PNHP

The health care crisis and what to do about it

The health care crisis and what to do about it

The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It
By Paul Krugman, Robin Wells
The New York Review of Books
March 23, 2006

The good news is that we know more about the economics of health care than we did when Clinton tried and failed to remake the system. There’s now a large body of evidence on what works and what doesn’t work in health care, and it’s not hard to see how to make dramatic improvements in US practice.

The bad news is that Washington currently seems incapable of accepting what the evidence on health care says.

1. Is health care spending a problem?

2. The unraveling of employer-based insurance

3. Medicaid and Medicare

4. The “consumer-directed” diversion

5. Single-payer and beyond

6. Beyond reform: How much health care should we have?

7. Can we fix health care?

A mere shift of power from Republicans to Democrats would not, in itself, be enough to give us sensible health care reform. Even liberal economists and scholars at progressive think tanks tend to shy away from proposing a straightforward system of national health insurance. Instead, they propose fairly complex compromise plans. But the main reason for not proposing single-payer is political fear: reformers believe that private insurers are too powerful to cut out of the loop, and that a single-payer plan would be too easily demonized by business and political propagandists as “big government.”

These are the same political calculations that led Bill Clinton to reject a single-payer system in 1993, even though his advisers believed that a single-payer system would be the least expensive way to provide universal coverage. Instead, he proposed a complex plan designed to preserve a role for private health insurers. But the plan backfired. The insurers opposed it anyway, most famously with their “Harry and Louise” ads.

We believe that the compromise plans being proposed by the cautious reformers would run into the same political problems, and that it would be politically smarter as well as economically superior to go for broke: to propose a straightforward single-payer system, and try to sell voters on the huge advantages such a system would bring. But this would mean taking on the drug and insurance companies rather than trying to co-opt them, and even progressive policy wonks, let alone Democratic politicians, still seem too timid to do that.

So what will really happen to American health care? Many people in this field believe that in the end America will end up with national health insurance, and perhaps with a lot of direct government provision of health care, simply because nothing else works. But things may have to get much worse before reality can break through the combination of powerful interest groups and free-market ideology.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18802

Comment: By Don McCanne, M.D.

You likely do not have the time right now to read this very long article. The sections are listed above simply to demonstrate that it really does address the health care crisis and what to do about it, as promised in the title. Save this for your next break.

Do not be deterred by the fact that this is a book review, actually a review of three books. It is a stand-alone article on our health care crisis, not constrained by the subject matter of the books reviewed.

You should encourage others who are concerned about our health care system to take the time read this article. You can assure them that most authors would have required an entire book to communicate the messages that Krugman and Wells have presented here in a single article. In this day of information overload, you’ll rarely find a bargain like this: a lucid perspective of the basics of our health care crisis with a very modest commitment of time.

Tell everyone to read it.

Remedy for ailing system sought

Forums to examine possible solutions to health care cost crisis
By Matt Pacenza
Times Union, Albany, New York
Monday, March 6, 2006

ALBANY — The bill gets bigger every day. By 2015, one out of every five dollars spent in America will pay for health care — $4 trillion, according to a recent study.

There has to be a better system than the current U.S. hodgepodge of private and public insurance, which is unnecessarily costly yet also leaves millions with inadequate care, according to a diverse group of activists and business people that has come together in recent years to seek an alternative.

Four forums to debate transforming the health care system will be held over the coming month at WAMC’s Linda Norris Auditorium at 318 Central Ave. The lunchtime symposiums, open to the public, won’t just bring together those who back universal health care.

“People are participating from different points of view,” said Dr. Paul Sorum, chairman of the Capital District chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program and event organizer. “We expect a lot of interesting and passionate exchanges between them and members of the audience.”

The first session — from noon to 2 p.m. on Tuesday — includes Dr. Oliver Fein, a Cornell medical school dean who backs universal health care, Dr. Jeremy Lazarus from the American Medical Association, which supports free-market approaches, and the chief of the Capital District Physicians Health Plan, Dr. William Cromie. Rounding out the panel — called “What is wrong with the current system? Would ‘Medicare for All’ remedy these deficiencies?’ ” — is Albany Med’s well-known bioethicist, Glen McGee.

Each forum will be moderated by WAMC President Alan Chartock and edited for broadcast.

The time is ripe for an in-depth debate on health care, said Sorum, who is also a professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Albany Medical College. He listed the issues grabbing headlines across the country: “The rising cost; the number of people who don’t have health insurance; the screams of business people who can’t afford to provide insurance, even if they would like to; the rising cost of Medicaid, and its burden on county taxpayers.”

Anyone interested in attending the forums is asked to pre-register by e-mailing pnhpalbany@verizon.net or by calling (518) 391-2508. The other three panels will be held on:

March 27, 1 to 3 p.m. “What lessons can we learn from other countries?”

April 10, noon to 2 p.m. “What would an expanded Medicare for all look like?”

April 24, noon to 2 p.m. “Can we institute Medicare for all in a single state, namely New York?”

The Uninsured Patient

By Baldeep Singh, MD, and Rachel Golden, PhD
Commentary
The American Journal of Medicine
February 2006

Despite recent attempts by federal programs to increase access to medical care for uninsured persons, the number
of Americans without insurance has increased since 1994 by an average of one million per year, and 2.4 million in
2002. By 2002, 43 million Americans were uninsured, comprising 17.3% of the nonelderly population (Kaiser
Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000). Even this number may
underestimate the extent of the problem; recent data from the Kaiser Commission found that approximately 30% of
Americans, more than 70 million people, lacked health care for at least 1 month over a 3-year period (Kaiser Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000).1

Many Americans have lost coverage throughout the past decade because of the increasing cost of health insurance, which has resulted in larger costs to individuals for premiums and co-pays, and decreased availability of employer-based health insurance.1 For example, in a study by Cooper et al.2 in 1997, two-thirds of those without employer-based insurance cited the high cost of health insurance plans as the main reason they were not covered. Similarly, despite the robust economy of the late 1990s, an increasing percentage of companies cited the high cost of health care plans as the main reason they were dropping medical coverage for or shifting costs to their employees (Kaiser Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000).

During the past decade, the U.S. Congress has passed regulatory reforms and enacted new programs in an attempt to increase opportunities for Americans to obtain and maintain health insurance coverage. Two incremental reforms in private health insurance regulation, the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, were legislated to increase opportunities for Americans to maintain their insurance coverage, but these regulations have not stopped the numbers of uninsured Americans from continuing to increase. In the public sector, large increases in Medicaid eligibility over the past two decades, as well as the enactment of the State Children痴 Health Insurance Program in 1997, were designed to increase eligibility for public programs, but have also failed to decrease the number of uninsured patients in the United States (Kaiser Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000).

The uninsured tend to be young, working poor, minority families. They tend to have worse health, and when they do become ill, have worse outcomes. This article identifies important demographic trends among the uninsured and explores the barriers they face in getting and keeping health care coverage. More importantly, these barriers significantly affect health outcomes and reveal a growing divide in health care access that is affecting the nation痴 health as a whole.

COVERAGE BY TYPE OF HEALTH INSURANCE

In 2002, the uninsured represented 17.3% of the nonelderly, American population. Because almost everyone 65 years of age or more has Medicare, children and adults aged less than 65 years of age make up the majority of the uninsured. Among insured Americans aged less than 65 years of age, employment-based health insurance covers 63.3%, Medicaid covers 12%, and Medicare covers 2%.1

There is a common misperception that the Medicaid program provides health coverage for all low-income Americans, when, in fact, its policy toward low-income adults is quite restrictive. Although the program covers many low-income children, there are only a few eligibility pathways for adults, aside from being significantly disabled or pregnant預nd those that do exist are primarily limited to single parents with very low incomes. Parents working full-time at the minimum wage, for example, are not eligible for Medicaid in the majority of states (Kaiser Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000). Even if one does qualify for Medicaid, strict eligibility makes coverage difficult to keep. At the end of any given year, two-thirds of those who were insured by Medicaid will have lost their coverage.3 The federal welfare reforms enacted in 1996 have affected the Medicaid enrollment process and have been associated with decreases in Medicaid coverage. In addition, these reforms have served to increase the number of uninsured because those leaving welfare move into the workforce to take low-wage positions for which health benefits are less likely to be offered or affordable.

For individuals who are self-employed, work in small companies, or have opted out of their employer痴 health insurance plans, the alternative is private, nongroup insurance. However, private, nongroup insurance covers only 5.3% of the population. The major reason there are not more enrollees is the relatively high cost of such plans compared to family income. For example, the maximum income of families at 200% of the 2004 federal poverty level was $37 700 for a family of 4, whereas the full premium for this family averaged more than $7000 per year. Thus for low-income families, comprising twothirds of the uninsured, premiums remain out of reach.3 Furthermore, workers who have health insurance typically pay one-quarter to one-third of the total cost of family coverage premiums.

COVERAGE BY AGE

Young adults, 19 to 34 years of age, comprise just a quarter of the nonelderly population, but represent 40% of the uninsured.1 Young adults are at higher risk of being uninsured because they are less likely to be married and therefore have only themselves as a link to job-based health benefits. They also earn lower incomes on average and are usually not eligible for Medicaid. Three million young adults are uninsured because they decline to purchase available health insurance because of high premiums and co-pays. But, 11 million young workers are uninsured because their employers do not offer health insurance, and they cannot afford to purchase coverage elsewhere.2 This latter group comprised 75% of the growth in the number of uninsured in recent years (Kaiser Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000).

More than half of the uninsured come from families with children, and 1 in 5 of the uninsured is a child. Thanks to recent expansions in Medicaid and the State Children痴 Health Insurance Program, the percentage of children who are uninsured has not increased for the last 3 years. Nevertheless, 10 million children less than 18 years of age in the United States do not have medical insurance even though it is estimated that 95% of them are eligible for public insurance.7 In general, eligible children are more likely to be enrolled in public programs if the rest of the family has coverage. In particular, the insurance status of parents seems to affect whether their children receive care, as well as how much, even if the children have coverage (Kaiser Family Foundation/Lehrer Survey About the Uninsured, unpublished data, February 2000).

COVERAGE BY INCOME

In 2002, 27% of the uninsured were from families with incomes below the Federal Poverty Level ($14 348 for a family of 3), 39% had family incomes between 100% and 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, and the remaining 36% of the uninsured were from families with higher incomes. This third group represents the fastest growing segment of the uninsured over the past 3 years.1 Nonetheless, approximately one-third of all members of families living at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, are uninsured, placing an undue burden on this segment of the population as a whole.

Workers with lower incomes are offered employmentbased insurance plans much less often than those with middle to upper incomes. Only 55% of workers whose hourly rate is less than $7 are offered health insurance through their own or a family member痴 job, compared with 96% of workers whose hourly rate is more than $15. 9

COVERAGE BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS

It is a myth that most of the uninsured are unemployed. In fact, 80% of uninsured children and adults less than 65 years of age live in working families. Even members of families with two full-time workers have a 1 in 10 chance of being uninsured.3 Only 19% of the uninsured live in families with just part-time workers or no member working outside the home.1 Nonetheless, members of families without wage earners are much more likely to be uninsured than members of families with wage earners.

Low-wage workers have born the brunt of higher premiums and cost sharing. Thirty-two percent of all low-wage families are not offered health insurance by their employers.10 In fact, rates of employer-sponsored coverage among low-wage workers (making $7/hour) decreased between 1987 and 2000, whereas rates of coverage for high-wage workers actually increased. In fact, 96% of higher-wage workers were offered employerrelated health benefits, and 90% were insured by an employer-sponsored plan.

The highest rate of uninsured workers is found among employees in small firms (25 workers) or self-employed. Thirty-five percent of workers in small firms are uninsured, compared with only 13% in large firms of 100 employees or more.1 However, regardless of firm size, the chances of having job-based coverage are less for those with lower incomes, even for those employees who are full-time.

Blue-collar workers constitute 63% of the work force in the United States, but they represent 81% of the uninsured. This is because they are less likely than white-collar workers to be offered health insurance as a benefit.1

When employers do offer insurance plans, the cost of these programs places a disproportionate burden on low-wage workers. The expense of insurance premiums paid by employees tops the list of reasons why uninsured workers decline to take employment-based insurance when it is offered.11 In 1995, the proportion of workers who paid more than 10% of their family income for health care expenditures increased to 33%.12

COVERAGE BY RACE, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER

Although racial minorities formed one-third of the nonelderly population, they comprised more than half of the uninsured. More than one-third of Latinos are uninsured, and a quarter of both African Americans and Native Americans have no health coverage. African Americans are twice as likely and Latinos are 3 times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be uninsured.13 The differences in health coverage across racial and ethnic groups are only partially explained by differences in income. Two other factors are evident here. Minority groups are less likely, on average, than non-Hispanic whites to hold jobs that offer health insurance, and they are less able to afford workplace insurance coverage when it is available.

Gender disparities in health coverage are also evident. Adult men are more likely than women to be uninsured. Conversely, women have lower rates of employmentbased coverage. Women are more likely to obtain insurance policies through individual and public programs, usually when they are lower-income and pregnant or with young children. Women with public insurance status, however, tend to have greater instability in their health coverage, providing more opportunities for gaps in coverage.14

COVERAGE BY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN AND IMMIGRATION STATUS

US citizens make up the majority of the uninsured. Although public opinion polls suggest that Americans think most of the uninsured are noncitizens, in fact, noncitizens comprise only 20% of the total uninsured patients. However, this group is at the highest risk (45%) of being uninsured, and immigrant uninsured rates decline with increasing length of residency in the United States.3,15

Recent immigrants are 3 times as likely as members of the general population to be uninsured, but they only comprise 6% of the total uninsured. Disparities in the uninsured rates between immigrants and native-born US residents reflect the lower rates of employer-based coverage among immigrants, as well as their likelihood of employment in lower-waged positions.16 Compounding the problem for immigrants, since 1996, federal welfare and immigration reform legislation have banned legal immigrants arriving after 1996 from eligibility for Medicaid, The State Children痴 Health Insurance Program, and other federal means-tested benefits programs. Except for emergency care, immigrants are not eligible for coverage through these programs during their first 5 years in the United States.17

COVERAGE BY GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION

More than 20% of the nonelderly uninsured population reside in the southwest and south central states, where poverty rates are higher and rates of employer-sponsored coverage are lower than the national average. The amount a state provides in assistance to the uninsured depends on the proportion of families with low incomes, the structure of the state痴 unemployment benefits, and the inclusiveness of the state痴 Medicaid programs. A threefold difference exists between the states with the lowest (9%) and highest (27%) rates of uninsured. Reflecting the predominantly urban locations of the general population, most uninsured persons live in urban areas, although rural and urban residents are equally likely to be uninsured.15

DOES COVERAGE AFFECT MEDICAL OUTCOMES?

There is an association among health insurance coverage, access to health care, and patient outcomes. Although 57% of the public reported they believe that those without health insurance are able to get the care they need, one survey found that the uninsured were less than half as likely as those with insurance to receive medical care for a serious medical condition, as judged by physicians.18

The most important prerequisite for access to care is health insurance coverage. Without it, most people cannot afford medical care. They are more likely to postpone or go without necessary treatment for fear of high medical bills.19 In fact, uninsured adults are at least four times as likely as the insured to report delaying or foregoing needed health services.

Growing evidence from large observational studies reveals the staggering effects of insurance status on general health outcomes. The uninsured poor, for example, are more likely to delay hospitalization compared with those with private health insurance, and when in the hospital, uninsured patients stay longer and experience higher death rates. In addition, hospitalized uninsured patients are 2.3 times more likely than those with insurance to have adverse iatrogenic events.20,21 Uninsured patients are twice as likely to die over 15 years compared with insured patients (18.4% vs 9.6%); even after adjusting for major health risk factors, mortality remains 25% higher among the uninsured.22

The effects of poor access to care for the uninsured are particularly striking for diseases which require early detection. The uninsured receive fewer preventive services such as blood pressure checks, mammograms, and screening for colorectal cancer.2 For example, the loss of Medicaid coverage has been associated with a 10-point increase in diastolic blood pressure and a 15% increase in the hemoglobin A1C in diabetic patients. This has translated into a higher probability of death over 6 months.21 In addition, because regular preventive care is not received, the uninsured are more likely to be diagnosed at advanced stages of cancer. Greater than 40% of uninsured women are more likely to be diagnosed with latestage breast cancer, and 40% to 50% are more likely to
die of breast cancer, compared with insured women, depending on their age.23

In the case of acute care, outcomes are consistently worse for uninsured patients. Among patients with appendicitis, for example, uninsured individuals were 1.5 times more likely than insured patients to present with an
appediceal rupture.24

CONCLUSION

The problem of the uninsured in the United States is rapidly becoming a crisis, affecting a broader crosssection of society with each passing year. Growth in the numbers of uninsured Americans has continued annually for over the past decade, and currently more than 17% of the nonelderly population are uninsured. The poor and members of certain minority groups have historically been excluded by a system of voluntary health insurance in the United States. However, contrary to public perception, most Americans without health insurance today are members of working families and are U.S. citizens. The crisis of the uninsured has increasingly become a problem that reaches all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, and across a wide spectrum of occupations. Despite recent attempts to improve pediatric insurance coverage, children remain 20% of the total uninsured population.

The uninsured are battling both the decreasing affordability and availability of private health insurance, as well as the increasing restrictions on public health insurance programs. Despite an improved economy, obtaining low-cost health care when needed is becoming more difficult for the uninsured. Fewer employers cover their workers because of the increasing cost of health care, and fewer people can afford to pay. The high cost of private insurance plans themselves clearly affects access to medical services in that fewer people can afford health insurance. In addition, the increasing level of out-of-pocket costs for premiums and co-pays reduces usage of health care services.25,26 Governmental reforms to increase private and public health insurance have made little impact, and in some cases have made the problem worse. Thus, the gap between the increasing cost of health care and the reduced purchasing power of those trying to access health care seems to be the biggest factor in this national crisis.

Furthermore, the uninsured are more likely to have poorer health outcomes than those with health insurance. The high cost of care causes many uninsured people to postpone or forego necessary treatment. As a group, the uninsured are having their diseases detected later, and their morbidity and mortality are higher.

Whether or not one has health insurance affects job decisions, financial security, access to care, and health status. But lack of insurance and gaps in coverage affect all of society. When an uninsured person goes to a public hospital or clinic, an emergency department, or a private physician for care and cannot pay the full cost, some of the bill is passed on to those who do pay, through higher insurance premiums and in the form of taxes supporting our public medical insurance programs. We all pay for having a large and growing uninsured population.

Americans have boasted for years that we have the best health care in the world, but if this is true, it is the case only for those with health insurance. In fact, the clear relationship between insurance status and health outcomes should be considered a national emergency. If access to medical care and health care coverage correlates with improved clinical outcomes, where is the cry from the medical profession to increase both of these? If doctors are entrusted with improving the health care of our patients, we must be at the forefront of moving legislation toward increasing the coverage of all our citizens, thereby increasing the overall health of our nation.4-6,8

Baldeep Singh, MD
UCLA Department of General Internal Medicine
Los Angeles, Calif.

Rachel Golden, DrPh
South Los Angeles Health Projects
Los Angeles Biomedical Research
Institute at Harbor-UCLA
Medical Center, Calif.

References
1. Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured; 2002.
2. Bennefield R. Dynamic of Economic Well-Being: Health Insurance, 1993 to 1995. Who Loses Coverage and for How Long? Census Bureau Current Population Reports. Household Economic Studies, 70-64.
3. Cooper PF, Schone BS. More offers, fewer takers for employment based health insurance: 1987 and 1996. Health Aff (Milwood) 1997; 16(6):142-149.
4. Fronstin P. The Economic Cost of the Uninsured: Implications for Business and Government. Employee Benefit Research Institute. 5. Kellerman A. Health policy and clinical practice/health policy report. Ann Emerg Med 2002;40:644-647.
6. Gabel J, et al. The Financial Burden of Self Paid Health Insurance on the Poor and Near Poor. 1998.
7. Broaddus M, et al. Nearly 95 Percent of Low-Income Uninsured Children Now Are Eligible for Medicaid or S-CHIP. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; 2000.
8. Hanson K. Is insurance for children enough? The link between parents・and children痴 health care revisited. Inquiry 1998;35(3): 294-302.
9. Cooper PF, Schone BS. More offers, fewer takers for employment based health insurance: 1987 and 1996. Health Aff (Milwood) 1997; 16(6):142-149.
10. Custer ??, et al. The Changing Sources of Health Insurance. Health Association of America; 2000.
11. Hoffman C, et al. Uninsured in America: A Chart Book. The Kaiser Foundation; 2000.
12. Kronick R, Gilmer T. Explaining the decline in health insurance coverage, 1979-1995. Health Aff (Milwood). 1999;18(2):30-47.
13. Mills R. Health Insurance Coverage, 1999. Current Population Reports. 60-211. 166.e4 The American Journal of Medicine, Vol 119, No 2, February 2006
14. Fronstin P. The Economic Cost of the Uninsured: Implications for Business and Government. Employee Benefit Research Institute.
15. Coverage Matters. Insurance and Health Care. Institute of Medicine; 2001.
16. Carrasquillo O, Carrasquillo AI, Shea S. Health insurance coverage of immigrants living in the united states: differences by citizenship status and country of origin. Am J Public Health 2000;90(6):917-923.
17. Rosenbaum S, et al. Medicaid Eligibility and Citizenship Status: Policy Implications for Immigrant Populations. Policy Brief no. 2201. Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured; 2001.
18. Blendon RJ, Young JT, DesRoches CM. The uninsured, the working uninsured and the public. Health Aff (Milwood) 1999;18(6):203-211.
19. Baker D, et al. Regular source of ambulatory care and medical care utilization by patients presenting to a public hospital emergency room. JAMA 271(24):1909-1912.
20. Levit KR, Freeland MS, Waldo DR. Health spending and ability to pay, business, individuals, and government. Health Care Financing Rev 1989;10(3):1-11.
21. Berghold LA. Purchasing Power in Health. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press; 1990.
22. DiCarlo S, Gabel J. Conventional health insurance: a decade later. Health Care Financing Rev 1989;10(3):77-89.
23. Ayanian JZ, Kohler BA, Abe T, Epstein AM. The relation between health insurance coverage and clinical outcomes among women with breast cancer. N Engl J Med 1993;329(5):326-340.
24. Braveman P, Schaaf VM, Egerter S, Bennett T, Schecter W. Insurance-related differences in the risk of ruptured appendix. N Engl J Med 1994;331(7):444-449.
25. Zweifel P, et al. Consumer incentives in health care. Handbook of Health Economics. 2000:410-459.
26. Wielawski I. Gouging the medically uninsured. A tale of two bills. Health Aff (Milwood) 2000;19(5):180-185.

Our health care system is inefficient, wasteful

Maine

Who among us cannot be ashamed that more than 45 million Americans lack health insurance and millions more have inadequate coverage? How do we spend twice as much as anyone else while being the only developed nation not to provide universal health coverage for its people?

The high cost of private insurance billing is one part of the problem. A recent study published in Health Affairs (www.pnhp.org/Kahn/kahn_galley.pdf) shows that 1 in 5 health care dollars goes to billing and paperwork. A 2003 Harvard study pegged these costs at 31 percent of U.S. health spending — about $400 billion — vs. 17 percent in Canada.

It is no surprise that our fragmented health care financing system is very inefficient and wasteful. Dozens of insurance companies have their own departments for enrollment, exclusions, referrals, billing, sales and marketing. Add to this massive duplication of effort the cost of huge salaries to CEOs, and shareholder profits generated by minimizing payments for patient care services.

The money squandered is more than enough to cover the uninsured and to eliminate exclusions, co-payments and deductibles that often bankrupt even insured families in the face of serious illness.

Only single payer national health insurance can squeeze the bureaucratic waste out of health care and use the savings to give patients affordable, high-quality and comprehensive care without waits.

As a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, I urge everyone to learn more about how to deal with our health care crisis by visiting www.healthcare-now.org.

John Benziger
South China

thebenzigers@hotmail.com

AHPs for the Blues

Sen. Enzi To Introduce Compromise Legislation on Association Health Plans
Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report
March 3, 2006

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) early next week plans to introduce a bill (S 1955) that would allow association health plans to form under certain conditions, and he has scheduled a March 8 markup for the proposal, CongressDaily reports (CongressDaily, 3/3). Like two other pending bills, Enzi’s proposal would allow small businesses and trade associations to join together to offer group health coverage on a statewide or nationwide basis. However, Enzi’s bill differs from pending House (HR 525) and Senate (S 406) legislation in that it would require AHPs to cover any benefits mandated by at least 45 states. To address further the concerns of opponents who say the plans would impair state-mandated consumer protections, Enzi’s bill would leave supervision of the plans with state officials rather than the Department of Labor. In addition, while the bill “would permit business and trade associations to pool their members independently, they would not be allowed to establish self-insured plans, but would rather have to provide benefits through a fully-funded plan,” CQ HealthBeat reports. Enzi said, “Working with a diverse group of senators and business groups representing small business, we’ve bridged the gap between small business proponents of traditional AHPs and state-based interests worried about the prospects of dramatic regulatory changes in health insurance markets.” Mary Nell Lehnhard, senior vice president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, a group that has opposed other AHP proposals, said, “I feel all of our concerns have been listened to. The process has been amazing.”

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/print_report.cfm?DR_ID=35779&dr_cat=3

S. 1955:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.01955:

And…

January 21, 2006
President’s Radio Address
The White House

Congress also needs to pass Association Health Plans, which allow small businesses across the country to join together and pool risk so they can buy insurance at the same discounts big companies get.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/
20060121.html

Comment: By Don McCanne, M.D.

Proposals for Association Health Plans (AHPs) have been criticized partly because they allow circumvention of state mandated benefits. The savings for small businesses would not come from group discounts, but rather from being able to purchase stripped down plans with very low premiums. Such plans would fall far short of the protection that their employees need. Also they would allow employers who currently provide coverage to drop their plans in favor of these cheap alternatives.

Sen. Enzi’s proposal pretends to address this issue by requiring that benefits mandated by at least 45 states be covered. If only 6 states fail to mandate any given benefit, then it would not be a requirement of the AHPs. Although I haven’t seen any survey, it is improbable that there is any state mandate that would end up being a required benefit for AHPs.

Insurers have not been supportive since they could be left out if the AHPs established their own self-insured pools. Small businesses are potentially a very large market for insurers. Sen. Enzi’s new version pleases the insurers since it would require that benefits be provided through fully-funded plans.

The BlueCross BlueShield Association management finds it amazing that their concerns were listened to. S 1995 will protect and enhance their market for their highly profitable, stripped down plans.

So the President and his colleagues in Congress are addressing the concerns of his friends in the insurance industry.

But, Mr. Bush… What about the patients?

Recourse Grows Slim for Immigrants Who Fall Ill

By Nina Bernstein
The New York Times
March 3, 2006

When Ming Qiang Zhao felt ill last summer, he lay awake nights in the room he shared with other Chinese restaurant workers in Brooklyn. Though he had worked in New York for years, he had no doctor to call, no English to describe his growing uneasiness.

Mr. Zhao, 50, had been successfully treated for nasal cancer in 2000 at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, which has served the immigrant poor since its founding in 1736. But the rules there had changed, and knowing that he would be asked for payment and that security guards would demand an ID, he had concluded that he could not go back.

So Mr. Zhao went to an unlicensed healer in Manhattan’s Chinatown and came away with three bags of unlabeled white pills.

A week later, his roommates, fellow illegal immigrants from Fujian Province in China, heard him running to and from the toilet all night. In the street the next day, July 6, he collapsed.

Immigrants have long been on the fringes of medical care. But in the last decade, and especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, steps to include them have faltered in a political climate increasingly hostile to those who face barriers of language, cost and fear of penalties like deportation, say immigrant health experts, providers and patients. More and more immigrants are delaying care or retreating into a parallel universe of bootleg remedies and unlicensed practitioners.

Last year, about 80 bills in 20 states sought to cut noncitizens’ access to health care or other services, or to require benefit agencies to tell the authorities about applicants with immigration violations. Arizona voters approved such a requirement in 2004 with Proposition 200. Virginia has barred adults without proof of citizenship or lawful presence from state and local benefits. Maryland’s governor excluded lawful immigrant children and pregnant women from a state medical program for which they had been eligible.

Most proposed measures were not adopted, but new versions are expected. Ballot initiatives modeled on Arizona’s Proposition 200 are circulating in California and Colorado. And in December, the United States House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill that would make “unlawful presence” in this country a felony and redefine “criminal alien smuggling” to include helping any immigrant without legal status.

“We’ve seen a real rise in anti-immigration measures across the country,” said Tanya Broder, a public benefits lawyer in Oakland, Calif., for the National Immigration Law Center, “and it’s engendered confusion and fear that prevent immigrant families from getting the care they need.”

Some who had been drawn into medical treatment by outreach efforts have retreated, like Mr. Zhao, fearing the harder line toward immigrants, especially those without money or proper papers. Even legal immigrants and parents of children with legal status are more skittish about their health care, scared that medical bills and public medical insurance can hurt their chances for citizenship, bar relatives from coming to the United States or break up their families.

“I heard that if you go to the emergency room or go to the doctor, they were going to deport you,” said Alejandra, a mother from Colombia living in Queens, referring to a rule proposed in 2004 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that would have made hospitals report the immigration status of emergency-room patients in exchange for more federal money. “So then my four children are going to be without me because I don’t have documents here.”

The proposal did not pass, but like many of the proposed rules immigrants hear about on television or from neighbors, its chilling effects lasted.

Restrictive bills are part of what supporters describe as a movement to end tolerance for the country’s estimated 11 million illegal residents.

“It’s certainly an effort to make them go back,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group calling for fewer immigrants and stricter enforcement of immigration laws. “It will never be acceptable for people to break our laws and then expect taxpayers to provide health care.”

Almost by definition, the most fearful immigrants are the least likely to talk. The Colombian mother in Queens, however, was among 75 immigrant parents, both legal and illegal, who were interviewed in depth by researchers from the New York Academy of Medicine for a study to be released later this year, with the guarantee that their real names would be withheld.

What emerges from the transcripts, and from dozens of other interviews conducted by The New York Times with patients, health-care providers and experts on immigration, is a picture not only of heightened anxiety but also of immigrants who are primed to flee rather than fight for help from a system that even the native-born often find baffling and rude.

For Nadege, pregnant and in pain when she sought treatment at Queens Hospital Center, a public hospital, the defining moment was a snub by a fellow Haitian who had been summoned to interpret. “She said to me, ‘Don’t come here saying that you have a bellyache: no one is going to stay with you the entire day,’ ” Nadege recalled.

“I cried,” she said. “I picked up my belongings and left. Even if I was dying that day, I wouldn’t go back.”

Lard and Vodka, Not Doctors

No one is suggesting that hospitals and clinics are seeing a decline in immigrant patients. On the contrary, as a decade of record immigration continues at an estimated annual clip of 1.2 million newcomers, the number of patients who speak little or no English is growing everywhere. And some hospitals and clinics are trying harder than ever to at least meet language needs.

But even in New York, a gateway of immigration, a national climate that makes immigrant patients more timid also emboldens some front-line workers to bar the way.

“If you have one renegade public-benefits worker who thinks they should be discouraging access because they believe it’s a drain on taxes, the word on the street is it’s too much of a hassle to apply,” said Adam Gurvitch, director of health advocacy for the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella group for more than 150 immigrant organizations.

Problems getting insurance sometimes lead to risky decisions about children’s health care. A legal immigrant from Russia, Oksana, confessed to academy researchers that she had delayed her daughter’s vaccinations for months, keeping her out of school until she could borrow $300 to pay for them. Melosa, of Mexico, had so many problems with state-subsidized insurance that when her severely asthmatic son ran a high fever she resorted to rubs of pig lard and carbonate, instead of taking him to a doctor.

Vera, a Brooklyn mother from Belarus, used vodka rubs and borrowed medications when her daughter was delirious with fever from the flu. “We couldn’t go to the doctor without medical insurance,” she said.

In the end, immigrants often return to mainstream care in dire need, only to have their chaotic medical histories compounded by a beleaguered system whose costliest medical technology is no substitute for timely treatment. In Mr. Zhao’s case, an ambulance took him, unconscious, to a bankrupt hospital system where his life hung in the balance for weeks, and where one of his roommates, a 19-year-old waiter with uneven English, served as the interpreter.

“No money, no ID, no good English,” said the waiter, Hong Chung. “What you going to do? Nobody pay attention to us.”

Mr. Zhao was in a coma when his brother, Ming Tong, 49, and Fujianese friends came to the hospital, clutching the unlabeled pills, which had been described as herb-based remedies for high blood sugar, high blood pressure and insomnia.

Mr. Chung remembers pleading, “If you find out the name of the ingredients, maybe he won’t have to die.” But he said doctors told him that the hospital was unable to do such an analysis. The hospital, St. Mary’s in Brooklyn, was scheduled to close after more than a century serving the immigrant poor. St. John’s in Queens, where Mr. Zhao was transferred for more tests 12 days later, was up for sale. Their parent organization, St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers, the largest Roman Catholic hospital system in New York State, had just filed for bankruptcy protection.

At struggling hospitals, interpretation can seem like a luxury, despite longstanding federal and state laws requiring equal language access and studies showing that it cuts cost by improving quality. Few hospitals have laboratories capable of analyzing underground remedies.

“With regular drugs, we know what the side effects and interactions are,” said Dr. Sarvesh Parikh, a resident at St. John’s, who wrote a note in Mr. Zhao’s chart about his roommates’ account of the pills. “About these kinds of pills, we don’t know anything.”

The larger mystery was why Mr. Zhao, a thin, quiet, frugal man, had gone without medical care instead of returning to Bellevue. In 2000, seven years after he and his brother arrived on American shores, jammed into the fetid hold of a smuggling ship, Bellevue doctors had diagnosed and eradicated his nasal cancer.

But even when treatment is a medical triumph, without sick pay or a safety net it can be personally devastating. In Mr. Zhao’s case, the effects of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy left him unable to work. His wife and son in China had counted on his income, and without it, she divorced him to marry another man. Then staggering medical bills arrived at the apartment that he and his brother shared with six roommates.

Medicaid reimburses hospitals for emergency care of the poor, regardless of immigration status. Outside of emergency care, however, illegal immigrants like Mr. Zhao are ineligible for Medicaid; in two-thirds of states, so are most legal noncitizens, no matter how indigent.

James Saunders, a spokesman for Bellevue, like Debby Cohen, a spokeswoman for St. John’s, said confidentiality laws barred discussion of Mr. Zhao’s case. But Mr. Saunders emphasized that Bellevue has a mandate not to turn anyone away because of immigration status or lack of money, “and an obligation to the federal government to collect what we can.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, about the same time Bellevue security guards began demanding ID cards, clerks started collecting sliding-scale fees from the uninsured. Mr. Zhao was charged $20 per visit, then $150 for a CAT scan. Destitute, intimidated, unable to keep borrowing such sums, and unaware that the fees could be waived, his brother said, Mr. Zhao gave up on Bellevue in 2002.

“The doctor said that he was supposed to come back every two months, every three months, every six months, until the end of his life,” Ming Tong Zhao recalled through an interpreter. “But he couldn’t go back, because he couldn’t pay.”

By the time Mr. Zhao again ended up in a hospital, he was in a coma; just his intensive care bed, at St. Mary’s and then at St. John’s, cost Medicaid $5,400 a day. For more than a month, a parade of doctors did spinal taps, EKG’s, CAT scans and an M.R.I.; infused him with antibiotics, anticonvulsants and blood thinners; and placed him on a ventilator. Tests showed diabetes and high blood pressure, though their role in his collapse was uncertain.

Ming Tong, visiting between his work renovating kitchens in Manhattan, could not get a clear answer about what was wrong with his brother and was afraid to press. “You understand,” he said, “people in the United States without legal status don’t want to cause too much trouble.”

Afraid to Seek Help

Whether legal or illegal ・and many immigrant families include members in both categories ・noncitizens are fearful of asking for too much. Many echo Catalina, a Queens woman from Colombia who hesitated to sign her toddler up for the free speech therapy urged by his pediatrician because she and her husband had a pending application for a green card. “It scared us,” the woman said, “because if you are asking for residency, you have to show you are capable of living here without any help.”

Noncitizens are two to three times more likely to lack health insurance than citizens, studies show, and the gap has widened, even for children. Even legal immigrants qualified for government medical coverage often think twice about accepting it.

Special concerns arise among different ethnic groups. Korean parents in Staten Island mistakenly fear that their children will forfeit future chances for a college loan, said Jinny J. Park, a health specialist at Korean Community Services. And mothers at the Latin American Integration Center in Queens worry unnecessarily that free medical care will later mean their children’s military conscription. As one, Melosa, put it, “Everything we receive from the government is like giving my children away little by little” to the Army.

The changing political climate makes it hard to separate myth from reality. Laws codify disapproval of government aid for noncitizens. An immigrant deemed “likely to become a public charge,” for example, is to be denied a green card as undesirable. The 1996 welfare overhaul barred most legal immigrants who arrived after August of that year from receiving federal Medicaid until they become citizens, and the state-by-state patchwork of exceptions is confusing.

Even New York, which extends Medicaid to lawful immigrants and to low-income children regardless of status, reserves the right to sue their sponsoring relatives for reimbursement, though it is not doing so.

Those who do apply for public insurance discover a stark gap between the enthusiastic multilingual marketing of H.M.O.’s and the Kafkaesque task of getting and keeping an insurance card that works. They tell of learning only in the doctor’s office that a sick child’s card is not valid and then being turned away for lack of money.

The public health implications alarm James R. Tallon, president of the United Hospital Fund, a nonprofit policy group in New York. “Anything that keeps anyone away from the health system makes no sense at all,” Mr. Tallon said, noting that early detection is crucial in case of Avian flu or bioterrorism. “It takes one epidemic to change everyone’s attitudes about this.”

In some cases, the change in attitude comes instead from immigrants who arrived with high expectations of American medicine and now yearn for the kind they left back home. Yelena Deykin, a legal refugee who came from Ukraine in 2000, said that if she had the money, she would take her son back there for treatment of his thyroid ailment. “Our doctor not like your doctor,” she said. “Altruism ・not business.”

In Mr. Zhao’s hospital room, visitors began to hope for his recovery. After three weeks, he seemed responsive when they called his name. So it came as a shock when Mr. Chung, the waiter acting as a translator, relayed a new request from a doctor: Would they agree to let Mr. Zhao die?

Mr. Chung, who would soon return to work at an Asian restaurant in South Charleston, W.Va., translated the request for a “do not resuscitate” order as best he could, and drew his own conclusions. “Maybe some people don’t like Chinese,” he said.

Ming Tong refused to sign the order, then telephoned his brother’s son, in China, and asked him to decide. The son wept. Now 23, he had been a child of 9 when he last saw his father. As they discussed it again on Aug. 9, Mr. Zhao grew agitated. He tried to pull free of his tubes and his oxygen mask, as though he wanted to speak. Instead, despite resuscitation efforts, he died without a word.

In the End, No Answers

“The one thing that he wanted the most in his life was to see his son again, and he didn’t even get that chance,” Ming Tong said. “Why did he die? I asked the doctors. They didn’t know. They didn’t answer me.”

For immigrants, the divide of language and culture often deepens after death. In this case, doctors requested an autopsy. Ming Tong refused, in keeping with Chinese tradition. Doctors certified the death as natural, not mentioning the pills. The official cause of death was lobar pneumonia and sepsis, secondary to diabetes and hypertension ・acute lung and blood infections, that can attack patients on ventilators, but whose origins in this case are unknown, and chronic conditions that weaken the system.

On Aug. 13, The World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper circulating to 300,000 in North America, described Mr. Zhao’s death as part of a pattern of fatal misdiagnoses and wrong medications given by unlicensed practitioners on East Broadway, the thoroughfare of Fujianese Chinatown.

But at the Medical Examiner’s Office, where an inquiry could have been ordered, no one reads Chinese and no one was aware of questions about the case. Permission for cremation was granted the next day.

Most of Mr. Zhao’s possessions fit into his coffin. The rest, including the pills, were discarded. But a woman going to his funeral called The New York Times and accused an unlicensed practitioner on East Broadway of mishandling Mr. Zhao’s case.

A decade ago, the Chinese American Medical Society helped spur a short-lived state crackdown on a Chinatown subculture of fake doctors. But “there are more illegal doctors than ever now,” said Dr. Peter Fong, an ophthalmologist and a former vice president of the society. They are not just offering herbal supplements, for which no license is required, he said, but practicing medicine without a license ・a crime.

To John C. Liu, the first Asian-American elected to the New York City Council, the reason is obvious: “What empowers the quacks is lack of access to health care.”

Chinese workers scattered in jobs throughout New York and across the country periodically return to East Broadway, the hub of Fujianese life in the United States, to find health care ・of a sort.

No. 52, where Mr. Chung says he accompanied Mr. Zhao last summer and saw the dispensing of the pills, is stacked with self-styled clinics. One thrives at the back of a basement computer store; another features $30 pregnancy sonograms and a crookedly lettered sign for “precise dental art.”

The establishment of Yu Yuan Zhang, 50, where Mr. Chung said he and Mr. Zhao went, has operated for 11 years. Near drawers of Chinese herbs hangs a New York State medical license ・in someone else’s name. Visibly nervous, Mr. Zhang denied that any pills he dispensed could cause harm. “They’re made in China,” he said, “available all over, in the street.”

By then, the only evidence left of Mr. Zhao’s 12 years in the United States were bills, ashes and a death certificate that his brother could not read. Pressed about the case, the practitioner did not hesitate.

“There is no such person,” he said. “There is no Ming Qiang Zhao.”

More community health centers, but fewer clinicians

Shortages of Medical Personnel at Community Health Centers Implications for Planned Expansion
By Roger A. Rosenblatt, MD, MPH; C. Holly A. Andrilla, MS; Thomas Curtin, MD; L. Gary Hart, PhD
JAMA
March 1, 2006

Residents of the United States lack universal access to health care, and millions of people have difficulty obtaining medical care. The year 2005 marked the 40th anniversary of one of the nation’s most enduring attempts to remedy this problem: the creation of community health centers (CHCs) as part of the “war on poverty.”

The role and responsibility of CHCs have increased as more people in the United States have difficulty gaining access to medical care. CHCs now provide care to more than 14 million US residents in more than 3500 communities. Governed by nonprofit boards with majority representation from the patient population served, CHCs are different from the private practices and for-profit entities that deliver most ambulatory care in the United States.

A national decision to invest further in CHCs has occurred during a period when access to health care in the United States is limited for more people than ever before in the country’s history.

Our results show that in 2004, CHCs were understaffed and were having difficulty recruiting essential health care personnel. This inability to fill budgeted vacancies could become a rate-limiting factor as they seek to expand their clinical activities to care for needy populations, particularly in rural areas.

The clinical role of CHCs is dependent on primary care clinicians, both physicians and nonphysician clinicians. This is occurring in a national environment in which primary care in general has lost popularity as a practice discipline. For example, the US production of family physicians has decreased rapidly in the last 7 years, with the number of US medical graduates matching in family medicine declining 51.6% from 1997 to 2005. Filling the existing CHC vacancies would absorb 20% of the 2005 output from the family medicine residencies.

Conclusions: CHCs face substantial challenges in recruitment of clinical staff, particularly in rural areas. The largest numbers of unfilled positions were for family physicians at a time of declining interest in family medicine among graduating US medical students. The success of the current US national policy to expand CHCs may be challenged by these workforce issues.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/9/1042#REF-JOC60013-9

Comment: By Don McCanne, M.D.

Expanding community health centers seems to be an almost futile exercise when the primary care workforce is contracting.

What can be done, under our current system of funding health care, to address this problem? On the other hand, what might the public administrator of a single payer monopsony do if presented with this same problem? More importantly, would this degree of deterioration of the primary care workforce have been allowed to happen under a single payer system?

Why pick on Wal-Mart?

Editorial
LA Times
March, 2 2006

WAL-MART’S RECENT DECISION to offer health coverage to more of its 1.4 million U.S. employees is a little like getting a date with a favorite crush because she feels sorry for you. Sure, you’re happy to have it, but you wish it had happened for a different reason.

The retailing behemoth is only expanding employee benefits because so many state legislatures are bullying it to do so. Two months ago, Maryland passed the Fair Share Health Care Act, which requires companies with more than 10,000 workers to spend at least 8% of their payroll on healthcare or pay the difference to the state; only Wal-Mart is affected.

More than two dozen states have threatened similar legislation. In response, Wal-Mart has said it will try to increase the number of its insured workers — currently about half are covered — by significantly reducing the waiting period for new employees to qualify for coverage and by offering bare-bones health plans for as little as $11 a month.

This kind of legislative intimidation is bad for a couple of reasons. First, it’s arbitrary and unfair. Why not go after companies with 5,000 employees? Or 50? Or ones with employees who wear funny hats and ask, “You want fries with that?” Second, employer mandates don’t work. To make up for higher healthcare costs, Wal-Mart is likely to reduce salaries or other benefits. That’s partly why Californians two years ago rejected Proposition 72, which would have forced businesses with 50 or more employees either to insure their workers or pay a fee to the state.

It’s true that Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest private employer and that its approach to healthcare can have a disproportionate effect, much like its approach to retailing does. But it’s foolish to think that Wal-Mart alone can fix the deep problems afflicting the nation’s healthcare system. Although healthcare spending is expected to jump to $4 trillion in the next decade — to 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product — the number of uninsured is increasing by more than a million people a year, and Americans are no healthier than citizens of countries that spend half what we do. That’s the definition of bad medicine.

Fortunately, the public appears to be growing so tired of the problem that national healthcare reform is all but inevitable. Proposals range from a comprehensive overhaul to minor tweaks. More moderate reforms could simply increase the number of low-income adults eligible for existing public programs. And even after President Clinton’s disastrous healthcare reform proposals a decade ago, momentum is growing again for a “single payer” government agency that would insure everyone in the country.

Whatever Americans decide, they should understand that any serious reforms will require shared sacrifice. Meanwhile, shaming Wal-Mart or any other company into covering more of its workers isn’t necessarily productive. Employers alone didn’t create the American healthcare crisis, and they alone can’t solve it.

Managed care is alive and sick

Doctors object to ultimatum on health care
By Cheryl Clark
The San Diego Union-Tribune
February 26, 2006

Dozens of doctors are protesting a Sharp physician network’s demand that their senior patients enroll in one health plan, Secure Horizons, if they want to use Sharp’s services in San Diego County.

Some 22,000 patients could be caught in the cross hairs, the doctors said.

These 45 doctors have until Tuesday to accept or reject Sharp’s ultimatum. If the physicians decide to work exclusively with Sharp, their non-Secure Horizons patients must switch to Secure Horizons or find primary-care doctors who accept their current health plan by June 1.

If the independent doctors contract exclusively with Sharp, community hospitals such as the 301-bed Paradise Valley Hospital also would suffer.

Dr. Alan Schoengold, Sharp Community Medical Group’s president, said his network “is very well aware of the ramifications” for patients, hospitals and physicians.

For doctors who face financial difficulties because they gave up non-Secure Horizons patients, Sharp will advance payment and provide loans to them.

No matter what the dissenting doctors choose, they will lose some patients. If they select Sharp, they will lose patients who want to stay with Health Net or other providers. If they opt to remain independent, they will lose their Secure Horizons patients to Sharp.

Lincoln Acres resident Ruth Wells, 87, said she recently switched from Blue Cross to Health Net, whose network includes her specialists and whose pharmacy plan covers the drugs she needs.

But when Wells was told that her physician may require her to switch to Secure Horizons, she became very upset.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “I want to see doctors in my neighborhood.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060226/
news_1m26sharp.html

And…

Blue Cross Coverage Extended in Dispute
By Lisa Girion
Los Angeles Times
February 25, 2006

State regulators stepped in Friday to delay a showdown that threatens access for more than 175,000 Blue Cross members to three hospitals in Los Angeles County.

The state Department of Managed Health Care intervened in a long-running fee dispute that pits struggling hospital operator Centinela Freeman HealthSystem against the nation’s largest insurer, WellPoint Inc.

Centinela Freeman Chief Executive Mike Rembis said the company had hoped to go into the black this year. But, he said, that hinged on getting an adequate increase in reimbursements from Blue Cross.

Almost a quarter of Centinela Freeman patients are Blue Cross members but they provide only 9% of revenue, administrators said.

Blue Cross has asked the Department of Managed Health Care for permission to send its members to other hospitals in the event that they fail to reach a new agreement. Blue Cross members also could use Centinela Freeman hospitals but would be reimbursed at a lower, out-of-network rate.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-centinela25feb25,1,3558558.story

Comment: By Don McCanne, M.D.

Those who claim that the age of managed care is ending simply haven’t been paying attention.

Health care intermediaries continue to leverage their positions by taking choice away from patients, physicians and hospitals. Periodic contract changes create instability, negatively impacting patients’ choice of physicians and hospitals, while threatening the solvency of the providers.

The consumer-directed (CDHC) advocates claim that their model would replace managed care. But the high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) that they are touting are still managed-care preferred provider organizations (PPOs). Though these plans may allow out-of-network health care, the patients’ out-of-pocket expenses are so great that it is almost equivalent to having no coverage at all.

Adopting a single payer national health insurance system would return to patients free choice of health care providers, including the option of choosing integrated health systems such as Kaiser Permanente. The CDHC advocates want patients to participate in their health care decisions. They should start by giving them choice of their physicians and hospitals. That will never happen with PPO HDHPs which, by design, deliberately restrict choices.

Seducing the medical profession

The New York Times
Editorial
Originally published February 6, 2006

New evidence keeps emerging that the medical profession has sold its soul in exchange for what can only be described as bribes from the manufacturers of drugs and medical devices. It is long past time for leading medical institutions and professional societies to adopt stronger ground rules to control the noxious influence of industry money.

Recently, two new cases came to light that reveal the lengths to which companies will go to buy influence with doctors, pharmacists, and other medical professionals. Reed Abelson reported in The New York Times on Jan. 24 about a whistle-blowers lawsuit alleging that Medtronic had paid tens of millions of dollars to surgeons in a position to use and recommend its medical devices. In one particularly egregious example, a prominent Wisconsin surgeon received $400,000 for just eight days of consulting.

In the Times last month, Gardiner Harris and Robert Pear revealed that a Danish company paid a pharmacist, doctors assistants, and a drug store chain to switch diabetic patients to the company’s high-priced insulin products.

In the wake of past reports of industry’s influence over prescribing practices, medical and industry groups have issued guidelines defining appropriate behavior. But as an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association made clear, these guidelines are far too weak.

The influential authors called for a complete ban on all gifts, free meals, and payments for attending meetings. They urged doctors to reject free drug samples because they are a powerful incentive to use medicines that are expensive but not more effective.

These proposals are hardly onerous. Kaiser Permanente has adopted nearly all of the recommendations. Its doctors prescribe heavily marketed medicines far less frequently.

The critical issue is that doctors must have the best interests of their patients at heart in prescribing drugs or recommending medical devices. Their judgment must not be clouded by financial self-interest or the desire to please industrial benefactors.

Goodbye, Europe. Hello, USA.

Alberta headed for USA-style health care system
By Diana Gibson
Parkland Institute
Originally published February 21, 2006

Ralph Klein has wasted no time challenging the election promises of Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government.

In early February, Alberta Health Minister Iris Evans presented the first phase of Alberta’s health care reform plans to the provincial cabinet. Evans, who plans to announce additional reforms this month, acknowledged that the reforms will potentially violate the Canada Health Act.

Harper solemnly pledged to uphold the Canada Health Act, which requires, among other things, universality, comprehensiveness and public administration.

Yet Klein has announced that he is rolling out an agenda to dramatically expand private health insurance and delivery. Carefully crafted rhetoric like “third way,” “increasing access,” “medicare plus,” “increasing choice”
and “European model” is used to shroud the fact that he is talking about privatization, and taking Alberta toward a US- style, corporate health system.

There is no “third way” or “European model.” As the Supreme Court’s Justice Marie Deschamps pointed out in the Chaoulli decision, “There is no single model; the approach in Europe is no more uniform than in Canada.” There is, rather, a spectrum of health care models ranging from purely public to purely private.

Canada already has significant private-sector involvement on both the funding side (insurance) and the delivery side (private surgeries, labs and diagnostics). In fact, Canada is already farther down the path to private insurance than most European countries.

In most European countries, private insurance covers less than 10 percent of health care costs, whereas Canada is already at approximately 14 percent.

In fact, Canada is already fourth among OECD countries for private health insurance spending.

European health care is more comprehensive. Among members of the EU, health insurance tends to be more universal and more comprehensive than Canada’s, covering a wider range of benefits such as pharmaceuticals, dental care and long-term care.

If there is a trend in OECD countries, it is towards less, and not more, private funding. Between 1994 and 2004, the private share of health spending was either constant or decreased in more than half of OECD countries.

European countries protect the publicly funded system. Health care practitioners can’t be in two places at the same time. So creating a parallel, for-profit system will simply take doctors, nurses and radiologists away from the public sector, where there is already a shortage.

For this reason, many European countries have instituted regulations that protect the public sector from such erosion. Examples include requirements that doctors and even patients must opt in or out of the public system; and limits on what practitioners can charge and insurance companies can pay in the private system. For example, in Austria, private insurance can only pay 80 percent of the cost billed by professionals practising in the public
sector.

Alberta currently has a provision that doctors must opt out of the publicly funded system if they want to offer services covered by the public system on a for- profit basis. As the bulk of the work is in the publicly funded system, this presents a disincentive to doctors practising outside of the publicly funded system; they can’t do both.

Such protections are precisely what Ralph Klein is proposing be eliminated. He has already clearly said that the requirement for doctors to opt in or out will be eliminated.

There have also been hints that the protections for the public system introduced in Bill 11 will be reversed – for example, the provision that private, for-profit surgical clinics could operate but not private, for-profit hospitals.

These changes take us down an American path, not a European one.

There are other reasons to believe that Klein is taking the US path and not the European path.

First, Canada is integrating our economy with the US, not with Germany, Sweden or France – and Canada has clearly become part of a North American health care market.

Second, it is US health care corporations, not European ones, who are pushing for access to the Canadian health care system.

Not surprisingly, the US has the world’s largest health insurance industry.

The influence wielded by US health insurance corporations is reason enough to carefully scrutinize Klein’s choices.

Witness the Alberta government’s decision to hire US-owned AON Corporation to design health care options for Alberta.

This choice speaks volumes; AON will be intimately familiar with the US model.

And yes, this is the same AON whose American parent recently paid out $190 million following a probe into allegations of fraud and anti-competitive practices.

Once the door is opened to further privatization in Canada’s health care system, it will be difficult to turn back to the principle of universality – equal access to health care regardless of ability to pay.

Private interests will be heavily invested, and NAFTA’s infamous Chapter 11 may open us to lawsuits if we try to make our system public again.

We are embarking on a critical debate about the future of our health care system, a system that represents the fundamental values of equity and justice at the core of Canadian society.

Will Harper stand up for Canada? Will he stand up to Klein?

Diana Gibson is the Research Director for the Parkland Institute. She has an extensive background in public policy research and as an educator. Prior to joining Parkland, Diana worked as staff and a consultant to various community organizations, colleges, government agencies and trade unions on topics ranging from health care policy and water security to international trade.