PNHP

Next civil rights frontier? It surely has to be health care

Next civil rights frontier? It surely has to be health care

By Jessica Schorr Saxe, M.D.
The Charlotte Observer, Jan. 14, 2012

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
–Martin Luther King, 1966

In the exam room, the patient recounted her complicated illness. When she described symptoms related to her surgery, I suggested she see her surgeon.

She had spoken calmly until this point, but now tears came to her eyes. When she lost her job because of her illness, she lost her insurance and could no longer see any of her trusted physicians. Then followed months without needed care. Hers was just one of the sad money-related stories I hear daily.

Injustice we still tolerate

On Martin Luther King Day, it is easy to congratulate ourselves on our progress in moving beyond segregated schools, lunch counters and drinking fountains. The hard question is this: what injustices do we still accept that should, in fact, be intolerable?

Surely Dr. King would find the next civil rights frontier in health care, with nearly 50 million uninsured, almost 45,000 deaths annually due to lack of insurance, and more than half of all personal bankruptcies linked to illness and medical bills.

While the Affordable Care Act will bring improvements, such as decreasing the ranks of the uninsured, supporting community health centers, and investing in prevention, it leaves many gaps. At least 23 million people will still be uninsured in 2019. Tens of millions will be underinsured, one serious illness away from financial ruin. Most people who suffer medical bankruptcy had private insurance before getting sick. And medical bankruptcy is a cruel double whammy. Already beset with pain, anxiety and fear – due to serious illness – families find themselves financially devastated.

This doesn’t happen in other industrialized countries, which have high-quality health systems that cover everyone.

The U.S. spent $7,960 per person for health care in 2010. Most developed countries spent less than half that amount and yet have better health outcomes and, in many cases, similar or better access to technical advances, such as hip replacements, bone marrow transplants, and MRIs.

How is this possible? As a nation, we waste about $350 billion in unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy, thanks to our fragmented system of financing care through multiple insurers. And, although all countries are suffering from health care inflation, our rise in costs is far higher.

What to do? We should move to an Improved Medicare for All system, in which we share the cost of covering everyone, as we do for other valued services such as education, police, and the fire department.

How could we afford it? Our current public expenditures for health care that don’t cover everyone are already greater than the total expenditures of countries that do.

First, we would save by cutting out the insurance company middlemen. Second, we would negotiate lower prices for medications and supplies. Finally, by abolishing private insurance premiums and substituting revenues from taxes based on ability to pay (a mixture of taxes on payroll, personal, and unearned income as well as stock and bond transactions), we would easily cover the uninsured.

Concerned that this is socialized medicine? Not at all. The U.S. has a high-performing socialized medicine system in the Veterans Administration, which owns hospitals and employs doctors and enjoys high patient satisfaction. Improved Medicare for All is not socialized medicine. The bills would be paid by one source, but medical practices and non-profit hospitals would continue to be independent.

Worried about the solvency of Medicare? Medicare actually operates economically, with administrative costs well under half those of private plans and with better cost control. In addition, Medicare has been considerably less inflationary. If billions of dollars were freed up in administrative costs nationally, that could go a long way toward comprehensive (not minimal) coverage for all, as well as fair (and not constantly threatened) payment for doctors and hospitals.

What are those expenses? Insurance companies incur them for designing plans, marketing, and deciding who is – or often isn’t – eligible. Hospitals and providers also have excessive costs. While medical practices in Ontario spent $22, 205 per physician annually interacting with Canada’s single payer agency, American practices spent $82,975 per physician dealing with health plans.

Use health care dollars to help

Consider the possible savings. This money could be used for actually providing health care.

My dream is to take care of patients and not have the specter of financial issues an unwelcome presence at every visit. I dream that there will be no tears in my office due to the unaffordability of needed care. And I dream that my time – and our health care dollars – will be spent helping people, not mired in bureaucracy.

Do you want to pay a real tribute to Martin Luther King? Be bold and visionary as he was. Fight “the most shocking and inhumane” injustice – and support Improved Medicare for All.

Jessica Schorr Saxe is a Charlotte physician and a board member of the Health Care for All NC.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/14/2925694/next-civil-rights-frontier-it.html

In Dire Health

By Arnold Relman
The American Prospect, Jan. 13, 2012

Most people assume that insurance is an essential part of the health-care system. Some think it should be provided through public programs like Medicare, while others prefer to see it purchased from private insurance companies, but the majority believe that insurance is needed to help pay the unpredictable and often catastrophic expenses of medical care. That is why so much public policy focuses on extending coverage to as many people as possible and controlling its cost. I think this emphasis on insurance is mistaken. We would have a much better and more affordable health-care system if the reimbursement of medical expenses through public or private insurance plans was replaced by tax-supported universal access to comprehensive care, without bills for specific services and without insurance plans to pay those bills.

Insurance is not simply a mechanism for spreading financial risks and paying for medical care. Because it usually tries to limit payments to providers, insurance often is an intrusive third party in the doctor-patient relationship and, particularly with private insurance, restricts the freedom of doctors and patients to select the services, specialists, and facilities they want to use. At the same time, insurance coverage tends to encourage the “moral hazard” of overuse of elective services, by reducing patients’ awareness of costs and limiting their out-of-pocket expenditures. Furthermore, all insurance plans have administrative expenses, and most private plans take profits that add to the cost of their premiums. The billing and collecting operations that are an integral part of any insured health system are a major expense for doctors and hospitals as well. Billing and collecting through insurance also offer abundant opportunities for fraud and abuse, which skim off as much as 5 percent to 10 percent of the total expenditure on health care.

For-profit insurance companies, which control most of the private market, are the greatest problem. They have a direct conflict of interest with their customers, because a plan’s net income is increased by avoiding coverage of patients with serious illnesses (who, of course, are most in need of insurance), restricting access to services, and limiting coverage of expensive medical conditions. Provisions in the new Affordable Care Act, which take effect in 2014, will prevent private insurers from denying or dropping coverage because of illness, but the act will also put many more people into for-profit insurance plans, which will still be permitted to raise premiums. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the business costs and profits of these plans currently take more than $150 billion from their premiums before paying for medical services and are projected to increase more rapidly than national expenditures on health care. Additionally, the private insurance industry adds costs to doctors and hospitals that must spend tens of billions in billing and collecting from multiple plans, each with its own rules and regulations.

Apologists for the for-profit insurance industry claim that its high overhead costs are justified by greater control of providers’ charges, the provision of preventive services, and the promotion of the quality of medical care. No credible evidence supports these claims. The rapid turnover of membership in private plans makes continuity of oversight by insurers nearly impossible and limits the effectiveness of preventive and quality-promoting programs. Despite insurers’ efforts to control costs in the private sector, they continue to rise more rapidly than in public programs.

The private insurers’ “managed care” plans did stabilize the costs of care in the private sector for a few years in the mid-1990s by limiting patients’ choices of physicians and hospitals, monitoring physicians’ recommendations of expensive procedures, and reducing elective hospitalizations. However, a backlash from patients and physicians forced the plans to change these tactics, which were seen as an intrusion into the practice of medicine. By the end of the decade, private health costs had resumed their rapid rise. Private for-profit health insurance has now grown into a huge industry that exerts a powerful self-serving influence on national health policy.

Public insurance through Medicare also has its problems. Although its overhead costs (less than 5 percent of expenditures) are much lower than those of private insurance (about 15 percent to 25 percent of expenditures), it also encourages overuse of elective services. Medicare also struggles with constantly rising expenditures. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the program’s costs will almost double over the next decade. The increase has caused a federal budget crisis requiring urgent efforts at cost control. Payments to hospitals are being cut, and more medical costs are being shifted to Medicare beneficiaries. Provisions in the Affordable Care Act authorize trials of new forms of payment and new organizations of physicians and hospitals to receive these payments (accountable-care organizations). The administration of these trials, though, will require so much new bureaucracy that their number will be severely limited—even if Republican opposition in Congress doesn’t block their implementation. Most experts think that without major reforms, Medicare’s rising costs will not be sustainable much longer, but there is little agreement on what reforms will rescue the program or whether any of the proposed cost–saving measures will succeed.

There is, however, a practical alternative to health insurance and the fee-for-service system with which it is usually associated: a not-for-profit system in which a public single payer provides universal access to comprehensive private care delivered by primary-care physicians cooperating with medical specialists in group-practice arrangements. Like health systems based on insurance, this system would not require that patients have much “skin in the game” and therefore might pose a moral hazard that would lead to overuse of elective services. However, unlike insurance-based systems, physicians would be paid by salary rather than fee-for-service, so it would give physicians no financial incentive to recommend unnecessary procedures. Each group’s management would determine and pay salaries, under federal regulations that would cap the fraction of the group’s budget allocated to salaries but would allow management to determine individual compensation. Furthermore, in this insurance-free system, primary-care physicians trained to avoid unneeded care would counsel patients.

Successful examples already exist of systems that are based on a single payer and group practice centered on primary care. They are self-insured, not-for-profit staff-model HMOs such as Kaiser Foundation health plans, Geisinger Health Plan, and the plan designed by and for the New York hotel and restaurant workers’ union. In self-insured plans, there is no third-party insurer to pay the charges; these plans assume the insurance risk of providing their members with the medical care for which they contract. These plans support a multispecialty group practice that provides a specified range of comprehensive medical services. Their members usually choose a primary-care physician in the group who directs their treatment and refers them to specialist colleagues and other personnel in the group as needed. Some plans have no bills for individual services; others charge small token fees for each visit. Evidence shows that plans like these deliver quality, cost-effective care.

The recently reorganized Veterans Affairs medical-care system, once viewed unfavorably, now is often cited as another example of a single-payer system that provides comprehensive care by teams of salaried physicians and other health professionals, without insurance reimbursement. The federal gover
nment funds the program, but its patients contribute modest payment for some services.

In the system I envision, there would be no bills, although there might be small token fees at the point of service to discourage overuse for trivial complaints. Regulated private accountable-care organizations of salaried physicians that delivered the treatment would be responsible for staying within budgetary limits set by the agency that paid them on a per-capita basis. Physician groups would be nonprofit; low-cost public reinsurance would compensate them for any losses due to caring for extremely sick patients. Net income could not be used to enhance salaries or make capital improvements but could be applied to upgrading patient services. Physician groups could be expected to pay hospital costs, or hospitals could be separately paid by the single payer, but all hospital charges would be regulated.

Congress would not have a separate health-care system. Everyone, including legislators and government officials, would be in the system and would pay their share of the progressive, designated health-care tax that supported the program. This would, among other things, prevent legislative underfunding. People would be free to choose their primary-care physician and physician group and could change doctors and group membership as they wished. They would also be free to pay for any medical services they might choose outside the publicly funded program.

The envisioned system would be much less expensive than the hodgepodge we now have, because the profits and overhead costs of private insurance would be gone. Without bills, there would be little or no fraud and abuse and less administrative hassle. Without fee-for-service, physicians would have no incentives for unnecessary elective services. And with medical care based on nonprofit groups of cooperating specialists centered on primary-care physicians, there would be good reason to expect services to be efficient and of high quality.

Given what we know about the added costs of private insurance and given informed estimates of the costs of fraudulent billing and of unnecessary and duplicated services, a conservative guess of the total savings from eliminating these problems might be one-third or more of the entire cost of medical care. In any case, these savings would amount to many hundreds of billions—far more than enough to pay for the cost of providing good care for everyone. A reformed system based on group practice could also reduce the cost of defensive medicine (procedures done in response to concerns about malpractice liability). This would probably add a substantial amount to the projected savings. The federal government would have ultimate control over rising costs, because it would set the rate of the designated, progressive tax that funded the entire system and would thereby determine how much could be spent on health care each year. At the beginning of reform, the health tax would presumably collect an amount close to the current total cost of health care. Subsequent tax rates would reflect the new system’s needs and its savings.

Converting the present system to the one I have proposed would require a sea change in public opinion and government policy and would also need the support of most of the medical profession. To say the least, it would be a long and difficult process that would be bitterly opposed by the private insurance industry and its friends and by all those who fear a “government takeover” and cling to the groundless belief that the free market can best govern the health-care system. Nevertheless, there are reasons I believe this transformation has at least a chance of becoming reality.

First, physicians are flocking to join group practices in great numbers, and this could be the beginning of a major national reorganization of medical care. About 200,000 physicians (approximately 25 percent to 30 percent of all those in practice) are now employed by multispecialty groups owned by physicians or by hospitals, and this number is increasing by about 10 percent annually. Most of these groups pay their physicians at least a partial salary—only a few pay full salaries. The majority, though, still receive payment from insurance plans on a fee-for-service basis.

A rapidly growing fraction of practicing physicians are beginning to see the advantages to themselves and their patients of organized group practice with partial or full salaries. At the same time, the traditional conservatism of doctors seems to be changing. If this trend continues—and I believe it is being accelerated by the increasing number of women in medicine, who tend to favor group practice and health-care reform—we may see physicians and many medical societies urging basic reforms that would include a single-payer system. Women will soon represent half of all practicing physicians, and their attitudes will influence the profession, patients, and the general public. Legislators, now largely responsive to the financial inducements of lobbyists and vested interests, might begin to appreciate that they need votes even more than money and might become more receptive to proposals for reform that their constituents widely support.

The private health-insurance industry would be a formidable opponent of the reforms I propose, and its position would be supported by those who worry about the many thousands of jobs that might be lost if this industry were to disappear. However, a huge compensating gain in jobs could result from the expansion of employment in businesses that would no longer have to pay the ever-increasing costs of their employees’ health insurance. Because health benefits were originally given to employees in lieu of salary increases, employers should be expected to share their savings with their employees in the form of increased wages to help them pay their health-care tax. However, if the new system reduced health-care costs and controlled their rate of rise as much as expected, both employers and employees would benefit.

Private insurers would not be appeased by these developments but might be satisfied if the industry’s investors were compensated for their equity interests. Some of the health-care-tax receipts could be used for this purpose over a period of time, perhaps by issuing government bonds to investors in exchange for stock in the private insurance companies.

The phasing-out of private insurance could also be accomplished through competition from a government program. Medicare coverage could be offered to those under age 65 as an alternative to private insurance in decade-by-decade steps. This would allow time for physicians to develop their group-practice arrangements and for the government to carry out trials of capitated payment to groups (that is, payment on a per-capita basis for comprehensive care). To control costs, capitated payments would ultimately have to replace Medicare’s current fee-for-service arrangement, and this would mean a change in the way most Medicare beneficiaries receive their care. Instead of being subsidized by government to obtain health care on a fee-for-service basis, beneficiaries would be expected to select a group practice in a system that would meet all their medical needs at a cost no more—and probably less—than they would pay for Medicare coverage. Opponents of reform would nevertheless claim this abandons entitlements for the elderly, so it would take a lot of public education—and the medical profession’s reassurance—to convince Medicare beneficiaries that they would be much better off in the new system.

Experiments at the state level could facilitate national conversion to a single-payer system. Vermont recently passed legislation to establish such a system and is working toward reorganizing the delivery of medical care. As economic pressures for reform continue to grow, other states may follow. The Hawaii Legislature is considering a universal health system, and Massachusetts is looking at replacing fee-for-service wit
h some form of global payment. The success of state experiments like these would embolden the federal government to act on a national level.

I do not underestimate the complexity of the changes I am proposing. The odds against it are daunting. Congress might not even begin to debate major reform until the health system is near collapse. But what seems clear is that the best—possibly the only—hope for achieving universal, affordable care lies in the eventual elimination of private insurance and fee-for-service payment and in the creation of a tax-supported system based on group practice. Although this proposal makes good medical, social, and economic sense, its ultimate fate will be decided in the political arena. It cannot become a reality without an informed and aroused public bolstered by the medical profession’s strong support for the reform.

http://prospect.org/article/dire-health

Physicians investing in for-profit technology

After urologists got machine, cancer treatments soared

By Jay Hancock
The Baltimore Sun, January 17, 2012
Four years ago, doctors at Chesapeake Urology Associates started ordering the most expensive kind of prostate-cancer therapy for many more of their patients.
Before 2007, the large, multi-office practice was prescribing the treatment, known as intensity modulated radiation therapy, for 12 percent of its prostate-cancer patients covered by Medicare, according to data compiled by a Georgetown University researcher. But starting in mid-2007, Chesapeake Urology’s referral rate for IMRT more than tripled, rising to 43 percent of the Medicare cases.
What could have caused such a sharp change?
It couldn’t have been because IMRT, which costs about $40,000 per treatment, was new. Maryland hospitals had been offering it for years.
It couldn’t have been because IMRT was better.
“No randomized clinical trials show that prostate cancer patients receiving IMRT live longer or experience fewer long-term side effects than those getting the alternatives” of radiation-seed therapy or surgery, said Dr. James Mohler, a urologist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., and chairman of the national committee that sets standards for prostate-cancer care.
Chesapeake Urology tripled its percentage of prescriptions for IMRT after the practice acquired its own IMRT machine in 2007. The more patients the Baltimore-area urologists referred for that expensive therapy alternative, the more revenue and profits they would generate.
“They’re steering patients to IMRT because that’s where they make their money,” said Jean Mitchell, a professor and health care economist at Georgetown who’s working on a national study about IMRT referrals. “They’re making a ton of money out of this. There’s no question about it. At the expense of the taxpayers” who finance Medicare.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-bz-hancock-chesapeake-urology-20120114,0,670418.column

Technology that improves patient outcomes and reduces costs is great. Technology that increases costs, produces undesirable side effects, and provides no evidence of extended life expectancy is… well… not so great, except for meeting the financial goals of the entrepreneurial owners of the technology. And when the owners of the technology are the same trusted physicians who are prescribing it, that’s reprehensible.
Theoretically a government-funded and government-administered health care financing program would have the power to prevent these abuses. Yet this diversion of radiation treatment fees to the referring physicians is occurring within the Medicare program. So simply expanding Medicare to everyone alone is not enough to fix our dysfunctional financing system.
A properly designed single payer national health program would do far more than simply remove private insurers from the system. In this instance the need for the radiation equipment would be determined by medical science confirming the value of the intervention. The decision to purchase the equipment would be made through regional planning based on need. The payment for the equipment would be through separate budgeting of capital improvements. The ownership would be public or non-profit and would have no investors to draw off profits.
Physicians would be paid appropriately for their professional services as urologists and radiation oncologists, but they would not receive extra dividends based on their insight as to the potential lucrative benefits of personally investing in the equipment.
So about that Medicare for all. We speak of an improved Medicare for all, but the improvements would have to be monumental.

What Dr. King might say about physicians in the 1 percent

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane”
–Martin Luther King Jr.

Among the Wealthiest One Percent, Many Variations

By Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff
The New York Times, January 14, 2012

The colossal gap between the very rich and everyone else – the 1 percent versus the 99 percent – has become a rallying point in this election season. President Obama positions himself as a defender of the middle class, and Mitt Romney, the wealthiest of the Republican presidential candidates, decries such talk as “the bitter politics of envy.”

The range of wealth in the 1 percent is vast – from households that bring in $380,000 a year, according to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates.

Most 1 percenters were born with socioeconomic advantages, which helps explain why the 1 percent is more likely than other Americans to have jobs, according to census data. They work longer hours, being three times more likely than the 99 percent to work more than 50 hours a week, and are more likely to be self-employed.

In one survey of wealthy Chicago families, almost twice as many respondents said they would cut government spending as those who said they would cut spending and raise revenue.

“I don’t mind paying a little bit more in taxes. I don’t mind putting money to programs that help the poor,” said Anthony J. Bonomo of Manhasset, N.Y., who runs a medical malpractice insurance company and is a Republican. But, he said, he did mind taking a hit for the country’s woes. “If those people could camp out in that park all day, why aren’t they out looking for a job? Why are they blaming others?”

Still, David Mejias, a divorce and personal injury lawyer who once served as a Democratic legislator for Nassau County, said that the system everywhere was skewed in favor of the self-employed and business owners who could deduct part of the cost of their cars, trips, dinners and even collectibles like art.

“Not only do we make more money, but if you do a lifestyle analysis, we make a lot more money,” he said. “Before we even get paid, most of our life has been paid for already.”

“I definitely see it around me,” said Anu Chandok, 36, an oncologist in Lake Success, referring to the country’s economic pain. “It just personally hasn’t affected me yet.”

Dr. Chandok said that her husband, also a doctor, was still paying off his student loans. The couple has a nanny, but Dr. Chandok’s father-in-law does the shopping and cooking.

Dr. Chandok said she had never heard the Occupy Wall Street slogan “We are the 99 percent.” Two children and 11-hour workdays, she said, do not leave much time for politics.

But when the slogan was explained as a complaint against the wealthy’s growing share of income, she shook her head. “I spent four years in undergraduate school, four years in medical school, three years as a resident and three years as a fellow,” she said. “You have to look at the people who are complaining.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

New York Times Interactive

Of 360,785 physicians who practice in offices and clinics, 27.2 percent have incomes in the top 1 percent (over $380,000).

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

On Martin Luther King Jr Day it seems appropriate to contemplate what he might say about the dramatic increase in flow of wealth from middle- and lower-income families to the 1 percent who constitute the uber-wealthy. It seems safe to assume that he would be concerned about the negative impact on the issues of social justice to which he devoted his life.

One of those issues was health care justice. What do you think he might say about the fact that 27 percent of physicians practicing in offices and clinics fall into the highest 1 percent of income? It is likely that he would not frame the problem narrowly as excess compensation for physicians but rather as the larger issue of an excess accumulation of wealth at the very top when there is so much unmet need amongst the masses.

But for many of us who have had experience in the trenches, we have been annoyed, to say the least, that many of these same high-income physicians refused to see our uninsured and Medicaid patients. Was it because they didn’t want to make the smallest of dents in their high incomes by using a small amount of office time on just a few patients that did not cover their costs? Or was it that they didn’t want “that element” to frequent their waiting rooms? Both, in my experience, and as Dr. Chandok’s views suggest.

One concern that many physicians have about single payer, or an improved Medicare for all, is that the government, as a monopsony, could reduce physicians’ incomes perhaps to the level of teachers’ salaries. Although incomes of physicians in most other nations are lower than in the United States, they still rank well above average. Physicians do very well, though most are not able to accumulate large amounts of wealth that a $380,000 or more income might bring.

Most physicians who are truly dedicated to serving patients would be satisfied with incomes in the top 20 percent if they were provided a practice environment conducive to optimal care for all of their patients. That, of course, is precisely a major goal of single payer.

Many if not most of those physicians who want to be in the top 1 percent might not be satisfied. When deciding on career choices they might reject medicine if it had government controls on spending, and choose an educational path that might lead to the financial services industry, corporate leadership, or entrepreneurial endeavors.

Opponents of government-financed medicine have warned that controls on health care spending might deprive health care of some of the finest and brightest minds. What? Do we really want more physicians whose primary interest is to accumulate wealth while demonstrating absolutely no compassion for the least amongst us? There isn’t much doubt about what Dr. King’s position would be.

When we are asked if single payer might reduce physicians’ incomes we don’t need to fumble around trying to craft an answer that would placate physicians with very high incomes. We should state frankly that if an individual’s goal is to have a personal fleet of luxury automobiles and a condo in every climate, then medicine isn’t the field for them, or at least shouldn’t be.

On the other hand, if the goal is to obtain the best attainable health care for everyone, while adjusting incomes to reinforce the primary care infrastructure and to provide fair but not excessive compensation for procedure-oriented specialists, then practicing medicine in a single payer environment is just what the compassionate doctor ordered.

What Dr. King might say about physicians in the 1 percent

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane”
–Martin Luther King Jr.

Among the Wealthiest One Percent, Many Variations

By Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff
The New York Times, January 14, 2012
The colossal gap between the very rich and everyone else – the 1 percent versus the 99 percent – has become a rallying point in this election season. President Obama positions himself as a defender of the middle class, and Mitt Romney, the wealthiest of the Republican presidential candidates, decries such talk as “the bitter politics of envy.”
The range of wealth in the 1 percent is vast – from households that bring in $380,000 a year, according to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates.
Most 1 percenters were born with socioeconomic advantages, which helps explain why the 1 percent is more likely than other Americans to have jobs, according to census data. They work longer hours, being three times more likely than the 99 percent to work more than 50 hours a week, and are more likely to be self-employed.
In one survey of wealthy Chicago families, almost twice as many respondents said they would cut government spending as those who said they would cut spending and raise revenue.
“I don’t mind paying a little bit more in taxes. I don’t mind putting money to programs that help the poor,” said Anthony J. Bonomo of Manhasset, N.Y., who runs a medical malpractice insurance company and is a Republican. But, he said, he did mind taking a hit for the country’s woes. “If those people could camp out in that park all day, why aren’t they out looking for a job? Why are they blaming others?”
Still, David Mejias, a divorce and personal injury lawyer who once served as a Democratic legislator for Nassau County, said that the system everywhere was skewed in favor of the self-employed and business owners who could deduct part of the cost of their cars, trips, dinners and even collectibles like art.
“Not only do we make more money, but if you do a lifestyle analysis, we make a lot more money,” he said. “Before we even get paid, most of our life has been paid for already.”
“I definitely see it around me,” said Anu Chandok, 36, an oncologist in Lake Success, referring to the country’s economic pain. “It just personally hasn’t affected me yet.”
Dr. Chandok said that her husband, also a doctor, was still paying off his student loans. The couple has a nanny, but Dr. Chandok’s father-in-law does the shopping and cooking.
Dr. Chandok said she had never heard the Occupy Wall Street slogan “We are the 99 percent.” Two children and 11-hour workdays, she said, do not leave much time for politics.
But when the slogan was explained as a complaint against the wealthy’s growing share of income, she shook her head. “I spent four years in undergraduate school, four years in medical school, three years as a resident and three years as a fellow,” she said. “You have to look at the people who are complaining.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/business/the-1-percent-paint-a-more-nuanced-portrait-of-the-rich.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
New York Times Interactive
Of 360,785 physicians who practice in offices and clinics, 27.2 percent have incomes in the top 1 percent (over $380,000).
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html

On Martin Luther King Jr Day it seems appropriate to contemplate what he might say about the dramatic increase in flow of wealth from middle- and lower-income families to the 1 percent who constitute the uber-wealthy. It seems safe to assume that he would be concerned about the negative impact on the issues of social justice to which he devoted his life.
One of those issues was health care justice. What do you think he might say about the fact that 27 percent of physicians practicing in offices and clinics fall into the highest 1 percent of income? It is likely that he would not frame the problem narrowly as excess compensation for physicians but rather as the larger issue of an excess accumulation of wealth at the very top when there is so much unmet need amongst the masses.
But for many of us who have had experience in the trenches, we have been annoyed, to say the least, that many of these same high-income physicians refused to see our uninsured and Medicaid patients. Was it because they didn’t want to make the smallest of dents in their high incomes by using a small amount of office time on just a few patients that did not cover their costs? Or was it that they didn’t want “that element” to frequent their waiting rooms? Both, in my experience, and as Dr. Chandok’s views suggest.
One concern that many physicians have about single payer, or an improved Medicare for all, is that the government, as a monopsony, could reduce physicians’ incomes perhaps to the level of teachers’ salaries. Although incomes of physicians in most other nations are lower than in the United States, they still rank well above average. Physicians do very well, though most are not able to accumulate large amounts of wealth that a $380,000 or more income might bring.
Most physicians who are truly dedicated to serving patients would be satisfied with incomes in the top 20 percent if they were provided a practice environment conducive to optimal care for all of their patients. That, of course, is precisely a major goal of single payer.
Many if not most of those physicians who want to be in the top 1 percent might not be satisfied. When deciding on career choices they might reject medicine if it had government controls on spending, and choose an educational path that might lead to the financial services industry, corporate leadership, or entrepreneurial endeavors.
Opponents of government-financed medicine have warned that controls on health care spending might deprive health care of some of the finest and brightest minds. What? Do we really want more physicians whose primary interest is to accumulate wealth while demonstrating absolutely no compassion for the least amongst us? There isn’t much doubt about what Dr. King’s position would be.
When we are asked if single payer might reduce physicians’ incomes we don’t need to fumble around trying to craft an answer that would placate physicians with very high incomes. We should state frankly that if an individual’s goal is to have a personal fleet of luxury automobiles and a condo in every climate, then medicine isn’t the field for them, or at least shouldn’t be.
On the other hand, if the goal is to obtain the best attainable health care for everyone, while adjusting incomes to reinforce the primary care infrastructure and to provide fair but not excessive compensation for procedure-oriented specialists, then practicing medicine in a single payer environment is just what the compassionate doctor ordered.

What if 911 was run by health insurers?

By Brad Cotton, M.D.
Circleville (Ohio) Herald, Jan. 12, 2012

What if 911 was run the way we do health care in the U.S.?

Much of the following is taken from J. Wesley Boyd, M.D., Ph.D., “Health Care Blues — or, Why Exactly Don’t We Have Single-Payer National Health Insurance?” (available at Physicians for a National Health Program).

“Is this 911?”

“Yes.”

“I have an armed intruder in my house. Please send the police right away. I’m afraid he’s going to kill us all.”

“I’m sorry. From our database, I see the household you are calling from does not have anyone who is employed and therefore you are not entitled to police protection. You’ll have to fend off the intruder yourself. Bye.” (Click)

Or imagine this scenario, which might hit a bit closer to home for many of us with unaffordable and inadequate underinsurance:

“Is this 911?”

“Yes.”

“I have an armed intruder in my house. Please send the police right away. I’m afraid he’s going to kill us all.”

“I see from our database that your employment provides you with our Best Blue police coverage. Best Blue is a wonderful protection plan. We will be able to send an officer out just as soon as we receive your credit card number for your $10 co-pay. Also, once the officer arrives — assuming your credit card payment is approved by MasterCard — he will be able to use his revolver to stop the intruder but not his shotgun. You’ll have to pay the full cost of shotgun coverage yourself. With the Blue plan, the officer can pursue a suspect on foot free of charge to you, but if the officer needs to pursue in his cruiser, you would have to foot (I’m so sorry for the pun) that bill yourself. Also, we would not be able to provide you with the aerial support that we provide our Gold members but, don’t worry, almost nobody needs that kind of service. And finally, as it states on page 28 of your coverage manual, Blue coverage does assume you are at least a Brown Belt in Karate, so statistically you would be able to fend off intruders half of the time by yourself ….”

Sounds pretty bizarre, right? But we Americans accept the same reasoning all of the time with respect to our health care coverage. And although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will decrease from 50 million to about 30 million, those us with no coverage, as in the first caller above who gets only “Bye” and a (click) from 911, the current model of reform shovels your tax dollars directly into the boardroom and stockholders of the “Best Blue” insurance company. Perhaps the health insurers are the armed intruders threatening our lives?

We can do better. Canada takes care of all her citizens, every single one at half the cost and with better results. How? Well, for starters they are not wasting 31 percent of every health care dollar on the slimy “Best Blue” health insurers as we do. Canada has more primary care doctors per capita that we do, furthermore, Canadians see their doctor more often, receiving better care than we do.

Come on down to the Scioto Valley Coffeehouse, 216 West Main, at 6 p.m. on Sunday to see “Healthcare: The Movie,” featuring interviews with Canadians about their highly patient-rated health care system. We could get started on the path to do as well as Canada so easily. Just go to the Medicare statutes and erase all references to Americans over age 65. Replace with “eligible at birth.” Kurt Bateman, director of the Ohio Single Payer Action Network and myself, member of Physicians for a National Health Program, will be available to field discussion.

Martin Luther King, whose birthday we observe this month, reminds us access to health care is not a “policy-wonk” political and academic debatable topic, it is a moral question. How we take care of the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40) reflects on our Christian character: “ Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

http://www.circlevilleherald.com/comment/editorials/article_17db45ba-3d29-11e1-838a-001871e3ce6c.html

Medicaid and uninsured patients receive less imaging in EDs

Imaging and Insurance: Do the Uninsured Get Less Imaging in Emergency Departments?

By James W. Moser, PhD, Kimberly E. Applegate, MD, MS
Journal of the American College of Radiology, January 2012

Compared with non-Medicaid insured ED patients, uninsured ED patients were less likely to get any imaging services and to get lower value imaging RVUs (relative value units), results that held for nearly all modalities. Similar results regarding the number and value of imaging services, as well as health status, were found for Medicaid patients.

Even after controlling for health status and other measurable factors, the average number of imaging tests received by uninsured ED patients was ≥8% lower than that for non-Medicaid insured ED patients. The deficit for Medicaid ED patients was even greater, at about 10%. Uninsured ED patients and Medicaid ED patients also received fewer imaging-related RVUs per visit than non-Medicaid insured ED patients: 13% and 19%, respectively. These differences amplify the potentially serious health implications for persons lacking conventional health insurance. As the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise, the use of ED services will also rise.

The differences in imaging RVUs by insurance group stemmed from a bias toward lower valued imaging modalities for persons lacking coverage compared with insurance persons. Medicaid patients, perhaps underinsured, also received lower valued imaging and less imaging compared with insured patients. Other studies have found that the uninsured are less likely to get timely medical care and consequently are sicker upon being admitted to the hospital.

http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(11)00445-5/fulltext

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Fully predictable. Uninsured and Medicaid emergency department patients receive fewer imaging tests, and when they do receive them, they are more likely to be lower valued tests. Under the Affordable Care Act, many individuals will remain uninsured and many more will be enrolled in Medicaid. Thus this is a problem that is not going away.

We can do better than this.

Medicaid and uninsured patients receive less imaging in EDs

Imaging and Insurance: Do the Uninsured Get Less Imaging in Emergency Departments?

By James W. Moser, PhD, Kimberly E. Applegate, MD, MS
Journal of the American College of Radiology, January 2012
Compared with non-Medicaid insured ED patients, uninsured ED patients were less likely to get any imaging services and to get lower value imaging RVUs (relative value units), results that held for nearly all modalities. Similar results regarding the number and value of imaging services, as well as health status, were found for Medicaid patients.
Even after controlling for health status and other measurable factors, the average number of imaging tests received by uninsured ED patients was ≥8% lower than that for non-Medicaid insured ED patients. The deficit for Medicaid ED patients was even greater, at about 10%. Uninsured ED patients and Medicaid ED patients also received fewer imaging-related RVUs per visit than non-Medicaid insured ED patients: 13% and 19%, respectively. These differences amplify the potentially serious health implications for persons lacking conventional health insurance. As the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise, the use of ED services will also rise.
The differences in imaging RVUs by insurance group stemmed from a bias toward lower valued imaging modalities for persons lacking coverage compared with insurance persons. Medicaid patients, perhaps underinsured, also received lower valued imaging and less imaging compared with insured patients. Other studies have found that the uninsured are less likely to get timely medical care and consequently are sicker upon being admitted to the hospital.
http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(11)00445-5/fulltext

Fully predictable. Uninsured and Medicaid emergency department patients receive fewer imaging tests, and when they do receive them, they are more likely to be lower valued tests. Under the Affordable Care Act, many individuals will remain uninsured and many more will be enrolled in Medicaid. Thus this is a problem that is not going away.
We can do better than this.

Insurers use fitness memberships to select the healthy

Fitness Memberships and Favorable Selection in Medicare Advantage Plans

By Alicia L. Cooper, M.P.H., and Amal N. Trivedi, M.D., M.P.H.
The New England Journal of Medicine, January 12, 2012

This study examined the consequences of adding a fitness-membership benefit on the self-reported health status of enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans. Using a quasi-experimental design, we found that persons enrolling in plans after the addition of a fitness-membership benefit reported significantly better general health, fewer limitations in moderate activities, less difficulty walking, and higher PCS scores than did persons who enrolled in the same plan before the fitness benefit was added and in matched control plans that never offered a fitness benefit. These patterns persisted in the analyses of 2-year follow-up responses for all measures except self-reported general health. Our findings suggest that there is an association between the adoption of fitness-membership benefits in Medicare Advantage plans and the enrollment of healthier Medicare beneficiaries.

Risk-adjusted payments are designed to reduce incentives for plans to avoid high-cost patients. However, the enhanced Medicare risk-adjustment model has the power to explain only 11% of the total variation in health spending. Furthermore, the model overpredicts costs for persons in good health and underpredicts costs for persons in poor health, yielding overpayments for healthy enrollees and underpayments for less-healthy enrollees. Therefore, the continued limitations of the CMS payment model may not discourage Medicare Advantage plans from engaging in risk-selective activities. Our findings are consistent with the notion that Medicare managed-care plans have continued to selectively market their benefits to healthier beneficiaries, even after the improved risk-adjustment program was instituted.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1104273?query=TOC#t=articleTop

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

This study further confirms what we have known all along – that private insurers selectively market to the healthy, further cushioning their profits by being paid at rates for those with only average health. Although risk adjustment has been introduced to correct overpayments due to their use of favorable selection, the insurers have found devious ways to use risk adjustment to further expand their profits, even though technically prohibited. It is the nature of private insurers to always work the system to their own advantage, and that will never change.

How many times do we have to say it? It is time to dismiss the private insurers and establish our own single payer national health program in which the benefits accrue to the patients/taxpayers and not to the expensive, intrusive, wasteful insurance intermediaries.

Insurers use fitness memberships to select the healthy

Fitness Memberships and Favorable Selection in Medicare Advantage Plans

By Alicia L. Cooper, M.P.H., and Amal N. Trivedi, M.D., M.P.H.
The New England Journal of Medicine, January 12, 2012
This study examined the consequences of adding a fitness-membership benefit on the self-reported health status of enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans. Using a quasi-experimental design, we found that persons enrolling in plans after the addition of a fitness-membership benefit reported significantly better general health, fewer limitations in moderate activities, less difficulty walking, and higher PCS scores than did persons who enrolled in the same plan before the fitness benefit was added and in matched control plans that never offered a fitness benefit. These patterns persisted in the analyses of 2-year follow-up responses for all measures except self-reported general health. Our findings suggest that there is an association between the adoption of fitness-membership benefits in Medicare Advantage plans and the enrollment of healthier Medicare beneficiaries.
Risk-adjusted payments are designed to reduce incentives for plans to avoid high-cost patients. However, the enhanced Medicare risk-adjustment model has the power to explain only 11% of the total variation in health spending. Furthermore, the model overpredicts costs for persons in good health and underpredicts costs for persons in poor health, yielding overpayments for healthy enrollees and underpayments for less-healthy enrollees. Therefore, the continued limitations of the CMS payment model may not discourage Medicare Advantage plans from engaging in risk-selective activities. Our findings are consistent with the notion that Medicare managed-care plans have continued to selectively market their benefits to healthier beneficiaries, even after the improved risk-adjustment program was instituted.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1104273?query=TOC#t=articleTop

This study further confirms what we have known all along – that private insurers selectively market to the healthy, further cushioning their profits by being paid at rates for those with only average health. Although risk adjustment has been introduced to correct overpayments due to their use of favorable selection, the insurers have found devious ways to use risk adjustment to further expand their profits, even though technically prohibited. It is the nature of private insurers to always work the system to their own advantage, and that will never change.
How many times do we have to say it? It is time to dismiss the private insurers and establish our own single payer national health program in which the benefits accrue to the patients/taxpayers and not to the expensive, intrusive, wasteful insurance intermediaries.

Calif. health professional students rally for single payer


Photo by Dr. William Bronston

Various sources, Jan. 10, 2012

PNHP note: What follows is some of the media coverage given to parallel marches and rallies held on Monday, Jan. 9, in Sacramento and Los Angeles protesting the continuing injustices in U.S. health care and calling for a universal, single-payer health system. The protests were sponsored by the California Health Professional Student Alliance (CaHPSA), the Campaign for a Healthy California, Occupy LA, Occupy Sacramento, PNHP California and other groups. In Sacramento, the rally was immediately followed by student lobbying efforts in the state Capitol.

Health care students demonstrate for single-payer insurance

By Special to The Enterprise
The Davis Enterprise (Davis, Calif.), Jan. 10, 2012

Wailing a mournful tune, an eight-piece New Orleans funeral-style jazz band led about 500 California health professional students and their supporters Monday down Capitol Mall to the north entrance of the state Capitol in Sacramento.

Carrying two mock coffins, they demonstrated their support for a single-payer “Medicare for all” reform to the state’s health insurance laws.

The reason for the coffins was that there are an estimated 1,000 deaths per month in California due to lack of access to health care, demonstrators said. In this state, nearly 7 million do not have health insurance, a major reason why many have difficulty finding care.

The Davis contingent included Mary Zhu, M.D.; Paul Ulbrich, D.O., a retired emergency room physician; Millie Braunstein, R.N., Ph.D., the state vice chairwoman of Health Care for All; and Joan Moses, former president of the Davis League of Women Voters.

The demonstrators, who included more than 30 from Davis and the UC Davis medical school, were mainly composed of medical, nursing, pharmacy and public health students.

Dr. Henry Abrons, chairman of Physicians for a National Health Plan — California, a retired intensive care doctor, observed that he often may treat an asthma, cardiac or respiratory patient on life support in the intensive care unit who was seen in the ER a few weeks earlier, but couldn’t afford to fill a prescription, or have follow-up care by a primary care specialist.

Senate Bill 810, authored by Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, which was positively voted out of the Health Committee last spring, is due for a crucial vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Jan. 17. It would establish the process for building a single-payer health insurance agency in California, similar to the federal Medicare agency. Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, is a co-author of the bill.

Leno said private and public employers have found that their health care premium rates have increased an average of 153 percent over 10 years, compared with an inflation rate of 29 percent. Many speakers at the rally pointed out that the United States spends far more for health care than any other advanced economy, but many public health statistics show poorer outcomes.

SB 810 is designed to use health care dollars more wisely, while providing universal coverage, supporters said.

http://www.davisenterprise.com/health-news/health-care-students-demonstrate-for-single-payer-insurance/

***

Rally procession brings attention to health coverage

By Kathy Robertson, Senior Staff Writer
Sacramento Business Journal, Jan. 9, 2012

Nurses, medical students, seniors, doctors and members of the Occupy movement rallied in downtown Los Angeles and at the Capitol in Sacramento on Monday to rouse support for guaranteed health coverage for all Americans.

The local rally started at Third Street and Capitol Mall at 11 a.m. and progressed to the Capitol steps at noon. The Occupy movement planned to target insurance denials by health plans.

A New Orleans-style funeral procession remembering those who die every year without coverage gave way to a rally in support of Assembly Bill 810, which seeks to establish a single-payer system in California.

The bill was suspended on the Assembly floor late last session by author Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco. Proponents argue the bill would address California’s budget emergency by lowering state expenditures through a more rational, more cost-effective health care system. They have been trying for at least eight years to get a single-payer system into law. Health insurers oppose it.

The bill would establish a state-administered single-payer system to provide health coverage to all Californians without regard to income or employment status. It would establish a new state agency under control of an appointed healthcare commissioner to run the program.

It’s unclear how the program would jibe with federal health reform, although the federal law allows states to opt out of insurance exchanges in 2017 and get a waiver for innovative alternatives.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2012/01/09/sacramento-rally-health-care-occupy-prot.html

***

Supporters Of Single Payer Insurance System March In Downtown LA
CBS Los Angeles, Channel 9 television news, Jan. 9, 2012
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/6622430-supporters-of-single-payer-insurance-system-march-in-downtown-la/

Finally these additional sources of coverage:

PNHP’s Dr. William Bronston offers a gallery of photographs of the Sacramento march and rally: http://gallery.me.com/towerofyouth#100487

Indymedia’s coverage of the Sacramento march and rally includes a photo of PNHP’s banner at end:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/01/09/18704451.php

Wrong way to slow health care spending

Growth In US Health Spending Remained Slow In 2010; Health Share Of Gross Domestic Product Was Unchanged From 2009

By Anne B. Martin, David Lassman, Benjamin Washington, Aaron Catlin and the National Health Expenditure Accounts Team
Health Affairs, January 2012

Abstract

Medical goods and services are generally viewed as necessities. Even so, the latest recession had a dramatic effect on their utilization. US health spending grew more slowly in 2009 and 2010—at rates of 3.8 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively—than in any other years during the fifty-one-year history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts. In 2010 extraordinarily slow growth in the use and intensity of services led to slower growth in spending for personal health care. The rates of growth in overall US gross domestic product (GDP) and in health spending began to converge in 2010. As a result, the health spending share of GDP stabilized at 17.9 percent.

Conclusion

Health care spending experienced historically low rates of growth in 2009 and 2010 as the impact of the recent recession continued to affect the purchasers, providers, and sponsors of health care. Persistently high unemployment, continued loss of private health insurance coverage, and increased cost sharing led some people to forgo care or seek less costly alternatives than they would have otherwise used. As a result, growth in the use and intensity of health care goods and services in 2010 accounted for a much smaller share of personal health care spending growth than in previous years. Finally, as businesses, households, and state and local governments financed a smaller share of total national health care spending during and just after the recession, the federal government financed a larger share.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/1/208.abstract

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

For the present, growth in health care spending has leveled off at 17.9 percent of our GDP. But how? By high unemployment, continued loss of private health insurance, and increased cost sharing – all measures that prevent people from getting the health care that they should have. If you exclude from consideration this inappropriate decline in health care services, then you can only conclude that health care costs have continued their inexorable rise unabated. We desperately need a sane system of financing health care.