PNHP

A single (payer) step to reduce U.S. physician overhead by $60,000

A single (payer) step to reduce U.S. physician overhead by $60,000

US Physician Practices Versus Canadians: Spending Nearly Four Times As Much Money Interacting With Payers

By Dante Morra, Sean Nicholson, Wendy Levinson, David N. Gans, Terry Hammons and Lawrence P. Casalino
Health Affairs, August 2011

Physician practices, especially the small practices with just one or two physicians that are common in the United States, incur substantial costs in time and labor interacting with multiple insurance plans about claims, coverage, and billing for patient care and prescription drugs. We surveyed physicians and administrators in the province of Ontario, Canada, about time spent interacting with payers and compared the results with a national companion survey in the United States. We estimated physician practices in Ontario spent $22,205 per physician per year interacting with Canada’s single-payer agency — just 27 percent of the $82,975 per physician per year spent in the United States. US nursing staff, including medical assistants, spent 20.6 hours per physician per week interacting with health plans — nearly ten times that of their Ontario counterparts. If US physicians had administrative costs similar to those of Ontario physicians, the total savings would be approximately $27.6 billion per year. The results support the opinion shared by many US health care leaders interviewed for this study that interactions between physician practices and health plans could be performed much more efficiently.

The price of inefficiencies is not only the cost measured in this study. When these inefficiencies result in frequent interruptions in the work of physicians and their staff, they are likely to interfere with patient care. Everyone — health plans, physicians and their staffs, and patients — will be better off if inefficiencies in transactions between physicians and health plans can be reduced.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/early/2011/08/03/hlthaff.2010.0893

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

The U.S. spends over $60,000 more per physician per year than does Canada on the in-practice administrative costs of interacting with payers – four times as much in the U.S. as in the Canadian single payer system. That does not include the administrative costs of the U.S. private health insurers which will be 15 to 20 percent of premiums paid to plans in the exchanges being established by the Affordable Care Act.

A Health Affairs press release today stated, “Although the United States is not currently moving as a country toward a single-payer system, researchers offer ways to reduce administrative costs, including standardizing transactions as much as possible and conducting them electronically rather than by mail, fax, and phone.”

Unfortunately, the proposed use of standardized transactions conducted electronically hardly scratches the surface of this problem. Leaving in place a multitude of private and public plans with multiple benefit variations designed for the health care marketplace, with varying provider networks, and ever-changing patient eligibility can only perpetuate these administrative excesses.

What many in the policy community seem to forget is that it is not only the recovery of this administrative waste that would be of benefit, but we would all also benefit by the removal of the intrusive interference of the private insurers, the efficiencies of global budgeting and price negotiation, the assurance that everyone would be covered for life, benefits would be comprehensive, and financial barriers to care would be eliminated. Econometric models and the experience of other nations have demonstrated that we could have all of this without spending more than we already do.

Health Affairs and the sponsors of this study – The Commonwealth Fund and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – should not limit their recommendations to standardizing electronic transmissions. Instead of dismissing single payer with the passive observation that we are “not currently moving as a country toward a single-payer system,” they should be in the forefront of calling for a truly serious, in-depth look at the single payer model.

Instead of meekly submitting to the fact that we are hostages of the conservative revolution, we should break out and storm our centers of democracy, that is, if we still have a democracy.

Vladeck on the pernicious proposal of prohibiting first dollar coverage

Proposals To Forbid First-Dollar Coverage For Medicare Beneficiaries

By Bruce Vladeck, Ph.D
Kaiser Health News, August 2, 2011

The usual laundry lists of proposals for Medicare savings are already being circulated throughout official Washington. Most of these ideas have been around for years, and have never gotten past the talking stages because of political opposition or because they are simply bad ideas. But one especially pernicious proposal appears to have increasing traction among both politicians and policy analysts: the prohibition of first-dollar coverage in Medicare supplemental insurance, whether purchased in the individual markets or provided as a retiree benefit.

This proposal is based on a simple and seemingly self-evident syllogism. Medicare beneficiaries with supplemental insurance that provides them with first-dollar coverage by paying their deductibles and co-payments use more services than the small minority of beneficiaries without such coverage. Hence, forbidding such coverage would reduce use, thereby saving Medicare a pile of money.

American policymakers, and the health economists who enable them, are obsessed with issues of consumer demand, and the notion that health care is so expensive because Americans are so eager to consume it. In fact, insured Americans already have the highest out-of-pocket liabilities in the developed world, and use fewer services initiated by consumers. In the absence of supplemental coverage Medicare beneficiaries would have still higher out-of-pocket liabilities than other insured Americans, which is why essentially every beneficiary who can afford it seeks extra coverage. But while overuse of some services in some communities is inarguably a part of the Medicare cost problem, there is no compelling evidence that consumer-generated demand is a significant part of the problem. Whatever the political rhetoric, Medicare beneficiaries simply aren’t banging down the doors of physicians’ offices demanding extra MRIs and surgical procedures.

Quite the contrary: during the past decade, Congress has eliminated cost-sharing for most Medicare preventive services in response to concerns about the underuse of such services, and because of evidence that out-of-pocket costs were a significant deterrent, especially for less affluent and minority beneficiaries. More generally, while the evidence has been clear since the RAND experiments of the early 1970s that out-of-pocket costs reduce health care use, it’s also been clear that their effect is inversely related to disposable income: the less income a person has, the greater the effect of copayments and deductibles, not to mention the greater likelihood of poor health.

That’s why Medicaid historically forbade deductibles, and now permits them at only nominal levels. More importantly, the growth in out-of-pocket costs for health care consumers during the last decade or so has provided an abundance of illustrations of the basic fact that consumers deterred from seeking health care for economic reasons are just as likely to forego needed services as “discretionary” ones, and that that phenomenon is further correlated with income. Faced with higher out-of-pocket expenses, consumers may get fewer Botox treatments or buy fewer laxatives, but they also skip visits for management of their heart disease and diabetes, and don’t fill their prescriptions for hypertension medication.

The reason health insurance exists in the first place, after all, is to relieve individuals who are not medical experts of the need to figure out whether they can afford any particular medical service. In a rational world, policymakers worried about unnecessary or inappropriate use of specific services would just refuse to pay for those services. But in the contemporary American political environment, they might be accused of “rationing” or “death panels,” so they stay away. Instead, they appear to be willing, once again, to impose the consequences of their inability to control costs on those least able to bear them.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2011/August/02/different-takes-080211-vladeck.aspx

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

Unreasonable consumer demand is not a significant source of our high health care spending. Measures that deprive patients of beneficial health care services by imposing penalties designed to suppress consumer demand are not only inappropriate, but are truly heartless.

Vladeck on the pernicious proposal of prohibiting first dollar coverage

Proposals To Forbid First-Dollar Coverage For Medicare Beneficiaries

By Bruce Vladeck, Ph.D
Kaiser Health News, August 2, 2011

The usual laundry lists of proposals for Medicare savings are already being circulated throughout official Washington. Most of these ideas have been around for years, and have never gotten past the talking stages because of political opposition or because they are simply bad ideas. But one especially pernicious proposal appears to have increasing traction among both politicians and policy analysts: the prohibition of first-dollar coverage in Medicare supplemental insurance, whether purchased in the individual markets or provided as a retiree benefit.

This proposal is based on a simple and seemingly self-evident syllogism. Medicare beneficiaries with supplemental insurance that provides them with first-dollar coverage by paying their deductibles and co-payments use more services than the small minority of beneficiaries without such coverage. Hence, forbidding such coverage would reduce use, thereby saving Medicare a pile of money.

American policymakers, and the health economists who enable them, are obsessed with issues of consumer demand, and the notion that health care is so expensive because Americans are so eager to consume it. In fact, insured Americans already have the highest out-of-pocket liabilities in the developed world, and use fewer services initiated by consumers. In the absence of supplemental coverage Medicare beneficiaries would have still higher out-of-pocket liabilities than other insured Americans, which is why essentially every beneficiary who can afford it seeks extra coverage. But while overuse of some services in some communities is inarguably a part of the Medicare cost problem, there is no compelling evidence that consumer-generated demand is a significant part of the problem. Whatever the political rhetoric, Medicare beneficiaries simply aren’t banging down the doors of physicians’ offices demanding extra MRIs and surgical procedures.

Quite the contrary: during the past decade, Congress has eliminated cost-sharing for most Medicare preventive services in response to concerns about the underuse of such services, and because of evidence that out-of-pocket costs were a significant deterrent, especially for less affluent and minority beneficiaries. More generally, while the evidence has been clear since the RAND experiments of the early 1970s that out-of-pocket costs reduce health care use, it’s also been clear that their effect is inversely related to disposable income: the less income a person has, the greater the effect of copayments and deductibles, not to mention the greater likelihood of poor health.

That’s why Medicaid historically forbade deductibles, and now permits them at only nominal levels. More importantly, the growth in out-of-pocket costs for health care consumers during the last decade or so has provided an abundance of illustrations of the basic fact that consumers deterred from seeking health care for economic reasons are just as likely to forego needed services as “discretionary” ones, and that that phenomenon is further correlated with income. Faced with higher out-of-pocket expenses, consumers may get fewer Botox treatments or buy fewer laxatives, but they also skip visits for management of their heart disease and diabetes, and don’t fill their prescriptions for hypertension medication.

The reason health insurance exists in the first place, after all, is to relieve individuals who are not medical experts of the need to figure out whether they can afford any particular medical service. In a rational world, policymakers worried about unnecessary or inappropriate use of specific services would just refuse to pay for those services. But in the contemporary American political environment, they might be accused of “rationing” or “death panels,” so they stay away. Instead, they appear to be willing, once again, to impose the consequences of their inability to control costs on those least able to bear them.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2011/August/02/different-takes-080211-vladeck.aspx

Unreasonable consumer demand is not a significant source of our high health care spending. Measures that deprive patients of beneficial health care services by imposing penalties designed to suppress consumer demand are not only inappropriate, but are truly heartless.

Health Insurers Sacrifice Americans for Profit

By Wendell Potter
PR Watch, Aug. 1, 2011

Three of the biggest health insurers have announced quarterly earnings in the past few days. If Americans were able to eavesdrop on what executives from those firms tell their Wall Street masters every three months, they would have a better understanding of why premiums keep going up while the number of people with medical coverage keeps going down.

It only takes three words, when you get right down to it, to describe the real of those folks: profits over people.

CIGNA and Humana are scheduled to report earnings this week. The three companies that have already spoken — UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna — earned a combined $2.51 billion from April through the end of June, more than analysts expected. On a per share basis, their earnings were up more than 17 percent on average compared with the second quarter of 2010.

Those results were no anomaly. The big for-profit health insurers have been blowing analysts’ expectations out of the water for several quarters in a row, even as the country struggles to recover from the recession and the number of Americans without coverage — one out of every six of us — continues to rise.

Based on their strong performance during the first half of this year, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna have all have raised their profit forecast for 2011. In other words, they expect to earn far more this year than last year and far more than even the most hopeful investors and analysts had anticipated.

This has made Wall Street very happy indeed, as reflected in the breathtaking increase in the companies’ share prices over the past year. Since the end of July 2010, investors have bid up the stock by more than 50 percent at four of the big five. WellPoint, the laggard, saw its stock price increase by a still-impressive 35 percent.

One of the secrets to achieving these results is what the insurers euphemistically call “medical management.” That often translates into denied claims and denied coverage for doctor-ordered care. The fewer claims you pay and the more procedures you refuse to pay for, the more money is left over for investors to put in their pockets.

Another important way they’ve been able to sustain such a string of impressive earnings results is to shift more and more of the cost of care to their policyholders. An increasing percentage of these companies’ policyholders are enrolled in plans that require greater cost sharing. Those policyholders pay more for care out of their own pockets than ever before while their insurers are paying much less.

The insurers are loathe to admit this, and have been making up a host of incredible excuses to explain why they are paying so much less for care than investors and analysts had expected and so much less on a percentage basis than in previous years.

Unending Excuses to Duck the Truth

At the end of 2010, executives told Wall Street that the “utilization” of medical services was lower than in 2009 because the flu season last year was less severe. They assured investors utilization would return to more normal levels during the first quarter of 2011.

When it didn’t, the bad winter weather was to blame. Insurance executives wanted us to believe that people were not getting the care they needed because it was colder and snowier than usual.  They assured us that medical spending would jump again as soon as the weather improved and the ice and snow melted.

Surprise! It’s August and people are still not going to the doctor or picking up their prescriptions or checking into the hospital as much as they usually do.

And what’s the excuse this time? It’s the economy, they say — even though the recession officially ended more than a year ago.  At least UnitedHealth’s executives acknowledged that, as AP reported, “health plans that make patients more aware of the cost of care may be having an impact.”

May be? Give me a break. And stop the double-speak. What we’re so aware of is that we’re simply unable to get the care we need because of the often sky-high deductibles of today’s health plans, which insurers mislabel  “consumer-driven.”

Insurers’ Code Words

Insurance industry executives are experts at talking in code, which makes it difficult to understand just how much they value profits over people. Occasionally, though,  they slip up, as Aetna’s chief financial officer, Joseph Zubretsky, did last Wednesday during his company’s conference call with analysts.

Clearly concerned that investors might think Aetna was willing to grow by adding people to its rolls who might have substantial medical needs, Zubretsky disabused Wall Street of that notion.

“We would like to have both profit and growth, but if you have to choose between one or the other, you take margin and profit and you sacrifice the growth line,” Zubretsky said.

Whether he knew it or not, he was channeling WellPoint CEO Angela Braley. In a 2008 conference call with financial analysts, Braley had to acknowledge that her company had spent more on medical care during the previous three months than she and Wall Street had expected.

In the future, she promised, “We will not sacrifice profitability for membership.”

That was exactly what Wall Street wanted to hear.

WellPoint and Aetna and other insurers have demonstrated repeatedly that while they will do all they can to avoid sacrificing profitability for membership, they are quite willing to sacrifice their members — and the American public — for profits.

Wendell Potter is the former head of PR for CIGNA.

http://prwatch.org/news/2011/08/10929/health-insurers-sacrifice-americans-profit

What does Rick Scott mean by "choice"?

Florida submits Medicaid plan based on managed care to feds for approval

By John Kennedy
The Palm Beach Post, August 1, 2011

Florida officials sent a wide-ranging application Monday to the federal government for steering almost 3 million Medicaid patients into managed care, a major shift that has sparked heavy lobbying from critics who demand the Obama administration deny the move.

But Republican Gov. Rick Scott said he was confident the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would approve the request, which supporters say could save the state more than $1 billion when fully in place.

“I think that what we passed is going to be a model for Medicaid,” said Scott, a former health care executive. “A Medicaid recipient ought to have choice, just like all of us have choice for what insurance we want to buy. I think that’s positive.”

But he added, “We’ve got to make sure it’s a program we can afford as taxpayers. I think what we did will do those two things.”

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/florida-submits-medicaid-plan-based-on-managed-care-1681459.html

And…

State to limit HMOs in state employee insurance program

Health Beat
August 2, 2011

Florida is changing part of its state-employee health insurance program to offer only one HMO in each county.  The state Department of Management Services, which oversees employee insurance, said changes in the program would save an estimated $400 million over two years. The changes also would require thousands of state employees to switch to different HMOs, a process that would begin in late September.

Insurers UnitedHealthcare of Florida and Coventry Health Care of Florida filed formal protests Monday against the changes. United argued, for example, that the changes could actually increase costs. That is because United — which would be shut out of the program in much of the state — says it can negotiate better discounts than other HMOs.

But Gov. Rick Scott and DMS Secretary Jack Miles touted the savings from the plan.

“Saving taxpayer dollars wasn’t just a campaign gimmick,” Scott said in a news release. “I meant what I said when I ran for office, and I urge Secretary Miles and his team to keep pushing hard every day to deliver more savings and better results.”

http://health.nsfblogs.com/?p=220

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

Although Rick Scott was certainly tarnished when his company, Columbia/HCA paid the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history, he has nevertheless been chosen by Florida Republicans to serve as their governor. One of his messages was to achieve savings in health care by promoting choice. Is he touting a fundamental economic principle, or is he using this rhetoric to masquerade his conservative ideology?

Look at what he is trying to do with Medicaid in his state. He wants to force Medicaid patients into managed care organizations claiming that giving them the right to choose insurers will reduce costs. If so, then why isn’t taking away from them their right to choose their health care professionals and institutions going to increase costs?

What about the state employee health insurance program? He is going to save money by taking away the employees’ choice of HMOs, limiting each county to only one HMO for government employees.

His use of the term “choice” is another fraud, but it is no worse than the fraud that progressives perpetrated when they campaigned for health reform using the slogan of “CHOICE.” Their proposal offered only choice of restrictive private health plans while preventing true choice of health care professionals and institutions that people could have had through a Medicare-like national health program.

Today’s final passage of the Budget Control Act doesn’t bode well for the future of placing policy above political rhetoric. In the name of “saving the economy,” the Democrats cooperated with the Republicans in slashing public programs while failing to tap important revenue sources in our nation that happens to have one of the lowest tax burdens of all industrialized nations.

Will we ever have the choice of truly responsible political leaders? It seems unlikely as long as Americans rely on billionaire disinformation campaigns for their understanding of public policy options.

Getting Up Close And Personal With Emergency Care, Canadian Style

By Michelle Andrews
Kaiser Health News, Aug. 2, 2011

It had been a gorgeous day of cycling the rolling hills of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. I wasn’t traveling very fast when I hit a patch of gravel on the trail, but I went flying, landing hard on my left side.

I sat up, holding my left arm. I couldn’t lift it, and it hurt much more than could be explained by the cuts and scrapes that were dripping blood all over my shorts. Meanwhile, the base of the thumb on my right hand, with which I’d apparently tried to break my fall, was misshapen and swollen. I’d also injured my left flank, as I discovered when I tried to walk.

As my two friends propped me up and tried to identify our location for the 911 dispatcher, I awaited my first real-life encounter with the mostly government-funded Canadian health-care system.

As a health care writer, I talk with people all the time about their experiences navigating the system, whether in the United States or elsewhere. Writing about health care is different from writing about the arts, say, or sports, in one crucial way: When you write about health care, you’re often left feeling profoundly grateful that you didn’t have to experience firsthand the event that you’re describing. But now my luck had turned, and I was about to get up close and personal with emergency care, Canadian style.

The ambulance arrived within 15 minutes, and I had a bumpy but uneventful ride to the hospital, a regional trauma center at one of the local universities. On arrival, we showed them my passport and American insurance card. Because I was a trauma patient, I was wheeled right in, just as would happen in a U.S. hospital. A nurse removed my clothes, cutting off my shirt since I couldn’t move my arm. Another nurse drew blood.

At the request of a very young-looking resident, I moved various body parts on command and answered questions about what hurt. The resident, who was my main contact throughout the visit, also looked over my injuries, including checking my ears and eyes. She was friendly and kind, and kept up a running commentary in mostly fluent English explaining what she and others were doing.

(One of my friends, a French-speaking Montreal resident, stayed with me and interpreted when the medical staff’s questions or my answers were complicated.)

One of the most striking things about the exam was how little high-technology equipment they employed. Until I had X-rays made of my hand, hip, shoulder and knee, a blood-pressure cuff was the most advanced equipment I encountered.

Emergency department technology use varies, of course, in Canada and elsewhere. Still, clinicians at a trauma center in the United States treating someone with injuries similar to mine would probably wheel a portable ultrasound machine to the bedside in the trauma bay to scan for internal injuries, says Sandra Schneider, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. They would also probably do CT scans, perhaps of my neck, pelvis and back, to make sure there were no bone breaks that didn’t show up on the X-rays. Some of the tests might not be absolutely necessary, but “a lot of what [U.S. emergency physicians] do is because we are very frightened of getting sued, because we get sued so often,” says Schneider.

In an analysis of data from 2003 to 2008, researchers at Yale and in Canada found that Americans were nearly twice as likely to get a CT scan during an emergency department visit as were Canadians living in Quebec.

In Canada, residents who go to the emergency department pay nothing for the visit, not even for X-rays or other imaging tests or for lab work, says Michael Schull, an emergency physician who co-authored the study on CT use. Patients would be charged for specialist visits and if they were admitted to the hospital, however.

“Hospitals aren’t making any money off these tests,” Schull says. “There’s no incentive to do them, because they’re not going to get paid for them.”

After the X-rays were taken and I was wheeled back into the trauma bay (No. 13, but I figured I’d already had my bad luck for the day), the resident came to my bedside with a big smile on her face and said, “You really are in pain! You have three fractures!”

Validation is nice, but I wished the news were different.

I had two fractures at the top of the humerus, the long arm bone that attaches to the shoulder, and another break in a bone at the base of my thumb. The shoulder breaks could be expected to heal cleanly, she said, but the thumb was slightly out of alignment and might require surgery. There were no broken bones in my pelvis or hip; the pain and difficulty walking I was experiencing there was probably caused by torn or otherwise damaged muscles, tendons and ligaments.

The trauma team referred me to an orthopedist to examine my shoulder and a plastic surgeon with expertise in hands to look at my thumb. Unfortunately, an orthopedist wouldn’t be able to see me until two days later. (The chief orthopedic resident, however, stopped by that night and reassured me that it would be okay to wait.) I did get examined by a plastic surgeon that evening, but my friends had to drive me to a sister hospital several miles away to see him. Specialists, it seemed, were pretty thin on the ground.

According to a 2010 Commonwealth Fund survey of health care in 11 countries, 33 percent of Canadians waited six days or more to see a specialist when they were sick, compared with 19 percent of Americans.

My pelvis apparently did not warrant special attention. Since the injury seemed to be muscular rather than skeletal, the hospital staff would do nothing further to diagnose what was wrong, the resident said. Her recommendation for me — rest and exercise — would probably be the same no matter what I’d done to any tissue.

I couldn’t argue with her reasoning, and if she was right, it was the sensible course. But what a difference in approach from what I would be likely to experience in the United States, Schneider says, where clinicians would probably have worked hard to nail down a definite diagnosis. I left with prescriptions for morphine, naproxen (an anti-inflammatory) and Tylenol.

Puzzled by my U.S. private insurance card, the billing person estimated that my care that night would cost 700 Canadian dollars (about $740) and charged my credit card. If it turned out I had been overcharged, she said, they would send me a refund. Yes, you read that right: overcharged.

Although comparing costs and bills is tricky, by any measure my evening in the Canadian emergency department was a good deal.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Features/Insuring-Your-Health/Michelle-Andrews-on-ER-Care-Canadian-Style.aspx

Everybody likes Medicare — so why not try it for everybody?

By Elizabeth Frost, M.D.
Twin Cities Daily Planet, July 31, 2011

The other day Representative Michelle Bachmann was taking a hit at President Obama: She accused the national health reform law of trying to destroy Medicare and force the evils of Obamacare onto the elderly. That Obama. But really, isn’t it interesting that even Michelle Bachman jumps up to defend one of our nation’s largest “socialist” programs? Why is that? Why is it so popular that Paul Ryan may meet his political demise by trying to gut it? This weekend Medicare has its 46th birthday, and I want to write a little about why we should be celebrating.

First of all, Medicare saves money. Its overhead is between 1-3%, in contrast to the private insurance industry that has administrative and profit overheads of 10-25%. That is a savings of 10 – 20%. Also costs don’t increase as fast in Medicare as they do in private insurance. We are a nation with a lot of new health technology, we live longer and this does cost money. For example since 1970 the cost of medical care adjusted to inflation has gone up 400%. That is a big increase, but the same time period from 1970 to today the cost of private insurance adjusted for inflation has gone up 700%.

We also know that Medicare is a good deal for the tax payers by looking at Medicare Advantage Insurance programs. This was the attempt by the Bush Administration to create “competition” by privatizing some Medicare programs. They have shown to waste billions of dollars by charging more for healthier patients and then dropping those same patients once they become sick. It is called “picking the cherries and spitting out the core” and it is a real phenomena. The Obama’s Affordable Care Act is slowly shutting down the wasteful private health insurance options for Medicare.

So all we need to do to make Medicare financially solvent is to increase the payroll tax by a small fraction of a percent. The rate has only been increased once, in the mid-80s, and it is time to do it again.

Medicare is an efficient, effective way of health care financing. It is what we all want for our parents and ourselves as we get older and heck — it probably is a good idea for the entire nation. If we had Medicare-For-All maybe it would be so popular that Michelle Bachmann would be forced to defend it, too.

Elizabeth Frost is a family doctor practicing in Minneapolis. She co-chairs the Minnesota Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

What does Rick Scott mean by “choice”?

Florida submits Medicaid plan based on managed care to feds for approval

By John Kennedy
The Palm Beach Post, August 1, 2011

Florida officials sent a wide-ranging application Monday to the federal government for steering almost 3 million Medicaid patients into managed care, a major shift that has sparked heavy lobbying from critics who demand the Obama administration deny the move.

But Republican Gov. Rick Scott said he was confident the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would approve the request, which supporters say could save the state more than $1 billion when fully in place.

“I think that what we passed is going to be a model for Medicaid,” said Scott, a former health care executive. “A Medicaid recipient ought to have choice, just like all of us have choice for what insurance we want to buy. I think that’s positive.”

But he added, “We’ve got to make sure it’s a program we can afford as taxpayers. I think what we did will do those two things.”

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/florida-submits-medicaid-plan-based-on-managed-care-1681459.html

And…

State to limit HMOs in state employee insurance program

Health Beat
August 2, 2011

Florida is changing part of its state-employee health insurance program to offer only one HMO in each county.  The state Department of Management Services, which oversees employee insurance, said changes in the program would save an estimated $400 million over two years. The changes also would require thousands of state employees to switch to different HMOs, a process that would begin in late September.

Insurers UnitedHealthcare of Florida and Coventry Health Care of Florida filed formal protests Monday against the changes. United argued, for example, that the changes could actually increase costs. That is because United — which would be shut out of the program in much of the state — says it can negotiate better discounts than other HMOs.

But Gov. Rick Scott and DMS Secretary Jack Miles touted the savings from the plan.

“Saving taxpayer dollars wasn’t just a campaign gimmick,” Scott said in a news release. “I meant what I said when I ran for office, and I urge Secretary Miles and his team to keep pushing hard every day to deliver more savings and better results.”

http://health.nsfblogs.com/?p=220

Although Rick Scott was certainly tarnished when his company, Columbia/HCA paid the largest fraud settlement in U.S. history, he has nevertheless been chosen by Florida Republicans to serve as their governor. One of his messages was to achieve savings in health care by promoting choice. Is he touting a fundamental economic principle, or is he using this rhetoric to masquerade his conservative ideology?

Look at what he is trying to do with Medicaid in his state. He wants to force Medicaid patients into managed care organizations claiming that giving them the right to choose insurers will reduce costs. If so, then why isn’t taking away from them their right to choose their health care professionals and institutions going to increase costs?

What about the state employee health insurance program? He is going to save money by taking away the employees’ choice of HMOs, limiting each county to only one HMO for government employees.

His use of the term “choice” is another fraud, but it is no worse than the fraud that progressives perpetrated when they campaigned for health reform using the slogan of “CHOICE.” Their proposal offered only choice of restrictive private health plans while preventing true choice of health care professionals and institutions that people could have had through a Medicare-like national health program.

Today’s final passage of the Budget Control Act doesn’t bode well for the future of placing policy above political rhetoric. In the name of “saving the economy,” the Democrats cooperated with the Republicans in slashing public programs while failing to tap important revenue sources in our nation that happens to have one of the lowest tax burdens of all industrialized nations.

Will we ever have the choice of truly responsible political leaders? It seems unlikely as long as Americans rely on billionaire disinformation campaigns for their understanding of public policy options.

Impact of Budget Control Act on Medicare

TEXT OF BUDGET CONTROL ACT AMENDMENT

House of Representatives
Rules Committee, August 1, 2011

(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the “Budget Control Act of 2011”

SEC. 302. ENFORCEMENT OF BUDGET GOAL

(8) IMPLEMENTING DIRECT SPENDING REDUCTIONS. — On the date specified in paragraph (4) during each applicable year, OMB shall prepare and the President shall order a sequestration, effective upon issuance, of nonexempt direct spending to achieve the direct spending reduction calculated pursuant to paragraphs (5) and (6). When implementing the sequestration of direct spending pursuant to this paragraph, OMB shall follow the procedures specified in section 6 of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, the exemptions specified in section 255, and the special rules specified in section 256, except that the percentage reduction for the Medicare programs specified in section 256(d) shall not be more than 2 percent for a fiscal year.

(9) ADJUSTMENT FOR MEDICARE. — If the percentage reduction for the Medicare programs would exceed 2 percent for a fiscal year in the absence of paragraph (8), OMB shall increase the reduction for all other discretionary appropriations and direct spending under paragraph (6) by a uniform percentage to a level sufficient to achieve the reduction required by paragraph (6) in the non-defense function.

http://www.rules.house.gov/Media/file/PDF_112_1/legislativetext/S365%20ct%201206.pdf

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

The deficit reduction agreement will likely result in an automatic two percent reduction in Medicare payments. The only way that can be prevented is by an agreement of a special twelve member bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to find alternative methods of reducing the deficit, and then to have their recommendations approved by an up-or-down vote of both current houses of Congress.

The probability of reaching a complex and controversial agreement that leaves Medicare totally unscathed is almost zero in this dysfunctional Congress. President Obama has already demonstrated that he is quite willing to capitulate to the demands of the right-wing obstructionists in Congress. This next time it will be much easier since the terms of the extortion have already been included in this legislation. Since Medicare remains a prime target for the reactionaries, it is very unlikely that it can clear this hurdle without further reductions.

Medicare payment rates have not been increasing at the same level as private insurance rates, understandably creating considerable uneasiness amongst the providers of health care. The Affordable Care Act will further reduce some Medicare payments, and now the Budget Control Act of 2011 will reduce them even further.

These trends will motivate the wealthy owners of Congress to seek private options such as Paul Ryan’s premium support (voucher) proposal, while diminishing their support of Medicare as an egalitarian system of social insurance. With reductions in funding and departure of the healthy and wealthy, Medicare would inevitably transition into a welfare program.

Happy Birthday Medicare! (Oh, that wasn’t nice.)

Care can be universal, cheaper

By James T. Binder, M.D.
Saturday Gazette-Mail (Charleston, W.Va.), July 30, 2011

In the fall of 1982, when I working as a pediatrician in upstate New York, a mother made an appointment to have her child seen on an urgent basis. The child did not really need to be seen quickly, but the mother didn’t know better. She was just worried about her child. She arrived and checked into the clinic. The receptionist greeted her with, “I should have known — Medicaid.”

The humiliation that mother experienced was the price she paid to obtain health care for her child. She was poor.

It is almost 30 years later, and this condescension for those using Medicaid insurance persists. And, in many instances, the actual medical care provided is inferior. A number of health-care experts consider Medicaid close to having no medical insurance at all. The system is chronically and grossly underfunded.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently reported that less than half of physicians are willing to accept children with Medicaid and CHIP as new patients, and over four-fifths experienced difficulty referring Medicaid and CHIP children to specialty care. I can say, from my experience at Marshall University Department of Pediatrics over the last 11 years, that obtaining competent mental-health treatment in the Huntington area for children with Medicaid is sometimes close to impossible.

Many mental-health care clinicians, as well as other specialists, in Huntington and across the country, don’t accept Medicaid because payments are low and unreliable. It is understandable. However, it is likely this contributes to the overuse of psychotropic medications in children, since it makes it harder for them and their families to be referred for psychotherapy.

In addition to the inability to access specialty care, parents of the children with Medicaid insurance typically do not have medical coverage. Clinicians cannot possibly provide good health care for children without treating the family. A new mother with untreated depression can affect her child’s school performance years later; a father with an untreated chronic lung condition cannot play actively with his children.

I think one of the reasons the system remains in place, despite all its deficiencies, is covert prejudice against the poor. The poor have no political clout. Poverty is a very complex, multiproblem condition. It seems to me that promoting healthy bodies and healthy minds for all children living in poverty is essential to any efforts to help them overcome poverty. Universal, caring and comprehensive health care is needed.

There is a way to accomplish it. But we cannot listen to conservatives (e.g. Rep. Paul Ryan) who would eliminate government health insurance for the poor, and we cannot heed the liberals who want to place more and more people into a broken and inadequate system. Sixteen million more people will be added to Medicaid as a result of the health-care reform passed by congress and President Obama last year. And, sadly, private insurance will reap even more profit than they do now, once the new law takes effect.

We must advocate for a nontiered system and creation of a comprehensive national health insurance program. A universal plan would be equitably funded, based on the current tax structure. We already put enough money into health care to cover every American for all necessary medical care. Huge savings would result from eliminating the bureaucratic costs of private insurance (20 to 30 percent of health-care spending goes for unnecessary bureaucracy, advertising and private profits).

It would be an expanded and improved version of Medicare. Almost every other industrialized country provides some version of this for their citizens, and at a much lower cost. Everyone in; no one out!

Dr. Binder is associate professor of pediatrics at Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, W.Va., and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.

http://wvgazette.com/Opinion/OpEdCommentaries/201107291961

Extending Medicare to everyone makes good economic sense

By James C. Mitchiner, M.D.
AnnArbor.com, July 31, 2011

In yet another attempt to bridge the debt ceiling impasse by reigning in entitlement spending, President Barack Obama recently proposed raising the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67. As we pass Medicare’s 46th anniversary on July 30, I propose that rather than raising the age for Medicare, we consider lowering it instead. In fact, let’s lower it to zero.

This is not as offbeat as it sounds. Expanding and improving Medicare — essentially creating a Medicare-for-All national health insurance program — would eliminate the administrative duplication that pervades the private insurance industry, capture economies of scale, and use more of the health care dollar for actually improving health and preventing illness.

Medicare-for-All would create a system providing universal and portable health care so that all Americans could receive the same health benefit package regardless of where they lived, and one that would follow them if they relocated. An expanded Medicare system would embody a uniform set of rates and fees for hospitals and physicians, and medical records for patients, all supported by a universal health information technology platform.

Employers would have the health insurance monkey off their backs, allowing them to better compete in the global marketplace. And a national health program modeled on Medicare would allow the U.S. to join the ranks of other advanced democracies that provide health insurance to all their citizens.

Since its creation, Medicare has turned out to be an enormously successful program, as measured by universal access to benefits, portability, minimal administrative costs, and overall popularity among its 47 million current beneficiaries. And relative to private for-profit insurance, it has done a better job in pooling risk, bending the cost curve, and making timely payments to doctors and hospitals. Yet Medicare as it exists now is by no means perfect.

The average Medicare recipient is finding it increasingly harder to afford the growing out-of-pocket costs of health care. Many will skimp on necessary care, or just go without. And Medicare’s looming insolvency, currently projected to occur in 2024, is deeply concerning to beneficiaries, government actuaries, Congress and health policymakers alike.

Expanding Medicare to cover everyone would address these problems. Since young and middle-aged adults and their families are healthier than current Medicare beneficiaries, and therefore have lower health care expenses, an expanded risk pool under Medicare-for-All would have an average per-beneficiary cost that’s much less than the current cost for seniors (over $10,000 per current enrollee). And since expanded revenues would be greater than projected expenses, Medicare’s Trust Fund could be replenished, and personal out-of-pocket costs could be minimized. Of course, financing an expanded Medicare program would require the non-elderly to pay an increased tax on income, but this would be modest, progressive, and a fraction of the exorbitant private insurance premiums they’re paying now.

To my critics who would decry a universal Medicare program as “government-run health care” with its implied rationing and restrictions, think about how the for-profit insurance companies control your choices now. Then recall the image of the health care townhall protester in 2009 who shouted, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Can you think of a better testimonial to the non-intrusiveness of the federal government in individual health care decisions? And as a physician, I find it much easier to deal with Medicare than with managed care plans.

It is clear that reducing government spending and thus forcing beneficiaries to pay more out-of-pocket will not by itself preserve Medicare and keep it sustainable for the baby boomers. Rather, what needs to be done is to find a better way of financing this important social insurance program so that it remains viable and available to future retirees. The solution is a single-payer national health insurance program modeled on the success of Medicare. That would be the icing on the Medicare birthday cake.

Dr. James Mitchiner, an emergency medicine physician, is the former president of the Washtenaw County Medical Society, and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.

http://www.annarbor.com/news/opinion/extending-medicare-to-everyone-makes-economic-sense/

Medicare, an effective program, turns 46

By Ann Settgast, M.D.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis), July 30, 2011

Whether the debt ceiling is raised or not in the days ahead, Minnesotans and the nation have reason to celebrate this weekend. Saturday marked Medicare’s 46th birthday.

While we have a long way to go before our health care system works well for all patients, this anniversary gives us an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve done right.

Surprisingly, Medicare was born out of bitter controversy in 1965. It was condemned by some as “socialized medicine,” a threat to basic freedoms. As a physician, I’m embarrassed to say organized medicine was among its key opponents. It all seems silly today.

Since its inception, Medicare has afforded hundreds of millions of Americans access to high-quality health care. It has reduced poverty among seniors and improved the financial security of their families. It has become one of the most popular government programs in history.

Current political discourse is centered on spending cuts, including Medicare. But covering Americans via Medicare saves money. No, that is not a typo.

Medicare boasts far lower administrative costs than the leanest private insurance company. While it is true that Medicare spending has risen dramatically over time, its growth is far less than that of the private sector.

And remember that Medicare pays for the care of our sickest and oldest, while private insurers foot the bill for the young and healthier.

In fact, uninsured Americans in their late 50s and early 60s routinely delay needed care, only to become expensive Medicare recipients once they reach 65.

Medicare is not the cause of health care inflation; rather, it is a victim of our country’s sky-rocketing health care costs. Cuts to Medicare will not control these costs.

Rather, they will reduce access to care by the nation’s elderly, worsen their health status, and increase financial hardship among already-struggling Americans.

Not only is Medicare less expensive than private insurance, it provides superior service. An example is the free choice of doctor granted to patients under Medicare — a basic freedom many privately insured Americans are currently denied.

As a practicing internist, I can attest to the lower “hassle factor” doctors incur when dealing with Medicare rather than interacting with multiple private payers, each requiring different rules and regulations. Expecting us to treat patients differently because they have different or no insurance contradicts our professional responsibility.

Medicare is far from perfect, and it has some serious limitations. But for this weekend, let’s celebrate a government program that actually works incredibly well. Americans are proud of Medicare. It should be strengthened, expanded and improved to include all of us. A sustainable Medicare-for-all system is the reform our nation needs.

Ann Settgast, M.D., is a primary care doctor practicing in the Twin Cities. She co-chairs the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/126430563.html