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Address why, not how, of health costs

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Address why, not how, of health costs

By Jonathan D. Walker, M.D.
The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.), July 31, 2011

Politicians and special interest groups are always trying to control the debate over health care. But there is one undeniable fact: we are paying more for health care than we ever have before.

People offer lots of explanations for this: malpractice, fraud, private insurance, obesity. All these problems contribute to the rising cost of health care. However, the primary reason is that there has been so much money sloshing around our health care system, and so many fragmented, for-profit entities getting that money, that prices keep climbing at a higher rate than almost anything else in the economy.

Unfortunately, politicians are reluctant to look closely at whether we are getting our money’s worth because special interests have tremendous control over the system. For instance, we hear about how expensive Medicare is, but did you know that although Medicare is spending our tax dollars, pharmaceutical lobbyists have made sure that it is forbidden to bargain over drug prices? Or if two treatments are equally effective, but one is expensive and the other is cheap, Medicare is required to pay for both without question?

To make matters worse, private insurance companies usually emulate Medicare, but they have to pay even more because otherwise health care providers won’t deal with them. There could be huge cost savings if we looked carefully at issues like these. But whenever someone tries to raise such questions, businesses that might lose money start complaining about “government takeover of health care” and the debate is shut down.

Since politicians don’t want to look at cost-effectiveness, the only way employers, insurance companies and the government can save money is to have us, the consumers, bear more of the cost. This is why co-pays and deductibles have increased so much over the past few years, and why employees have had fewer raises as employers spend more on insurance. It is also why some people want to change Medicare to a voucher program; doing so would further unload the cost onto patients. But none of this addresses why the costs are going up in the first place – it just gets us to pay more.

And there is another reason why this is happening. There are a lot of powerful people who think that the state of American health care will be better if we have more “skin in the game.” The feeling is that, as we pay more for medical treatments, we will become better shoppers for health care and that will bring costs down. Actually, there is a lot of data that suggest that putting more of our skin in the game doesn’t solve the problem. Instead, people end up putting off needed care and become sicker, or people who are really sick burn through their deductible so quickly that it doesn’t have any effect on costs at all. Plus, if huge corporations and the government can’t control the rising cost of health care, it is hard to imagine that individuals can. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make any difference that putting more of our skin in the game won’t solve the problem – the people with that viewpoint dominate the situation.

It is frustrating that our leaders are fighting over issues that are irrelevant when it comes to addressing the real problems. Things such as waivers or changing the eligibility age for Medicare do nothing to solve rising costs or improve the quality of care – they simply unload the costs onto us. We need to demand that politicians look at what we are paying for, rather than just how to pay for it. As we spend more every year on insurance, co-pays and deductibles, remember that it is our money and our health that are at stake. Unless we take the time to get involved, we may soon lose all of our skin to their game.

Dr. Jonathan D. Walker is a member of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan (hchp.info).

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110731/EDIT05/307319977/-1/EDIT01

For Medicaid Patients, Particularly Children, the Neurologist May Not Be In

By Gina Shaw
Neurology Today, July 21, 2011

If a child needs a pediatric neurologist in Chicago, he’d better hope that he isn’t on Medicaid. An alarming “secret shopper” style study published in the June 16 New England Journal of Medicine found that children with Medicaid were far more likely to be declined an appointment with a pediatric neurologist (as well as eight other types of specialists) than those with private insurance.

The researchers called 273 specialty practices in the Chicago area, posing as parents of children with urgent — but not emergency — medical problems. For the pediatric neurology practices, the child described was an eight-year-old with an initial onset of afebrile seizures, and a referral from both a primary care doctor and the emergency department.

The “patient” on Medicaid was nine times more likely to be denied an appointment with a pediatric neurologist than one with private insurance. The Medicaid callers who did get an appointment would have had to wait two weeks longer for their appointments than those with private insurance. (Pediatric neurologists actually did better than most other specialties in the study at accepting Medicaid patients — Medicaid callers seeking appointments with asthma specialists, otolaryngologists, dermatologists, and orthopedists were 34 to 44 times more likely to be denied a slot.)

“There’s never been a study this comprehensive or this rigorous that actually measured access to specialty care, let alone children’s access,” Karin V. Rhodes, MD, an author of the study and director of emergency care policy research in the department of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times in a June 15 report on the study.

“We’ve known this is the case for a long time, but I was really struck by this research and the incredible differences between Medicaid-insured children and privately insured children in their access to neurology specialty care,” said Rachel Nardin, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a practicing neurologist at the Cambridge Health Alliance. “It’s one of the most dramatic things I’ve ever seen,” added Dr. Nardin, who was not involved with the study.

The barriers to neurology care for people on Medicaid aren’t limited to pediatric neurology. “These disparities aren’t just for children; they’re there for adults as well,” Dr. Nardin noted. In the April 13, 2010 issue of Neurology, she and colleagues reported that the uninsured and those with Medicaid receive substandard migraine care, at least in part because they receive more care in emergency departments and less in physicians’ offices.

But, Dr. Nardin pointed out, the New England Journal study pinpoints the problem precisely, by separating out insurance factors from factors having to do with the patients themselves — such as lack of access to transportation and low health literacy. “That’s why it’s so important,” said Dr. Nardin. “It controlled for all the other variables and showed that simply being on Medicaid was responsible for dramatically reduced access to care.”

That finding doesn’t surprise Robert Friedland, MD, the Mason C. and Mary D. Rudd Chair of Neurology at the University of Louisville. “Rates of Medicaid reimbursement are falling, while expenses are not. It’s basically impossible for a neurologist to make a living seeing only Medicaid patients. I’m not talking about making a good living, I’m talking about making any living at all.”

In Illinois, for example, Dr. Rhodes reported that Medicaid pays $99.86 for an office visit for a problem of “moderate severity,” while private insurers pay $160. “At an AAN practice management class, I learned that for one neurologist in private practice to break even, they need to generate over $240,000 of income in order to cover all expenses. You can’t do that if you see Medicaid patients,” Dr. Friedland said.

“Through my contacts through the Florida Society of Neurology, I have heard from many private neurologists who have had to either stop taking Medicaid entirely, or limit the percentage of patients that they take, simply because they lose money every time they see a Medicaid patient,” said Glenn Finney, MD, assistant professor of neurology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “I would say that right now the only neurologists who can regularly take Medicaid patients are at large institutions that receive federal aid to offset the costs.”

Dr. Nardin said that she has encountered difficulty in referring Medicaid-insured patients to subspecialists. “I work at a safety net hospital, where around 40 percent of our patients have Medicaid. Since we’re a community hospital, we don’t have certain subspecialties and surgical specialists on the faculty, and it’s often very difficult to get a consult — even here in Boston, in a city with a lot of academic medical centers.”

For Medicaid patients who don’t live in a city that has a good-sized academic medical center, access to neurology care can be even more difficult. “Here in Florida, since we’re a geographically large state, if you’re not within close distance to a major academic institution with a neurology division, you may have to travel several hours to find a neurologist that will see you,” Dr. Finney said. “And a lot of our patients on Medicaid can’t travel easily. Either they can’t afford to, or they have neurologic conditions that prevent or curtail entirely their ability to drive themselves or go somewhere alone.”

WHERE PATIENTS END UP

So what do they do? “They end up seeing no neurologist at all for their problem, and rely on local generalists,” Dr. Finney said. “Although fewer and fewer primary care physicians are taking Medicaid as well. They may get their care through the emergency department. Or at best, they see a neurologist very occasionally, even if more frequent visits would provide better care and prevent complications from their illness.”

In some cases, even the academic medical centers are cutting back on Medicaid care.

“Our department still takes Medicaid patients, but several other branches of our institution do not,” Dr. Finney said. “I care for people with dementia, memory and cognitive disorders. Sometimes they need more in-depth cognitive testing done by a neuropsychologist, and we can’t find anyone to do it for Medicaid patients, even at our own institution. It’s not because of any desire not to see these patients. In fact, they’ve offered some limited programs at a reduced rate, for people with epilepsy, with neuropsychologists in training. But they literally can’t afford to care for Medicaid patients.”

Neurologists and their patients are particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of Medicaid. As a cognitive specialty, the heart of neurology is the physical examination and patient history, which reimburse — in any form of insurance, but particularly within Medicaid — at lower rates than procedure-based specialties.

People with certain neurologic conditions, especially those that can affect a younger population — such as migraine, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis — are also more likely to end up on Medicaid because of their disease. “A lot of patients who have uncontrolled epilepsy and can’t drive find that it impairs their ability to work,” said Dr. Finney. “They’re younger and can’t get Medicare, so they will end up on the Medicaid rolls trying to get control of their seizures and return to a good quality of life.”

Dr. Friedland noted that people with multiple sclerosis face particular challenges if they’re on Medicaid. “Their care is chronic and recurring and it doesn’t generate enough income to cover the costs of the practice,” he said. “And the patients don’t need EEGs
and EMGs, which are relatively more remunerative for neurologists.”

The longer these patients go without treatment, the more complicated their conditions may become — and ultimately, the greater the cost to both them and to society. “There are many treatable neurologic conditions that, if left untreated, affect not only the person’s well-being but their productivity in society. Untreated or poorly treated epilepsy or migraine really debilitate patients,” Dr. Nardin said. “There’s a big social cost to leaving these patients without access to the care they need to be fully functioning members of society.”

What’s the answer? “A financial situation in which doctors and departments, and functional units in an institution, lose money through their daily work is untenable. Certainly everybody agrees that care costs are going up very fast, but you can’t deal with it by paying doctors less,” Dr. Friedland said. He suggests that, for a start, reimbursement rates need to be reconsidered. “One question is whether a dermatologist really should be paid more than one $100 to do a five-minute skin biopsy, while an hour’s consultation with a dementia patient provides payment of less than $100.”

More broadly, Dr. Nardin said that these findings point to the need to rethink health care reform. “The recently enacted Affordable Care Act will increase the number of people who are insured in part by expanding Medicaid,” she said. “Sixteen million people are projected to get publicly subsidized private insurance and 16 million to get Medicaid. But now, we have data that tells us that just having the Medicaid card doesn’t mean that you’re going to have access to care.”

There are two options to fix that, she suggests — either legislation requiring Medicaid to reimburse sufficiently to cover costs, or replacing the patchwork of health insurance coverage in the current system with true national health insurance, providing standard coverage and full benefits to everyone equally. “If we really want to reform our health care system, we have to keep our eye on the prize,” she said. “Our goal isn’t just a health insurance card, but people being able to see a doctor when they need to.”

REFERENCE:
Bisgaier J, Rhodes V. Auditing access to specialty care for children with public insurance. N Engl J Med 2011;364(24):2324–2333.

Meja NI, Nardin R. Dying young: eliminating racial disparities in neuromuscular disease outcomes. Neurology 2010;75(11):948–949.

Wilper A, Woohandler S, Nardin R, et al. Impact of insurance status on migraine care in the United States: a population-based study. Neurology 2010;74(15):1178–1183.

http://journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2011/07210/For_Medicaid_Patients,_Particularly_Children,_the.2.aspx

Single payer in stormy times, Medicare facing new threats

Aug. 10, 2011

Dear PNHP colleagues,

These are challenging times for advocates of single-payer health reform, we think you’ll agree.

Even as PNHP members vigorously celebrated the 46th anniversary of Medicare in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, blogs and on radio stations across the nation, noting the program’s merits and utility as a model for a universal, cost-effective single-payer system, Congress and the White House set up a “deficit reduction” process that will likely result in serious cuts to the program – with the prospect of even deeper cuts down the road.

Announcing the Nick Skala Scholarship Fund

Help bring medical and other health professional students to PNHP’s Annual Meeting by generously donating to the Nicholas Skala Health Activist Scholarship Fund. The fund awards $250 travel stipends to the Annual Meeting for students who have shown courage, tenacity and passion in their advocacy for single payer. The award is named after Nick Skala, a young research associate for PNHP who died in 2009. Nick was one of our nation’s most gifted advocates for single-payer national health insurance. Donate to this special fund today! If you’re a student, you can apply for a scholarship by filling out this form.

The Budget Control Act, signed by President Obama last week, calls for an automatic 2 percent reduction in Medicare in the event that a newly created “supercommittee” of six Democrats and six Republicans can’t agree on a wider package amounting to at least $1.5 trillion in cuts in federal spending. This supercommittee can also recommend cuts to Medicaid and Social Security, among other programs.

Dr. Don McCanne, PNHP’s senior policy fellow, writes, “The probability of reaching a complex and controversial agreement that leaves Medicare totally unscathed is almost zero in this dysfunctional Congress.” He suggests the law will only accelerate efforts by Medicare’s opponents to undermine the program.

In the context of a troubled economy and deepening economic hardship, such cuts can only be expected to intensify the suffering of the U.S. population. Our New York Metro chapter issued a sharply critical statement on the legislation.

As indicated above, PNHP members have spoken out in defense of Medicare, even while acknowledging its limitations. See, for example, Dr. Ann Settgast’s recent op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dr. James Mitchiner’s op-ed at AnnArbor.com, or Dr. Hrayr Attarian’s letter in the Chicago Sun-Times. At least 15 similar articles by PNHPers appeared in newspapers nationwide over the past month.

Along the same lines, our sister organization Healthcare-Now helped organize at least 45 events in 21 states to celebrate Medicare’s anniversary and to call for the program’s improvement and expansion to cover everyone. Many PNHP members participated in these too, of course.

Polls, surveys and citizen juries have consistently shown our proposal – an improved Medicare for all – enjoys the support of about two-thirds of the public. And of course Medicare itself commands extremely high public approval ratings. For example, a July 18-20 CNN poll showed 87 percent oppose cutting Medicare to reduce the deficit. Yet pundits, lawmakers and the president seem remarkably cavalier about proposals that would undermine the program.

For further evidence of single payer’s robust support, please read this morning’s extraordinary endorsement of single payer by the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In view of these developments, we urge you to attend PNHP’s Annual Meeting on Oct. 29 in Washington, D.C., to help us strategize about the next steps forward for the single-payer movement. We also urge you to make a tax-deductible donation to PNHP so we can continue to educate the profession and the public about these critical issues.

(Incidentally, if you missed the stimulating PNHP dialogue about Medicare and single payer with Bruce Vladeck, the former head of Medicare and Medicaid, last month, you can listen to an audio recording of that conference call here.)

Finally, we’d like to draw your attention to a new study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine showing access to outpatient psychiatric care in the greater Boston area is severely limited, even for people with reputedly excellent private health insurance. Private insurers’ restrictive networks and their inadequate reimbursements to psychiatrists are at the root of the problem, the authors say.

The research was led by PNHP members Drs. J. Wesley Boyd, Rachel Nardin, Andrew Linsenmeyer, Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein. Read PNHP’s news release on the study and the Boston Globe’s article, “Mental care can be hard to find, even for insured.” The research was also covered by CBS News and Time magazine.

Cordially,

Garrett Adams, M.D., M.P.H.
President
 
P.S. Again: Don’t forget to register for PNHP’s Annual Meeting in Washington on Oct. 29 at the Gallaudet University Kellogg Conference Hotel. Guest speakers include Phillip Longman, author of “Best Care Anywhere”; Canada’s distinguished health economist Robert G. Evans; and the U.K.’s Dr. Jacqueline Davis, a leader of Keep our NHS Public. You’ll be able to exchange experiences with fellow physicians and single-payer advocates from all over the country. We will host a Leadership Training Institute for a limited number of participants on the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 28. You won’t want to miss this extraordinary gathering. Register today.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial on single payer

Editorial: If U.S. is serious about debt, there's a single-payer solution.

By the Editorial Board
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 10, 2011

If America truly is serious about dealing with its deficit problems, there’s a fairly simple solution. But you’re probably not going to like it: Enact a single-payer health care plan.

See, we told you weren’t going to like it.

But the fact is that everyone who has studied the deficit problem has agreed that it’s actually a health care problem.

That being the case — and nobody argues that it isn’t — there are two broad ways for the government to address its spiraling health care costs. One, shift more of those costs to recipients, by trimming benefits and/or extending eligibility ages and indexing eligibility to personal income. This is politically unpalatable, particularly to most Democrats, President Barack Obama being a conspicuous exception.

The second way for government to address its health costs is not to shift them, but to reduce them. This is what a single-payer health care system would do, largely by taking the for-profit players (insurance companies for the most part) out of the loop.

The advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program estimates that “private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”

Once everyone is covered, the government would have the clout to bring discipline into the wild west of health care spending.

Eventually, the United States will have a single-payer plan. But we’ll waste a lot of money and time getting there.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_97afa329-42f8-5f12-adb0-97fa305c3e4b.html

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

The Editorial Board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is right. Eventually we will have a single payer program, but only after wasting much more money and time.

If U.S. is serious about debt, there's a single-payer solution

By the Editorial Board
St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 10, 2011

If America truly is serious about dealing with its deficit problems, there’s a fairly simple solution. But you’re probably not going to like it: Enact a single-payer health care plan.

See, we told you weren’t going to like it.

But the fact is that everyone who has studied the deficit problem has agreed that it’s actually a health care problem — more specifically, the cost of providing Medicare benefits to an aging and longer-living population. The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform reported last December: “The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects if we continue on our current course, deficits will remain high throughout the rest of this decade and beyond, and debt will spiral ever higher, reaching 90 percent of GDP in 2020.

“Over the long run, as the baby boomers retire and health care costs continue to grow, the situation will become far worse. By 2025 revenue will be able to finance only interest payments, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Every other federal government activity — from national defense and homeland security to transportation and energy — will have to be paid for with borrowed money.”

That being the case — and nobody argues that it isn’t — there are two broad ways for the government to address its spiraling health care costs. One, shift more of those costs to recipients, by trimming benefits and/or extending eligibility ages and indexing eligibility to personal income. This is politically unpalatable, particularly to most Democrats, President Barack Obama being a conspicuous exception.

The second way for government to address its health costs is not to shift them, but to reduce them. This is what a single-payer health care system would do, largely by taking the for-profit players (insurance companies for the most part) out of the loop.

The advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program estimates that “private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”

Once everyone is covered, the government would have the clout to bring discipline into the wild west of health care spending. It could insist that providers be paid for quality of service, not quantity. Health facilities and equipment could be managed by regional boards. Medical services could be “bundled” — rather than paying hospitals and doctors and laboratories separately, there would be fixed prices for treatments. And so on.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in 2009 contains many pilot programs designed to test cost-reduction strategies. Most of them won’t kick in for another six to eight years, by which time health care costs will be approaching 20 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. The combined state and federal share of that will be 49 percent, up from 45 percent today.

Indeed, a study published this month in the journal Health Affairs estimates that while the Affordable Care Act will pay for itself by 2020, it won’t actually “bend the cost curve,” as the Obama administration had hoped. But the study, done by the Actuary Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says the ACA will significantly slow the rise of health care costs to state and local governments.

But consider those two findings: In effect, they say that if reducing overall health care costs is the goal, then the ACA didn’t go far enough. Thirty million more people will be insured and government costs will grow more slowly. But overall health care costs will continue to explode.

Sooner or later, a nation serious about controlling spending must take broad control of the health care system.

It surely won’t be sooner. Compared to the political fight that would erupt over a single-payer plan, the congressional battle over the Affordable Care Act would seem as tame as resolution praising mom, the flag and apple pie.

The ACA was a compromise. Mr. Obama brought everyone to the table — doctors, insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals — and came away with a “best we can get” kind of bill. Many of those at the table turned around and lobbied against it or sought special favors once the bill came before Congress.

It passed by narrow margins, and Congress is decidedly more conservative now. Indeed, the new House majority has voted to repeal the ACA and challenges to its constitutionality continue to work their way toward the Supreme Court.

But now, like a baby discovering its toes, Congress has discovered the deficit. And the plain fact is that unless you want to commit political suicide and cut Medicare to the bone — as Rep. Paul Ryan’s, R-Wis., budget plan would do — the best way to seriously address long-term deficits is to get control of health care costs through a single-payer plan.

In 2008, when health care costs amounted to “only” 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, Great Britain was spending 8.7 percent of its GDP on health care, and Canada was spending 10.4 percent. Both nations have single-payer plans. Quality of care scores in both nations are at least comparable, and in most cases, better.

Eventually, the United States will have a single-payer plan. But we’ll waste a lot of money and time getting there.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_97afa329-42f8-5f12-adb0-97fa305c3e4b.html#ixzz1UdVj1faS

Single payer works

By Patricia Downs Berger, M.D.
Letters, Boston Herald, August 10, 2011

Holly Robichaud’s column is an inflammatory attack on a common sense solution (“Single payer activists plan to take over,” Aug. 8). Most Bay Staters are hoping for a single-payer system; it is not being “foisted” on anyone. Ballot questions in 2008 and 2010 in 24 legislative districts all voted in support of single payer. The Massachusetts Medical Society in 2009 found that single payer reform was supported by 34 percent of doctors, the public option by 32 percent, and only 14 percent supported the Massachusetts health reform law of 2006.

A single payer system would save money by eliminating the wasteful bureaucracy created by the insurance industry and would allow physicians and patients to make decisions together without the interference of insurance policy makers. People would pay a predictable amount through the tax system with no premiums, no co-pays, no deductibles and no other out-of-pocket charges. Almost everyone including small businesses would save and everyone would be covered for comprehensive care. Single payer is not a crazy socialistic idea; it works!

Dr. Patricia Downs Berger is co-chair of Mass-Care, a coalition of groups supporting single-payer health reform.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/letters/view/20110810single_payer_works/

Physicians Group: Debt Deal Threatens Health of Seniors and Disabled

News release
CommonDreams August 5, 2011

NEW YORK – The New York Metro chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), an 18,000-member national organization, denounces the federal debt ceiling deal signed into law by President Obama on Tuesday.

“Politicians who say Medicare and Social Security are spared cuts are not being honest,” said Dr. Oliver Fein, Chair of PNHP-NY Metro. “Plans to cut these vital programs are simply being delayed until later in the year. Balancing the books by cutting programs that help the sick and the elderly is unconscionable.”

The Budget Control Act includes a 2 percent across-the-board cut to Medicare, which will be triggered automatically unless Congress accepts a budget reduction plan by a 12-member “Supercommittee” before December 23. Even if the panel’s proposal is approved, cuts to Medicare and Social Security are virtually certain in that plan.

“Instead of closing corporate tax loopholes and raising taxes on the wealthy, the lawmakers are blaming people who need health care. If they were truly interested in lowering health care costs, they would deal with the elephant in the room: an unaffordable health care system bloated by the private insurance industry’s $400 billion a year of profits and administrative wastes. What would actually cut health care costs for everyone? Improving and expanding an efficient public program, like Medicare, to everybody,” said Dr. Fein.

Since Medicare has a 3 percent overhead, compared with 17-28 percent for private health insurance, advocates for a universal, affordable health care system have long pushed for a public insurance system based on an improved version of Medicare for everyone.

Dr. Fein added, “An effective social program like Medicare is not the cause of our economic problem; it is the solution. Medicare is a government-funded program that is much more efficiently run than its private counterpart. It prioritizes people’s needs instead of private profits. This approach is the basis for a healthy society, both physically and fiscally.”

Nothing is off the table for the upcoming “Supercommittee” that will propose a plan for the second round of cuts. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have traditionally been the prime targets of any such proposal. Deep cuts to Medicare could include shifting major costs to beneficiaries, 50 percent of whom earn less than $22,000 a year.

“People on Medicare see it as a lifeboat. My patients know that if they’re on Medicare, they’re safe. But now this is being threatened,” said Dr. Alec Pruchnicki, a geriatrician and Board member of PNHP-NY Metro. “What should be done instead is fix Medicare Part D and give the government the power to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies, the way the VA already does. That would save tens of billions of dollars.”

“It’s not only about what is in this bill, since so much is still up in the air, but the larger political environment that allowed the conversations surrounding this bill to be possible,” said Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal, a dermatologist and PNHP-NY Metro Board member. “Doctors have to advocate for their patients, and we can’t remain silent when the foundation of our social safety net is being dismantled. This is a life and death issue.”

PNHP-NY Metro is part of a large and growing national movement dedicated to protecting and expanding the country’s social safety net. Stakes have been raised substantially by the debt ceiling deal, and professional and grassroots organizations working together are intensifying their organizing before the urgent deadline of December 23, before which Congress must vote on the second round of cuts.

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/08/05-6

Banned in Boston: Access to psychiatric care

By J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD and Rachel Nardin, MD
KevinMD.com blog, MedPage Today

Imagine you have severe depression and go to a Boston emergency room for treatment. You are told to follow up with a psychiatrist within two weeks. You have good health insurance, so this shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Wrong. In a new study just published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, we found quite the opposite. Access to outpatient psychiatric care in the greater Boston area is severely limited, even for those with excellent private insurance.

We posed as patients insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts PPO, the largest insurer in the state. We called every BCBS in-network mental health facility within a 10-mile radius of downtown Boston, reporting that we had been evaluated in an emergency department for depression and discharged with instruction to obtain a psychiatric appointment within two weeks.

Only eight (13 percent) of the 64 sites listed on the BCBS website offered appointments, four (6 percent) of which were within two weeks. Fifteen clinics (23 percent) never called us back, despite our leaving two messages requesting an appointment. Another 15 clinics told us that we could only be seen in their facility if we had a primary care physician in their system.

Our Boston findings are consistent with national data showing limited availability of mental health services. For example, two-thirds of primary care physicians report that they cannot obtain outpatient mental health services for patients who need them.

The limited availability of psychiatric services has serious consequences for patients and their families. Mental health disorders are common, affecting nearly one in four adults annually. Inadequate treatment can result in individual and family suffering, lost productivity, and even death. Suicide, the third leading cause of death among youth ages 10-24, is more common among those suffering from mental illness.

Inadequate mental health care also creates problems for our health care system and society at large. A third of the homeless and more than half of all prison and jail inmates have mental illness.

The nation’s emergency departments are de facto psychiatric wards, with 79 percent of emergency doctors reporting that their hospitals board psychiatric patients for whom appropriate treatment resources could not be found, sometimes for days.

Although there are many contributors to the inadequacy of our mental health system, managed care has hit psychiatric services hard. Private insurers aggressively constrain patients’ access to services through stringent provider networks. As our study shows, this is often covert: insurers provide lists of in-network providers, but most are unavailable.

Because insurance company reimbursements for psychiatric services are far lower than for other types of care, hospitals also frequently restrict access. By contrast, hospitals compete for insured patients who need highly profitable procedures such as MRI scans or elective surgeries like knee replacements.

Insurance industry practices have also discouraged many private psychiatrists from accepting patients with health insurance.

Until such time as we have a truly universal health system providing comprehensive care, we need to ensure that insurance companies reimburse psychiatric care adequately. Until they do so, psychiatric patients will remain vulnerable, second-class citizens.

J. Wesley Boyd is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Rachel Nardin is an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/08/banned-boston-access-psychiatric-care.html

We all deserve excellent coverage

By Ewell Scott, M.D.
Letters, The Lexington (Ky.) Herald, July 28, 2011

As regards to the discussion and analysis of Lexington-Fayette government employees’ health insurance, the casual observer might comment that the current coverage is quite good.

In fact, better than most working Americans have today.

The question is who in the world should expect or have such excellent coverage? Well, how about all of the citizens of France, Great Britain, Spain, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany … you get the picture … the list goes on and on. The rest of the civilized world has universal, affordable, comprehensive health insurance regardless of place of employment, at half of the per capita cost. We could have it too by enacting Medicare for all. It is that simple.

Dr. Ewell Scott resides in Morehead, Ky.

http://www.kentucky.com/2011/07/28/1826618/letters-to-the-editor-july-28.html

Get rid of the greedy insurance companies

By Lynn Chacko, M.D.
The Gainesville Sun, Aug. 7, 2011

As a family physician, I applaud June Girard’s guest column promoting national health care.

Although I graduated from the University of Florida College of Medicine just a few years ago, I have already seen countless numbers of patients suffer or die needlessly because they can’t afford to see a specialist, pay their medication copay or have a necessary test. And these are the patients with insurance!

Not only are one-third of Floridians uninsured, those that have insurance are sadly not much better off. The problem can be summed up in one word: “profit.”

Health care shouldn’t be about making money. It should be about caring for people. The only affordable answer is to get rid of the greedy insurance companies and pass universal, single-payer health insurance.

Lynn Chacko practices family medicine. She resides in Gainesville, Fla.

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110807/OPINION02/110809657/-1/opinion?p=2&tc=pg

Obama asks Supreme Court to allow compromised care for Medicaid patients

Democrats Challenging Administration on Medicaid

By Robert Pear
The New York Times, August 8, 2011

In an unusual break with the White House, the Democratic leaders of Congress told the Supreme Court on Monday that President Obama was pursuing a misguided interpretation of federal Medicaid law that made it more difficult for low-income people to obtain health care.

Faced with severe budget problems, many states have reduced Medicaid payment rates for doctors, dentists, hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and other providers. In many parts of the country, payment rates are so low that Medicaid recipients have difficulty finding doctors to take them.

Federal law says Medicaid rates must be “sufficient to enlist enough providers” so that Medicaid beneficiaries have access to care to the same extent as the general population in an area.

The issue, of immense importance to poor people and states, comes to the Supreme Court in a set of cases consolidated under the name Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, No. 09-958. The court plans to hear oral arguments in October, with a decision expected by the spring. The original plaintiffs in the case, Medicaid beneficiaries and providers, say they were harmed by California’s decision to cut payment rates that were already among the lowest in the country.

The federal Medicaid law does not explicitly allow such suits. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, said beneficiaries and providers could sue under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which makes federal law “the supreme law of the land.”

The Justice Department, siding with California, told the court in May that no federal law allowed individuals to sue states to enforce this standard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/us/politics/09medicaid.html?_r=1&hp

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act relies heavily on the expansion of Medicaid to cover low-income individuals who are uninsured. Yet at the same time, his administration is appealing to the Supreme Court, under the supremacy clause, the federal government’s right to critically underfund the Medicaid program to the extent that patients will have significant impairment of their access to health care.

As we have stated many times in these messages, a severely underfunded welfare program for low-income individuals that clearly impairs access violates our sense of equity and health care justice. Apparently President Obama does not share this view. Otherwise, as a constitutional lawyer, why would he allow the Justice Department to take to the Supreme Court a case that would permit his administration to violate the law that says that Medicaid rates must be sufficient to enlist enough providers so that Medicaid beneficiaries have access to care to the same extent as the general population?

Where does this lead? Yesterday, in the context of reducing the deficit, he said that the country needs “modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare.” More cuts.

Try doing that in nations with universal social insurance programs. It will never happen. But in our fragmented system, there is an opening for battles based on demographic divides. The tax-cutting, government-shrinking young rebels are taking up the cause of putting greedy geezers in their place.

Having been raised in the 40s and 50s – a time when there was great hope of an egalitarian America – I have to ask myself that trite but timely question, what kind of a country have we become?

Taxpayers ripped off by for-profit hospices

Medicare costs for hospice up 70%

By Kelly Kennedy
USA Today, August 7, 2011

Medicare costs for hospice care have increased more than in any other health care sector as for-profit companies continue to gain a larger share of the end-of-life medical market, government records show.

A recent report by the inspector general for Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare, found for-profit hospices were paid 29% more per beneficiary than non-profit hospices.

At the same time, some of the nation’s largest for-profit hospice companies are paying multimillion-dollar settlements for fraud claims and facing multiple investigations from state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Critics say costs have also increased because for-profit organizations have cherry-picked patients who live the longest and require the least amount of care — such as those with dementia or Alzheimer’s, rather than those with cancer.

“Certain hospices seem to be seeking out beneficiaries with particular characteristics, and these beneficiaries are often found in nursing facilities,” said Jodi Nudelman, a regional inspector general for HHS in a webcast about the report.

In a growing number of cases, hospices are collecting the same daily rate for visiting patients in nursing facilities as other hospice programs that also provide patients’ room, board and medical care not related to their terminal illness.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/story/2011/08/Medicare-costs-for-hospice-up-70/49854600/1

Report of the Inspector General of HHS:
http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-02-10-00070.pdf

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

PNHP has long advocated removing for-profit corporations, with their passive investors, from the health care equation. This report on hospices from the HHS Inspector General provides more compelling support for this view.

For-profit hospices that provide care to Medicare patients have been ripping off taxpayers by cherry-picking less expensive patients, collecting much larger fees by providing services prematurely, and, worst of all, collecting full fees for merely providing what is not much more than house-call-type services in nursing homes rather than providing the full range of services expected in hospice care. Their multi-million dollar fraud settlements don’t seem to deter them.

It is imperative that we remove passive investors and their corporate executive goons from health care.