps that would strengthen workers’ right to strike and organize.

However, they note, “A real politics of freedom posits a belief in the capacity of people to revise the terms of their existence and a commitment to the institutions that make these collective revisions possible.” In other words, freedom is best realized not through tending our own gardens but through disciplined commitment and collective struggle, in activities like mass strikes and party politics. “These democratic struggles are not simply expressions and experiences of freedom, though they are that. They are also the means to the freedoms people deserve.”

https://www.eurekalert.org…

Symposium on the Challenges Facing Democrats: Freedom Now

By Alex Gourevitch, Brown University and Corey Robin, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
University of Chicago Press Journals, Polity, July 2020

Abstract

Left-wing politics is resurgent. Self-proclaimed socialists are unexpectedly popular. Proposals like universal health care are a commonplace of Democratic campaigns. But there is not yet a clear, unifying idea behind this political shift. We propose that that idea is freedom. While the left once understood freedom as emancipation from the economy, the right spent the twentieth century neutralizing and appropriating the idea of freedom by reinventing the economy as the true site of freedom. To reclaim freedom as a value of the left, we have to begin with the daily experience of most people: the unfreedom of the workplace. The authoritarian organization of work is not just an offense against freedom; it also helps us understand how freedom requires emancipation both from the economy and within the economy, and why that emancipation requires mass struggle.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu…

Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

In simplified terms, “Freedom Now,” by Alex Gourevitch and Corey Robin, discusses how the political right captured the rhetorical concept of freedom, but that it can be reclaimed by the left by escaping the unfreedom of the workplace. To try to understand what this means, both the press release and the abstract of the article are reproduced above, since rephrasing helps. Actually, I found that I had to read the full article (available for free at the journals.uchicago.edu link above) – twice.

In my years of advocating for a single payer national health program, I’ve found that it is often difficult to find a common ground of communication with conservatives, libertarians, and even neoliberals. When I extol the virtues of Medicare for All, one common response from the right is that having the government involved takes away your freedom. That response, of course, has become a meme.

But Gourevitch and Robin show us that it is the unfreedom of the workplace from which we need relief. They conclude, “A real politics of freedom posits a belief in the capacity of people to revise the terms of their existence and a commitment to the institutions that make these collective revisions possible. In this instance, that translates into the belief that freedom is best realized not through tending our own gardens but through disciplined commitment and collective struggle, in activities like mass strikes and party politics. These democratic struggles are not simply expressions and experiences of freedom, though they are that. They are also the means to the freedoms people deserve.”

Social programs provided by the government but not dependent on the workplace, such as single payer Medicare for All, Social Security retirement, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, long term care, public education including that beyond the primary and secondary levels that eliminates the bondage of student loans, federal jobs guarantee, food security programs, guaranteed housing, progressive tax policies, and the like – dare we use the term “socialism” – provide freedom by freeing us up from the unfreedom of the workplace advocated by those on the right who support the capitalistic neoliberalism of the marketplace workplace. With appropriate social programs, capitalism, markets and the workplace still work for us, but they don’t take away our freedom.

Read the full article. Twice. Or three times. Freedom belongs to all of us. When we see that this disciplined commitment and collective struggle when acted out are the means to the freedoms people deserve, we will be able to shout out the words promulgated by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Stay informed! Visit www.pnhp.org/qotd to sign up for daily email updates.

COVID-19 proves need for universal medical coverage

By Erica Heiman, M.D., Jack Bernard, and Henry Kahn, M.D.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 31, 2020

COVID-19 has stolen the lives of over 140,000 Americans so far — with many more to come. Respected forecasters have predicted well over 200,000 US deaths due to COVID-19 before the end of October. (https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america).

As a worldwide pandemic, COVID-19 belongs to no single system of health care. It has affected countries with comprehensive, universal care as well as countries with inadequate or incomplete coverage, like us. But COVID-19 has impacted the U.S. particularly hard, with a higher number of confirmed cases than anywhere else in the world (nearly 3.8 million as of July 21st and rising very rapidly), https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html), and a higher mortality rate (3.7%)  than many less-developed nations. In large part this is due to our lack of a comprehensive system of national health insurance, like Medicare for All.

Many casualties of our pandemic are found at the “fault lines” of U.S. society. Think of individuals facing economic hardships who cannot socially distance because it would mean losing a job and precious income. Think of those imprisoned, detained, or the frail institutionalized elderly. Sadly, many of the characteristics that conspire to make people sick are rooted in systemic, long-time racism ingrained in our society and difficult to change.

Our U.S. healthcare financing is a clumsy mixture of public, private, and employer-based insurance. As the COVID-19 calamity has shown, our current “hodgepodge” financing denies high-quality care to people who are economically and socially underprivileged. We also allow increasing numbers of Americans to fall into these deprived categories as massive job losses lead to terminations of health insurance. Prior to the pandemic, unemployment was much lower. When statisticians include those underemployed or discouraged from seeking work, the current unemployment estimate is 18.3% (the long- term average is 10%)(https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_u_6_unemployment_rate_unadjusted).

Our number of uninsured was much too high before COVID-19, but now it has reached heights not seen since the passage of the ACA (Obamacare) in 2010. For example, between May 21 and May 26 of this year, the Census Bureau estimated that 20.5 million U.S. adults were uninsured; of that number 15.5 million were unemployed. The total number who were uninsured at some point during the current year will be much higher. Rates of uninsurance in the South are consistently higher than the national rates (https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/).

Short-term economic assistance meant to help the newly unemployed will generally fail to address their medical needs. Among indigent people with no job, few can successfully negotiate with a private-sector insurance plan whose main goal is to make a profit. Preserving community health is rarely the purpose of private-sector plans. We don’t need to wait for more data on this subject.

The past few decades show that the U.S. spends more per capita on its health care than any other nation in the world, and yet has poorer health outcomes than most developed countries. According to OECD data (2018), U.S. per capita health care cost is $10,586 as opposed to much lower figures in other developed nations, like France ($4,965) and Canada ($4,974) with better mortality and morbidity statistics than ours (https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en). Our percentage of GDP spent on healthcare is 16.9% as compared to 11.2% for France and 10.7% for Canada. If we perpetuate our inefficient way of financing health care, we will bankrupt ourselves while doing without vital public expenditures like replacing our decaying infrastructure and investing in education.

No system is perfect, but more-inclusive models around the world finance health care more cost-effectively. Other countries have done better during the coronavirus pandemic, such as Austria, Denmark, Germany and Japan (https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries). A financing system that includes everyone will minimize discrimination against the poor. It will also expand public-health programs that mitigate the historical impacts of racism.

Protesters of all races and ages in the streets of America’s cities have shown that our country wants major systemic changes. Now is the time to design and implement a simplified U.S. healthcare financing system that leaves no one uninsured or underinsured.

Universal healthcare coverage will not eliminate systemic racism or erase a pandemic, but it will provide a solid platform of good health for Americans to stand on. We call for expanded, improved, Medicare for All to prevent so many of our fellow citizens from falling through the cracks.

Erica Heiman, M.D., is an internist and medical educator based at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. She is an active member of the Georgia Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Jack Bernard, former Director of Health Planning for Georgia, is a retired SVP with a national healthcare corporation and a former Republican county commissioner in Georgia. Henry Kahn, M.D., practiced medicine for nearly 40 years. He is Professor Emeritus at the Emory University School of Medicine and adjunct faculty at the Rollins School of Public Health and Morehouse School of Medicine.

https://www.ajc.com…