Category Archives: Doctor shortage

Physicians Get Weed Killer; Administrators Get Miracle-Gro And neither is helping, Obamacare Funding Suggestions, Andrew Lang, Year in Review and Google Searches

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Last week Suneel Dhand reported that compared to a couple of years ago, very little has changed in the hospital medical community. 

In fact, I’m sure the divergence of the curves has only grown bigger, as more and more administrators are added to the ranks of healthcare. Look at what happened in Chicago where one of the fairly large hospitals fired 15 of their physicians and replaced them with 15 nurse practitioners last year, and in Texas 27 pediatricians at a chain of clinics in the Dallas area lost their jobs and were replaced by nurse practitioners. 

Quite often in life, the answers to some of the biggest questions we have, are staring us right in the face and incredibly simple. Healthcare can never be fixed unless we radically simplify everything and strip away the unnecessary complexities in our fragmented system. The divergence of the above lines, however, actually represents so much more than just an obnoxious visual. It actually symbolizes what happens when any organization, system, or even country, becomes top-heavy and loses sight of what is happening at the front lines. And in the end, it eventually collapses under its own weight.

When this happens in America, we cannot predict, but consider this: The amount we spend on healthcare would be the 4th largest economy in the world if it stood alone (at $3.5 trillion, only China and Japan have a higher total GDP). With an aging population, increasing chronic comorbidities, and expensive new treatments, if costs are not reined in, healthcare expenditure could account for a third of the entire GDP in about 25 years. A figure that will quite simply destroy the American economy.

It would be one thing if all the administration and bureaucracy was actually resulting in an improved and more efficient healthcare system. But look around you folks. Acute physician shortages now plague every state. Millions of people find it impossible to find a primary care doctor. Certain specialties are now booking out appointments months in advance. ERs and hospitals are overflowing. And in the end, patients are still facing soaring out of pocket expenses.

The last 20 years have witnessed the consolidation and corporatization of the entire U.S. healthcare system. Sold initially as a way to reign in costs, I am yet to see any evidence that it’s done anything other than dramatically increase costs (please feel free to forward me any financial analysis if I’m wrong). And why should that be a surprise to anyone?

I’ll leave you to stare once again at the above graph for a minute or two, and take in a comment that a distinguished physician colleague of mine recently made: “It’s like the physicians have been given weed killer and the administrators have been given Miracle-Gro.”

Affordable Care Act funding in question after health insurance taxes repealed

The Cadillac Tax, Health Insurance Tax and Medical Device Tax were recently repealed, raising questions over how the Affordable Care Act will be funded in the future. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani joins Adam Shapiro, Julie Hyman and Dan Howley during On the Move to break it all down.

Andrew Yang Has The Most Conservative Health Care Plan In The Democratic Primary

Daniel Marans of the Huff Post pointed out that Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has had unexpected staying power in the Democratic presidential primary thanks in part to the enthusiasm for his plan to provide every American with a basic income of $1,000 a month.

But the boldness of his signature idea only serves to underscore the unambitiousness of the health care plan he released earlier this month.

In fact, Yang’s health plan, which he bills as an iteration of the left’s preferred “Medicare for All” policy, is more conservative than proposals introduced by the candidates typically identified as moderate. 

Former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota all at least call for the creation of a public health insurance option that would be available to every American. (Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts favor Medicare for All, which would move all Americans on to one government-run insurance plan ― though the two senators disagree on the timeline for implementing the idea.)

In terms of expanding health insurance coverage, Yang says on his website merely that he would “explore” allowing the employees of companies that already provide health insurance the chance to buy into Medicare. 

“We need to give more choice to employers and employees in a way that removes barriers for businesses to grow,” Yang writes.

Under Yang’s plan, people employed by businesses that do not provide insurance, or who are self-employed, would continue to purchase coverage on the exchanges created by former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The decision not to focus on expanding coverage distinguishes Yang dramatically from his competitors. And in the foreword to his plan, he explains that that is a deliberate choice, since enacting single-payer health care is “not a realistic strategy.”

“We are spending too much time fighting over the differences between Medicare for All, ‘Medicare for All Who Want It,’ and ACA expansion when we should be focusing on the biggest problems that are driving up costs and taking lives,” he writes. “We need to be laser focused on how to bring the costs of coverage down by solving the root problems plaguing the American healthcare system.”

When asked about how Yang plans to expand health insurance coverage ― 27 million Americans remain entirely uninsured and millions more have insurance that is so threadbare they do not use it ― Yang’s campaign referred HuffPost to his website. 

Yang would increase health care access through reforms designed to reduce the health care system’s underlying costs, according to his campaign. On his website, he divides those reforms into six categories: bringing down the cost of prescription drugs through bulk negotiation; investing in waste-saving health care technologies; realigning medical providers’ “incentives” away from waste and abuse; increasing investment in preventive and end-of-life health care; making the provision of health care more “comprehensive”; and reducing the influence of lobbyists on the political system.

Yang implies that his rivals have sacrificed cost control in the name of expanding coverage. But when it comes to the specifics, Yang’s competitors have already gotten behind many of the ideas he is proposing ― and sometimes take them a step further. 

For example, Buttigieg has a provision in his health care plan that would prohibit “surprise billing” ― the practice of providing unwitting patients with a large bill after a medical procedure when a doctor who performed it is not in the hospital’s insurance network. Yang does not mention the practice in his health care plan.

One provision of Yang’s plan that genuinely sets him apart is his plan to encourage the replacement of the fee-for-service billing model for doctors with salaries. The latter model is supposed to cut back on duplicative practices and foster more holistic care. Other elements of his plan, such as “incentivizing” gym memberships, healthy eating and bike commuting as a form of preventive health care, have drawn eye rolls from leftists who regard the ideas as paternalistic.

First and foremost, though, many progressives are likely to find fault with Yang’s plan, because they consider his use of the term “Medicare for All” misleading. 

For months on the campaign trail, Yang claimed that he supported Medicare for All, though not the provision of Sanders’ bill ― and its companion in the House ― requiring people with private insurance to enroll in an expanded Medicare program. 

He even aired a television ad casting his commitment to the policy as a reflection of his experience as the father of a special needs child.

Yang says on his campaign website that he is still firmly committed to the “spirit” of Medicare for All. But now that he has introduced a plan of his own, that claim is harder to defend.

Yet the Yang campaign is plowing full-steam ahead with its appropriation of the term in a new 30-second ad, “Caring.”

“If my husband, Andrew Yang, is president, he’ll fight for Medicare for All with mental health coverage,” Yang’s wife, Evelyn, says in the ad. 

Fate of Obamacare uncertain amid tax repeals, lawsuits and Medicare-for-all push consider that Democrats seize on anti-Obamacare ruling to steamroll GOP in 2020

Alice Miranda Ollstein and James Arkin reported that a court ruling last week putting the Affordable Care Act further in jeopardy may provide the opening Democrats have been waiting for to regain the upper hand on health care against Republicans in 2020.

At the most recent Democratic presidential debate, candidates largely avoided discussing the lawsuit or Republicans’ years-long efforts to dismantle Obamacare, and instead continued their intra-party battle over Medicare for All.

But Senate Democrats, Democratic candidates and outside groups backing them immediately jumped on the news of the federal appeals court ruling — blasting out ads and statements reminding voters of Republicans’ votes to repeal the 2010 health care law, support the lawsuit and confirm the judges who may bring about Obamacare’s demise.

“I think it’s an opportunity to reset with the New Year to remind people that there’s a very real threat to tens of millions of Americans,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said in an interview. “We Democrats are always striving to improve the system, but, at a minimum, the American people expect us to protect what they already have.”

In 2018, Democrats won the House majority and several governorships largely on a message of protecting Obamacare and its popular protections for preexisting conditions. This year continued the trend, with Kentucky’s staunchly anti-Obamacare governor, Matt Bevin, losing to Democratic now-Gov. Andy Beshear.

The landscape in 2020 may be more challenging for Democrats than it was in 2018, when Republicans had more recently voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Republicans also say they now have more ammunition to push back on Democrats’ arguments with the party’s divisions over single-payer health care, which would replace Obamacare, shaping the presidential race.

Moreover, the appeals court’s ruling — which in all likelihood punted any final disposition on the case until after the 2020 elections — eliminates what some Republicans saw as a nightmare scenario: If the court had embraced a lower court ruling striking down the law in its entirety, it would have put the issue before the Supreme Court during the heat of the election, putting tens of millions of Americans’ health insurance at risk.

Still, Democrats believe they can win the political battle over health care, especially in Senate races. At least a half-dozen GOP senators are up for reelection, and Democrats need to net three seats to win back control of the chamber if they also win back the presidency. Democratic strategists and candidates are eager to run a health care playbook that mirrors that of the party’s House takeover in 2018, and say Republicans are uniquely vulnerable after admitting this year that they have no real plan for dealing with the potential fallout of courts striking down Obamacare.

Within a day of the ruling, the pro-Obamacare advocacy group Protect Our Care cut a national TV and digital ad featuring images of Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), warning that if the lawsuit succeeds, “135 million Americans with preexisting conditions will be stripped of protections, 20 million Americans will lose coverage and costs will go up for millions more.”

Other state-based progressive groups told POLITICO they’re readying their own ads going after individual Senate Republicans over the 5th Circuit’s ruling.

Protect Our Care director Brad Woodhouse predicts that it’s just a preview of the wave of attention the issue will get in the months ahead, as Democratic candidates and outside groups alike hammer the GOP on the threat their lawsuit poses to Obamacare.

“If there is one issue in American politics that is going to flip the Senate from Republican to Democratic in 2020, it’s this issue,” he said. “Our message is simple: President [Donald] Trump and Republicans are in court right now, suing to take away the ACA, take away your health care. And if Cory Gardner or Thom Tillis or any of them don’t think that’s an indefensible position, they should ask the 40-plus House Republicans who lost their seats in 2018.”

More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general, backed by the Trump administration, have been arguing in federal court for more than a year that Congress rendered the entire Affordable Care Act untenable when they voted as part of the 2017 tax bill to drop the penalty for not buying insurance down to zero. A district judge in Texas sided with them last year in a sweeping ruling declaring all of Obamacare unconstitutional.

Last week, an appeals court agreed that the elimination of the penalty made the individual mandate unconstitutional, but sent the case back down to the district court to decide whether any of the law could be separated out and preserved. The move all but guarantees the case won’t reach the Supreme Court until after the election, but it maintains the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the health law that experts say drives up the cost of insurance.

Though no one is in danger of losing their health coverage imminently, Democratic challengers in nearly every Senate battleground race, including Arizona, North Carolina, Maine and Iowa, jumped on the court ruling as an opportunity to attack Republicans on health care.

“Democrats have been in the fight to ensure that people across this country have access to affordable health care,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, the chair of the DSCC. “This opinion does not help the Republicans.”

Sara Gideon, Democrats’ preferred candidate in Maine to take on Collins, called the lawsuit a “direct threat to the protections countless Mainers and Americans depend on. She has been reminding voters that Collins’ vote on the 2017 tax reform law triggered the ACA lawsuit in the first place, and she voted to confirm one of the 5th Circuit judges that recently sided with the Trump administration’s arguments against the law.

Unlike the vast majority of her GOP colleagues in the upper chamber, Collins has spoken up against the lawsuit. She has written multiple times to Attorney General Bill Bar, urging him to defend the ACA in court. Collins told POLITICO the day after the ruling that it was “significant” that the 5th Circuit judges were clearly “very uneasy with the thought of striking down the entire law” and instead sent the case back down to the lower court for reconsideration. Collins’ campaign spokesman both emphasized that she believes the government should defend the law and criticized Democrats for defending the unpopular individual mandate.

Tillis, the vulnerable North Carolina senator, said the lawsuit gave Republicans “breathing room” to find a viable replacement for Obamacare and attempted to flip the attack on Democrats by tying them to their presidential contenders.

“I think the fact that they all raised their hands and said we need Medicare for All is also raising their hands and saying the Affordable Care Act has failed,” Tillis said.

Though most of the 2020 presidential candidates have come out against Medicare for All, and more Democratic voters favor a choice between private insurance and a public option, the single-payer debate has given Republicans a potent line of attack that they’re turning to more than ever in the wake of the court’s ruling.

“Obamacare failed to lower health care costs for millions of Americans, and now Democrats want a complete government takeover of our health care system,” said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “They spent all of 2019 defending their socialist plan to eliminate employer-based health care coverage, and those problems will not subside anytime soon.”

The effectiveness of the GOP attacks will depend largely on the Democratic nominee for president — if it is someone who backs Medicare for All, it will be much more difficult for Senate candidates who don’t support the policy to separate themselves from it. But Democratic activists say they’re confident the GOP’s actions in court will sway voters more than their claims about Medicare for All.

“We can prepare for and counter those attacks by reminding voters that [Republicans are] fighting actively to take health care away,” said Kelly Dietrich, the founder and CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, which coached more than 17,000 candidates for federal and state office in 2019. “Republicans’ ability to use fear as a tool to win elections should never be underestimated. But the antidote is to fight back just as hard.”

Year in Review: Lots of talk, not a lot of action in healthcare politics

Rachel Cohrs noted that lawmakers and regulators talked big on tackling high drug prices and surprise medical bills in 2019, but agreement on the bipartisan policies remained elusive. Some healthcare policy could be attached to a potential budget deal in December, but it is still unclear whether lawmakers will resolve funding disputes by the end of the year.

Despite major bipartisan legislative packages spearheaded by senior Senate Republican leaders, disputes over details and intense lobbying efforts have so far stalled progress in Congress. Drug makers are fighting a provision in the Senate Finance Committee’s drug pricing bill that would require them to pay back Medicare for drug price hikes faster than inflation, and providers and insurers are warring over how out-of-network medical bills should be handled.

Competing approaches to address surprise medical billing came to a head in December when a bipartisan, bicameral compromise proposal on addressing surprise medical bills emerged, but a key Senate Democrat involved in the negotiations had not signed on as of press time. Despite provider-friendly tweaks, providers still oppose the legislation and it is unclear whether House and Senate leadership have an appetite to include it in must-pass legislation.

Health reform 3.0: Early in the year, Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander and ranking Democrat Patty Murray released a wide-ranging plan to lower costs that addresses surprise medical bills; contract reform provisions; cost transparency; and boosting generic competition for Rx drugs. The year ended with a bipartisan, bicameral bill emerging, but at deadline it lacked Murray’s endorsement.

Reducing drug prices: Addressing drug prices was the other issue that dominated the policy landscape. Competing plans emerged, and the House passed a bill in mid-December on a party-line vote.

Grinding to a halt: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, which soured the prospects of a grand bargain between Trump and Pelosi on drug pricing and complicated the timeline for passing major healthcare policy.

Drug pricing was also a top priority for the Trump administration, but several marquee policy ideas have been stopped by the courts, abandoned, or are forthcoming. The White House decided to retract a prominent initiative that would have required insurers to pass manufacturer rebates directly to patients at the pharmacy counter, and a rule that would have compelled drug makers to include list prices in television advertisements is tied up in court. House Democrats passed a partisan government drug price negotiation bill, but it almost certainly will not become law.

The administration could at any time release a regulation outlining a process to allow states to import prescription drugs from Canada or move forward with a demonstration that would tie payments for physician-administered drugs in Medicare to international drug prices, but it has not yet acted on either proposal.

The 10 most-searched questions on health Reported by Sandee LaMotte of CNN

There were more questions that had people Googling in 2019.

The full list of the most-searched health questions in the United States this year also included questions about the flu, kidney stones and human papillomavirus or HPV:

  1. How to lower blood pressure
  2. What is keto?
  3. How to get rid of hiccups
  4. How long does the flu last?
  5. What causes hiccups?
  6. What causes kidney stones?
  7. What is HPV?
  8. How to lower cholesterol
  9. How many calories should I eat a day?
  10. How long does alcohol stay in your system?

NYU started to answer one of the big questions in the design of a fair healthcare system when they decided to declare their medical school tuition free. If all medical schools were tuition free the graduating doctors wouldn’t have the huge debt and they could have the opportunities to chose primary care and provide care to underserved rural and poorer communities. 

One step at a time and maybe next year Congress can really improve the health care system of our U.S.A.

And to all you interested readers out there Happy New Year! Maybe those in control will start the process of improving the delivery of affordable health care to all and not worry about their future political aspirations. What a change that would be!

Health care spending hit $3.6 trillion in 2018 due to ACA tax, The GDP and Again My Worry Concerning Rural Hospitals

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bus559National spending on health care is rising, fueled in part by the reinstatement of an Affordable Care Act tax on insurers, according to a new federal report.

Total national health expenditures last year increased by 4.6 percent to $3.6 trillion last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said. The U.S. spent about $11.172 per person, and national health care spending accounted for about 17.7 percent of the total U.S. economy last year, compared with 17.9 percent in 2017. It was roughly the same as in 2016.

By household, health care spending, which includes out-of-pocket spending, contributions to private health insurance premiums and contributions to Medicare through payroll taxes and premiums, also grew by 4.4 percent.

Private businesses, meanwhile, shelled out $726.8 billion on health care, a 6.2 percent increase from the year-ago period. Most of that goes toward employers’ contributions for insurance premiums. At 20 percent, it absorbed the second-largest shares of health care spending, preceded only by the federal government and households.

Overall, spending by Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance grew faster because of the health insurance tax; an annual fee on all health insurers intended to help fund the estimated $1 trillion cost of the ACA. Congress suspended the tax in 2017 and 2019. It was expected to raise $14.3 billion in 2018, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

“It was responsible for a significant portion of the rise we saw,” Micah Hartman, the report’s lead author, told The Wall Street Journal.

As baby boomers age, the pace of health care spending is only expected to grow. Health care’s share of the economy is projected to climb to 19.4 percent by 2027 from 17.9 percent in 2017, according to a previous CMS study cited by the Journal.

The number of uninsured Americans rose by 1 million for the second year in a row to 30.7 million in 2018. The rate of people without health insurance held steady under 10 percent.

The report could draw the ire of Democrats, who have criticized the Trump administration for its attacks on the ACA. The future of the Obama-era health law is in limbo as a panel of three federal appeals court judges weighs whether it’s unconstitutional after Republicans stripped it of the individual mandate in 2017.

Rare Dip in Healthcare’s Share of GDP in 2018

CMS report shows growth in spending on physician services fell slightly

Joyce Frieden, the News Editor of the MedPage points out that overall U.S.healthcare spending increased by 4.6% in 2018 — higher than the 4.2% growth in 2017, but still representing a slight drop in healthcare’s percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said Thursday.

The increase left the U.S. with health spending of $3.6 trillion in 2018, or $11,172 per person. Some of the spending increase was attributed to growth in private health insurance and Medicare spending due to collection of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance tax — postponed from 2017 — which raised $14.3 billion in 2018, said Micah Hartman, a statistician in CMS’s Office of the Actuary, during a press briefing hosted by Health Affairs. (The figure for the tax revenue came from the Internal Revenue Service, not CMS.) Other growth drivers included faster growth in healthcare prices. Because the overall economy’s 5.4% growth in 2018 outpaced healthcare spending, the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare dropped slightly, from 17.9% in 2017 to 17.7% in 2018, Hartman said.

Paul Hughes-Cromwick, MA, co-director of Sustainable Health Spending Strategies at Altarum, a healthcare consulting firm here, said in an email that he found the decrease in percentage of GDP “encouraging,” but added that “we can safely predict that this will return to near 18% in 2019 with mildly accelerating health spending and weakening GDP growth.” And “despite all the talk and support for social determinants of health (SDOH) across the political spectrum, government public health activities only grew at 2.4%, the second slowest in the past 7 years (though it is expected that much SDOH activity lies outside formal public health spending).”

Jamie Hall, a research fellow in quantitative analysis at the Heritage Foundation here, said in a phone interview that the decrease in the percentage of GDP “is the first time that’s happened since before Obamacare. So it’s a good sign that some of the Trump administration policies that are oriented toward containing costs are having an effect” — things like short-term, limited-duration insurance policies and efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs. “We’re sort of more at equilibrium and it’s somewhat more of a stable system at this point,” he said.

Growth in Spending on Physicians Declines

Spending on physician care and other clinical services increased by 4.1% in 2018, down from 4.7% the year before. This was due in part to slower growth in private health insurance, Medicaid, and “residual use and intensity” — the number and intensity of clinician visits — and was not offset by faster growth in healthcare prices, said Aaron Catlin, deputy director in the Office of the Actuary.

Healthcare prices are accelerating from an all-time low measured in 2015, Hughes-Cromwick noted. “If health care price growth returns to a historical pattern, i.e., significantly higher than economy-wide inflation, healthcare spending will definitely accelerate,” consistent with CMS’s long-run projections, he said.

The percentage of uninsured Americans grew by one million people, from 29.7 million to 30.7 million, according to CMS; that was on top of a previous one-million-person increase from 28.7 million in 2016. “We can’t track individuals, so we can’t say where those people came from and the status of their coverage before and after becoming uninsured … but we do show decreases in private health insurance and reductions in other directly purchased insurance,” said Catlin.

This increase in the uninsured “is a huge issue,” said Dan Mendelson, founder and former CEO of Avalere, a healthcare consulting firm here, in a phone interview. “The numbers are on an upward march and it will be a major electoral issue going into 2020.”

But Hall said the uninsured numbers were “quite misleading.” “Of the folks officially considered uninsured, the overwhelming majority of these folks have access to some type of coverage but have chosen not to enroll,” he said. “It’s important that folks not equate a lack of insurance with lack of access to coverage or lack of access to care.”

Private Insurance Enrollment Down

Private health insurance enrollment declined by 1.6 million people, with the drop coming primarily from those enrolled in private plans outside the ACA’s health insurance marketplaces, said Anne Martin, an economist in the Office of the Actuary. The number of enrollees who purchased employer-sponsored health insurance also fell slightly, from 175.6 million to 175.2 million. Medicare enrollment, on the other hand, grew from 57.2 million in 2017 to 58.7 million in 2018, while Medicaid enrollment also rose slightly during the same time period, from 72.1 million to 72.8 million.

Despite the enrollment drop, spending on private health insurance grew by 5.8%, to $1.2 trillion, up from 4.9% the prior year, Martin continued. “The most significant factor in insurance spending was the increase in the net cost of health insurance, which was influenced by the health insurance tax.”

Retail prescription drug spending rose by 2.5% in 2018, to $335 billion, up from a 1.4% increase in 2017. “This faster rate of growth was driven by non-price factors, such as the use and mix of drugs consumed, which more than offset a decline of 1% in prices for retail prescription drugs,” the agency said in a press release. This spending category does not take into account spending on physician-administered drugs or drugs administered in the hospital.

Home Healthcare Spending Up

“The fact that drug spending at the pharmacy is attenuating is a big deal, and it appears to be a combination of the mix of drugs being used,” Mendelson said. “It shows that consumers are using drugs more efficiently, which is good news. I think that change of behavior has been happening for quite some time; it’s durable and it’s a positive effect.”

However, he added, “The other thing is that healthcare costs are still rising much more rapidly than wages, and what it shows is that while costs have attenuated, the fact that they’re still rising faster than wages is squeezing consumers significantly … The fact we’re seeing macro[-level] progress doesn’t help the patient who is facing a $5,000 deductible and trying to figure out how to pay for their healthcare.”

In terms of personal healthcare spending, some of the largest increases were in-home healthcare (up 5.2%), durable medical equipment (up 4.7%), and dental services (up 4.6%). Spending on hospital care in 2018 rose 4.5% to $1.2 trillion, down slightly from a 4.7% increase the year before. The slower growth was attributed to a decrease in out-of-pocket hospital spending growth, decreased residual use and intensity, a slowing in inpatient days in hospitals, and a drop in the growth of hospital spending by the Defense Department.

Overall, 33% of healthcare expenditures in 2018 went for hospital care, 20% went for physician care and other clinician services, 13% to other services, 9% to retail prescription drugs, 8% to government administration and net cost of health insurance, and 5% to nursing care and continuing care retirement communities, according to the agency.

Sally Pipes: Sanders, Warren wants ‘Medicare-for-all’ like Canada – But Canadian health care is awful

Sally Pipes of the Fox News reported that the Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren want you to believe Canada’s health care system is a dream come true. And they want to make the dream even better with their “Medicare-for-all” plans. Don’t believe them.

In truth, Canada’s system of socialized medicine is actually a nightmare. It has left hospitals overcrowded, understaffed and unable to treat some patients. Americans would face the same dismal reality if Canadian-style “Medicare-for-all” takes root here.

Canada’s health care system is the model for the “Medicare-for-all” plan that both Sanders, I-Vt., and Warren, D-Mass., embrace.

North of the border, all residents have taxpayer-funded, comprehensive health coverage. In theory, they can walk into any hospital or doctor’s office and get the care they need, without a co-pay or deductible.

Sanders and Warren would one-up Canada by providing all Americans with free prescription drugs, free long-term care, free dental care, free vision care, and free care for people with hearing problems.

Who could possibly object to all that free care?

Well, politicians in Canada object. They say even their country can’t do what Sanders and Warren want because all this free care would cost too much and cause other problems.

But for Sanders and Warren, money is no object. They can just raise taxes as higher and higher and higher. And the huge tax increases needed to fund “Medicare-for-all” would hit us all – there aren’t enough millionaires and billionaires to foot the bill.

It’s true that everyone in Canada has health coverage. But that coverage doesn’t always secure care. According to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, patients waited a median of nearly 20 weeks to receive specialist treatment after referral by a general practitioner in 2018. That’s more than double the wait patients faced 25 years ago.

In Nova Scotia, patients faced a median total wait time of 34 weeks. More than 6 percent of the province’s population was waiting for treatment in 2018.

Waiting for care is perhaps better than not being able to seek it at all. The hospital emergency department in Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia recently announced that it would simply close on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There aren’t enough doctors available to staff the facility.

Canadians can’t escape waits like these unless they leave the country and payout of pocket for health care abroad. Private health insurance is illegal in Canada.

Private clinics in Canada are not allowed to charge patients for “medically necessary” services that the country’s single-payer plan covers. And the government has deemed just about every conceivable service “medically necessary.”

For the past decade, Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon who runs the private Cambie Surgery Centre in British Columbia, has tried to offer Canadians a way out of the waits by expanding patient access to private clinics. He’s been battling his home province in court for a decade to essentially grant patients the ability to pay providers directly for speedier care.

During closing arguments in Day’s trial before the British Columbia Supreme Court at the end of November, Dr. Roland Orfaly of the British Columbia Anesthesiologists’ Society testified that over 300 patients in the province died waiting for surgery from 2015 to 2016 because of a shortage of anesthesiologists. And that was in just one of the province’s five regional health authorities!

Shortages of crucial medical personnel and equipment are common throughout Canada. The country has fewer than three doctors for every 1,000 residents. That puts it 26th among 28 countries with universal health coverage schemes. If current trends continue, the country will be short 60,000 full-time nurses in just three years.

In 2018, Canada had less than 16 CT scanners for every million people. The United States, by comparison, had nearly 45 per million.

These shortages, combined with long waits, can lead to incredible suffering.

In 2017, one British Columbia woman who was struggling to breathe sought treatment in an overcrowded emergency room. She was given a shot of morphine and sent home. She died two days later.

That same year, a Halifax, Nova Scotia, man dying of pancreatic cancer was left in a cold hallway for six hours when doctors couldn’t find him a bed. Yes, people must sometimes be treated on hallway floors because of severe overcrowding.

In fact, some Canadian hospital emergency rooms look like they belong in poverty-stricken Third World countries.
WBUR Radio, Boston’s NPR station, documented these terrible conditions in a story about a hospital in Nova Scotia earlier this month.

Americans who find the promise of free health care difficult to resist would do well to take a hard look north.

Sure, “Medicare-for-all” as pitched by Sanders and Warren sounds good. But the reality is far from what these two far-left candidates are promising. Like a drug that helps you in one way but causes even more serious problems, “Medicare-for-all” has dangerous side effects that can be hazardous to your health.

Rural hospital acquisitions may reduce patient services

I have already discussed the outcome of Medicare for All on physicians and especially rural hospitals. Beware, especially when we hear of what is happening already! Last week it was reported that one of the hospital systems in Chicago fired 15 physicians and hired NP’s/nurse practitioners to take over their patient care responsibilities.

Also, Carolyn Crist of Reuters noted that although hospitals can improve financially when they join larger health systems, the merger might also reduce access to services for patients in rural areas, according to a new study.

After an affiliation, rural hospitals are more likely to lose onsite imaging and obstetric and primary care services, researchers report in a special issue of the journal Health Affairs devoted to rural health issues in the United States.

“The major concern when you think about health and healthcare in rural America is access,” said lead study author Claire O’Hanlon of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

More than 100 rural hospitals in the U.S. have closed since 2010, the study authors write.

“Hospitals in rural areas are struggling to stay open for a lot of different reasons, but many are looking to health-system affiliation as a way to keep the doors open,” she told Reuters Health by email. “But when you give up local control of your hospital to a health system, a lot of things can change that may or may not be good for the hospital or its patients.”

Using annual surveys by the American Hospital Association, O’Hanlon and colleagues compared 306 rural hospitals that affiliated during 2008-2017 with 994 nonaffiliated rural hospitals on 12 measures, including quality, service utilization, and financial performance. The study team also looked at the emergency department and nonemergency visits, long-term debt, operating margins, patient experience scores, and hospital readmissions.

They found that rural hospitals that affiliated had a significant reduction in outpatient non-emergency visits, onsite diagnostic imaging technologies such as MRI machines, and availability of obstetric and primary care services. For instance, obstetric services dropped by 7-14% annually in the five years following affiliation.

“Does this mean that patients are getting prenatal care in their community at a different location, traveling to receive prenatal care at another location of the same health system, or forgoing this care entirely?” O’Hanlon said. “Trying to figure out the extent to which the observed changes in the services available onsite at rural hospitals reflect real changes in patient access is an important next step.”

At the same time, the affiliated hospitals also experienced an increase in operating margins, from an average baseline of -1.6%, typical increases were 1.6 to 3.6 percentage points, the authors note. The better financial performance appeared to be driven largely by decreased operating costs.

Overall, patient experience scores, long-term debt ratios, hospital readmissions, and emergency department visits were similar for affiliating and non-affiliating hospitals.

“Research on these mergers has been mixed, with some suggestions they are beneficial for the community (access to capital, more specialty services, keep the hospital open) and other evidence that there are costs (employment reductions, loss of local control, increase in prices),” said Mark Holmes of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Mergers can have a large impact on a community, so understanding the effect on the resultant access, cost and quality of locally available services is important,” he told Reuters Health by email.

A limitation of the study is that the surveys capture affiliation broadly and don’t specifically describe the arrangements, the study authors’ note. Future studies should investigate the different types of affiliations, such as a full acquisition versus a clinically integrated hospital network, which may show different outcomes, said Rachel Mosher Henke of IBM Watson Health in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who also wasn’t involved in the study.

For instance, certain types of rural hospital affiliations may be better for the community than a full hospital closure, she said.

“However, it’s important to evaluate the potential for negative consequences for the community in terms of reduced service offerings,” she told Reuters Health by email. “New payment models such as all-payer global payments that allow rural hospitals to continue to operate independently with consistent cash flow may be an alternative to affiliation to consider.” But it may not fix the impossible especially if the system pays all at Medicare or Medicaid rates?

Next is to discuss the basis of single-payer healthcare systems and look who is back trying to hold his lead in the Democratic-run for President a guy who can’t even remember where he is, dates, or where he is going, Joe Biden!!!

 

Elizabeth Warren’s Number-Crunchers Out of Sync With Her on Some Big Plans and Is Soaking Rich the Answer. And How Did It Work Out for the French?

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73495095_2337220289740950_8378943902677204992_nAs a physician and an economist, I am amazed at the lack of knowledge of both medicine and finance by Ms. Warren and her Team as well as the rest of the Democrats running for President as they tout Medicare for All and give up on Affordable Health Care/ Obamacare. Sahil Kapur and Katia Dmitrieva pointed out that Elizabeth Warren is careful to cite economic experts to back up the costs of her multi-trillion-dollar policy plans. But even those experts disagree among themselves about how or whether those plans will work.

University of California Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman advised Warren on her wealth tax and say she could raise $2.75 trillion over a decade by imposing a 2% tax on wealth worth $50 million or more, going up to 3% for a wealth of more than $1 billion.

But Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics who Warren’s campaign asked to review her separate Medicare-for-All funding plan, which includes an additional 3% tax on wealth over $1 billion among other levies, is skeptical it would bring in that much money.

On health care, Zandi has projected that Warren could raise the $20.5 trillion she estimates it will cost to give everyone free health-care without any new middle-class taxes, even though he disagrees with her vision. Saez and Zucman support her policy in general but their funding approach does raise taxes on the middle class.

The disagreements among those who helped shape and gauge her policies highlight the challenges for Warren as she tries to convince voters that she can generate enough revenue to provide free health care, free public college, universal childcare, forgive a portion of student loans and mitigate climate change, among other ambitious policies.

Saez said in an email that Warren’s health care numbers are “reasonable” — with a caveat.

“Scoring is not hard science, and much will depend on the quality of enforcement. Her numbers assume that enforcement will be excellent,” he said. “We believe this is possible but it will require a big and successful push (a big policy change in and by itself).”

Zandi said the Warren wealth tax will be difficult to enforce, with billionaires likely to use multiple loopholes to avoid it. Several European countries experienced this issue when implementing their own tax programs. Warren has said she would empower the Internal Revenue Service to enforce collection, a promise made by many presidential candidates over the years.

“When considering all of Warren’s policy proposals, which includes a number of different tax increases on the wealthy, tax avoidance may be higher than she is assuming. But this doesn’t mean Medicare-for-All or any of other plans won’t be paid for,” Zandi said in an email.

Warren’s plan to pay for her Medicare-for-All proposal, which she released this month under pressure from rivals, increases her wealth tax and is predicated on avoiding any tax increases on the middle class in the hope of avoiding the political blowback such a move would likely bring.

Under Medicare for All, 98% of the money companies now pay for employees’ health care would be shifted to the government instead.

But Saez and Zucman, who priced out Warren’s tax plan, have floated a different way to pay for Medicare-for-All — a progressive tax that may hit some in the middle class, but would compensate by requiring companies to put the money they would have provided to their employees’ health care into higher paychecks.

Saez said Warren’s employer tax “is a tax on the middle class as economists pretty much all believe that such taxes are effectively borne by workers.” But he said workers are already bearing that cost. “Hence, if you count existing premiums as a pre-existing tax, the Warren plan effectively does not ‘increase’ taxes on the middle class.”

A campaign aide said that Zandi was only scoring her health care plan, while Saez and Zucman were advising her on the wealth tax. Warren tweeted Wednesday, “I knew Mark Zandi was skeptical, so I had him check the numbers on my plan to pay for #MedicareForAll. He confirmed they add up.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, who wrote the Medicare-for-All bill that Warren campaigns on, has released his own suggestions for how to fund it. His ideas include a more aggressive wealth tax than Warren’s and a 4% payroll tax which would hit many Americans though overall they would pay lower costs because of health care savings. He has acknowledged the middle-class would pay more in taxes.

Overall, Zandi backs up Warren’s health care math. He said in the email that Warren can finance her plan without raising taxes on the middle class, even though he doesn’t agree with the policy. And even if the rich don’t pay their fair share, she could find those funds elsewhere.

“Warren’s Medicare for All plan isn’t the only way to provide health insurance to all Americans, rein in growing health care costs and improve health care outcomes,” Zandi wrote in a CNN op-ed that was published on Wednesday. “A more tractable approach in my view is to allow those who like their private health insurance to keep it and to build on Obamacare by giving everyone else an option to get Medicare.”

Mark Cuban: Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-all will take years to achieve

Frank Connor pointed out that Elizabeth Warren unveiled a massive overhaul of the U.S. health care system in her single-payer Medicare-for-all plan. However, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes the proposal will take years to accomplish.

“Getting from where we are, to getting there is not something you can accomplish in 4, 8, 12, or even 20 years,” Cuban told FOX Business’, Maria Bartiromo.

Cuban does, however, believe that health care is a right for everyone and that there is a need for people with lower incomes to have access to healthcare. This, he suggested, may indicate an opportunity for a “hybrid plan.”

“Maybe we can expand Medicaid and Medicare and still have a good capitalist system for health care in the middle,” Cuban said.

Business, he argued, cannot operate when there are communities where there is “disruption and social unrest” and so these areas need a basis of health care.

One of the problems with the health care industry, according to Cuban, is a misalignment of incentives between payers and providers.

“The goal of, hopefully, a health care system is to make people healthy,” he said. “And so you don’t get that, you know, when payers, the insurance companies, and the providers work together.”

Cuban described this as a “malicious circle,” suggesting that the parties involved charge each other more in order to make more money.

“None of their metrics have to do with making people healthier,” he said.

The billionaire businessman does not believe the rise of high deductible insurance programs will lead to the growth of a consumer market in health care or lead to customers shopping for health care pricing. He argued high deductible programs are problematic because they make up such a high percentage of their actual income making it more difficult for them to get care.

Additionally, he noted that people don’t shop for care, they make these decisions based on who they trust.

He also believes that artificial intelligence will help the industry.

“As you get more into artificial intelligence and be able to use data more smartly, then you’re going to see a lot of benefits, particularly in radiology,” he said.

France Tried Soaking the Rich. It Didn’t Go Well.

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What about the idea that Elizabeth Warren pushes that the rich should be taxed to the fullest? Noah Smith noted that in recent years, several prominent economists have brought attention to the problem of growing inequality. These scholars include Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who in a new book chronicle the rise in American wealth inequality. All three embrace the same solution:  much higher taxes. Piketty has declared that billionaires should be taxed out of existence, and he called for a global wealth tax, while Saez and Zucman helped Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren design her proposal for a U.S. wealth tax. Piketty and Saez have also suggested taxing top incomes at a rate of more than 80%.

Other economists have struggled to evaluate dramatic proposals like this. Studies on the effects of taxation when rates are moderate might not be a good guide to what happens when rates are very high. Economic theories tend to make a host of simplifying assumptions that might break down under a very high-tax regime. Historical experience is of some help because the U.S. had very high top income taxes in the 1950s, but economic conditions could be very different now.

One way to predict the possible effects of the taxes is to look at a country that tried something similar: France, where Piketty, Saez, and Zucman all hail from.

During the past few decades, as income inequality rose in most rich countries, it stayed relatively constant in France. The biggest reason is government redistribution in the form of taxes and social-welfare spending. France leads its rich-country peers, including the legendarily egalitarian Scandinavian countries, on both measures:

France, therefore, shows that inequality, at least to some degree, is a choice. Taxes and spending really can make a big difference.

But there’s probably a limit to how much even France can do in this regard. The country has experimented with both wealth taxes and very high top income taxes, with disappointing results.

France had a wealth tax from 1982 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 2017. The top rate was between 1.5% and 1.8%, with the total tax rate on fortunes larger than 13 million euros ($14.3 million) hovering at about 1.4%. This is much less than the 6% top rate proposed by Warren (not to mention the 8% proposed by her fellow candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders), but it’s close to the 2% rate Warren would impose on fortunes larger than $50 million.

The wealth tax might have generated social solidarity, but as a practical matter, it was a disappointment. The revenue it raised was rather paltry; only a few billion euros at its peak, or about 1% of France’s total revenue from all taxes. At least 10,000 wealthy people left the country to avoid paying the tax; most moved to neighbor Belgium, which has a large French-speaking population. When these individuals left, France lost not only their wealth tax revenue but their income taxes and other taxes as well. French economist Eric Pichet estimates that this ended up costing the French government almost twice as much revenue as the total yielded by the wealth tax. When President Emmanuel Macron ended the wealth tax in 2017, it was viewed mostly as a symbolic move.

Another French experiment was the so-called supertax, a 75% levy on incomes of more than 1 million euros. Introduced by socialist President François Hollande in 2012, the supertax added to the exodus of wealthy individuals, most notably actor Gerard Depardieu and Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Star soccer players threatened to go on strike, and there was fear that France would become a wasteland for entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the supertax raised much less money than even the wealth tax had — only 160 million euros in 2014. The unpopular tax was repealed two years after its adoption.

France’s experiments with taxing the wealthy at very high rates didn’t raise much money and didn’t prove politically sustainable. The flight of wealthy individuals from the country probably helped reduce inequality on paper, but it’s not clear that their departure left France better off.

It’s possible that similar tax experiments in the U.S. might be more successful than in France. The U.S. economy is much larger than France’s; although a French business owner who moves to Belgium can still do business and move about freely within the European Union, an American mogul who moves to Canada might find access to one of the world’s largest markets restricted. That might allow the U.S. to raise more money from high taxes than France ever could.

But it’s also worth noting that France’s wealth tax and supertax ultimately weren’t that important. Despite repealing the supertax, France managed to increase government revenue and to reduce inequality. The end of the wealth tax will probably be a similar story. France simply didn’t need these flamboyant taxes on the rich to have very high levels of taxation and social spending. That means the U.S. probably doesn’t need them either. Tax increases across the board — on top incomes, capital gains, estates, pass-through businesses, corporations, and so on — might not excite populist firebrands, but they’re probably a more effective strategy for fighting inequality.

‘Save public hospitals’, French health workers urge Macron

Gabriel Bourovitch, Clare Byrne and Aurelle Carabiin looked at the French healthcare system and noted that thousands of French hospital workers demonstrated Thursday over years of cutbacks they say have harmed care in a country with a health system once the envy of the world. Also, remember what I pointed out as Medicare for All pays all doctors and hospital Medicare rates- about 50-60 cents on the dollar. You think when Medicare for All reimburses physicians and hospitals that doctors can pay their staff, their medical education bills, malpractice bills as well as run the hospitals? I think not!

Public hospitals in France have been forced to cut 9.0 billion euros ($9.9 billion) off their debts since 2005, leading to the scrapping of hundreds of beds and dozens of operating theatres while stagnant salaries have fuelled a flight to the private sector.

Calling on President Emmanuel Macron to “save public hospitals”, thousands of hospital doctors, nurses, students, and administrative staff held protests in Paris and a dozen other cities on Thursday.

The protests began in March when emergency room staff, who complain of elderly patients being left for hours on trolleys in corridors while waiting for a bed, began strike action.

Over 260 emergency rooms nationwide are still affected by work stoppages.

On Thursday, staff from other hospital departments joined in the protests.

In Paris, organizers said that some 10,000 demonstrators marched through the city waving placards with a message such as: “Exhausted caregivers = endangered patients”, “Public hospitals in a life-threatening emergency” and “The hospital is suffocating, let’s save it.”

In the southwestern city of Toulouse, 3,000 staff took to the streets, around 400 in Brest and Quimper in the northwest, and a few hundred each in other cities such as Nantes, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, and Marseille.

Jean-Michel Carayol, a hospital technician who demonstrated in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, said the staff were “at the end of their tether and exhausted”.

Monique Aubin, a 61-year-old nurse who also joined the protest, complained of a “lack of materials, even medication” and of being swamped in paperwork which left her little time for patients.

In 2000, the World Health Organization ranked France’s health system the best of 191 countries.

But a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation published in The Lancet medical journal in 2017 placed it in 15th place for quality of care.

The country is still one of Europe’s biggest spenders when it comes to healthcare.

In 2016, France spent 12 percent of its GDP on health, well above the western European average of 10 percent, and was also the country where the patient’s share of the health bill was the lowest.

– New winter of discontent? –

The protests have created jitters in the government, which fears that hospital staff could band together with other disgruntled groups such as transport workers who are planning mass strike action in December over pension reforms.

Three health plans in the past two years have failed to appease the anger of beleaguered hospital staff.

In an attempt to head off another winter of discontent, a year after the start of the “yellow vest” revolt, Macron said Thursday the government would unveil plans next week for “substantial” hospital investments.

While arguing that his centrist government had inherited an ailing hospital system, he said he had “heard the anger and the indignation over working conditions” in hospitals.

The protesters are demanding 3.8 billion euros in emergency investment in public hospitals — twice the amount set aside in the draft 2020 budget currently before parliament.

On Thursday, the upper house of the parliament, the right-wing dominated Senate, threw out the draft social security bill at its first reading in protest over what some senators described as Macron’s “disdain” for the workers in the sector.

Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has warned that hiking health spending will mean having to make cuts elsewhere.

France’s budget deficit is expected to breach an EU limit of 3.0 percent of GDP this year, reaching 3.1 percent.

I am amazed at how easy the voters can be swayed and convinced that everything will be free if “you vote for me!” I say be very wary of what you all wish for because you and the rest of may have to live with the results, as we are all sold a bill of false goods. Be very careful voters!!

 

Warren’s Health Care Plan Will Cost More Than She Says; Hillary’s take on the matters and what does Medicare cover and the VA “new” system!

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veteran529Tyler Cowen reported that Elizabeth Warren claims she can pay for her 10-year, $52 trillion health care plan without increasing taxes on the middle class. But both she and her critics are approaching the question wrong. What really matters is the opportunity cost of policy choices, in terms of foregone goods and services — not whether the money can be raised to pay for a chosen policy.

Consider this point in the context of Warren’s plan, which includes a complex series of health-care savings and higher taxes on the wealthy.

NOAH SMITH: Warren Tries to Make Medicare for All as Painless as Possible

One way of financing the plan is to pay doctors in hospitals lower fees (part of “saving” $2.3 trillion). There will then be fewer profitable hospitals, and fewer doctors working fewer hours because some of them might retire earlier than they otherwise would. Fewer hospitals mean they will likely increase their monopolistic tendencies, to the detriment of patients. A related plan to pay hospitals less is supposed to save another $600 billion.

The practical impact of these changes will be to deprive health-care consumers, including middle-class consumers, of goods and services. The larger point is that the real cost of any economic arrangement is not its nominal sticker price, but rather the consequences of who ends up not getting what.

Another part of the plan is to pay lower prices — 70% lower — for branded prescription drugs. That is supposed to save about $1.7 trillion, but again focus on which opportunities are lost. Lower drug prices will mean fewer new drugs are developed. There is good evidence that pharmaceuticals are among the most cost-effective ways of saving human lives, so the resulting higher mortality and illness might be especially severe.

Of course, many critics of the pharmaceutical industry downplay its role in the drug-discovery process. Regardless of the merits of those arguments, they do not show that a 70% cut in prices will leave supplies, or research and development, unchanged.

Another unstated cost of the Warren plan concerns current health-insurance customers: Many of them prefer their current private coverage to Medicare for All. Switching them into Medicare for All is an opportunity cost not covered by Warren’s $52 trillion estimates. Even if you believe that Medicare for All will be cheaper in monetary terms, tens of millions of Americans seem to prefer their current arrangements.

Warren also proposes higher taxes on corporations, capital gains, stock trades and the wealthy, as well as stronger tax enforcement — all of which is supposed to raise more than $10 trillion. Again, regardless of your position on those policies, they will diminish investment and (to some extent) consumption among the wealthy. You might not worry much about the consumption of the wealthy. But the decline in investment will lead to lower wages, less job creation, and fewer goods and services. These are all opportunity costs, for both the middle class and just about everyone else.

Supposedly $400 billion will be picked up from taxes on new immigrants, following the passage of a law legalizing millions now in the country illegally. I favor such legislation. Still, I don’t necessarily see this as a windfall. Yes, more immigrant labor will produce more goods and services. Tax revenue from this new productivity could be used in any number of ways, with universal health-care coverage just one option of many.

You might think that universal health insurance coverage is clearly the highest priority, but is it? America’s health-care sector is relatively costly and inefficient, and even major health-care legislation does not much improve health outcomes. What about investing in green energy or climate change alleviation? Private-sector job creation? Public health measures outside of the health-insurance system, such as fighting air pollution or lead? Checking California forest fires?

Even if you think health care is a human right, there are alternative policies that will benefit human health. They cannot all be carried out, at least not very well.

I don’t mean to pick on Warren. Virtually all politicians, of both parties, fall prey to similar fallacies when presenting the costs of their policies. Warren’s proposals, when all is said and done, are best viewed not as a way of paying for her program but as a series of admissions about just how expensive it would be. Whether or not you call those taxes, they are very real burdens — and many of them will end up falling on the middle class.

How Sen. Warren’s health care plan could impact 401(k)s

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “Medicare for All” plan may impact your future nest egg. Some critics of the proposal note the presidential hopeful could potentially tax investors, which would make it more difficult to save for retirement. Edelman Financial Engines Founder Ric Edelman discusses with Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman, Sibile Marcellus, and ‘The Morning Brew’ Business Editor and Podcast Host, Kinsey Grant.

Hillary Clinton: Warren’s Medicare for All Plan Won’t Ever Get Enacted

Yuval Rosenberg noted that Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that she doesn’t believe Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-All plan would ever become law and that there are better ways to raise revenues than Warren’s proposed wealth tax.

Asked at a New York Times conference whether she thinks the health-care plan released by Warren would ever get enacted, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said: “No, I don’t. I don’t but the goal is the right goal.”

In her 2016 campaign, Clinton supported a public health insurance option and rejected calls from Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic nomination, for a single-payer system. On Wednesday, Clinton said she still favors a public option to build on the Affordable Care Act, which lifted insurance coverage rates to 90%. “I believe the smarter approach is to build on what we have. A public option is something I’ve been in favor of for a very long time,” she said. “I don’t believe we should be in the midst of a big disruption while we are trying to get to 100 percent coverage and deal with costs and face some tough issues about competitiveness and other kinds of innovation in health care.”

Clinton also said she supports the health care debate Democrats are having and tried to contrast that with the Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “Yeah, we’re having a debate on our side of the political ledger, but it’s a debate about the right issue, how do we get to health care coverage for everybody that we can afford?” Clinton said.

Warren responded on Thursday. “I’m saying, you don’t get what you don’t fight for,” she said, according to The Times. “You know, you’ve got to be willing to get out there and fight.”

On the issue of a wealth tax, another central element of Warren’s campaign, Clinton said she doesn’t understand how the proposal could work, suggesting it would be too disruptive. Clinton added that there are better ways to raise revenues, get the rich to pay more and combat inequality. “I just think there are better ways of doing it,” she said, adding that she would be in favor of raising the estate tax.

Also, Hillary Clinton called the wealth taxes proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren “unworkable” and said they would be “incredibly disruptive” if enforced.

Warren health plan departs from US ‘social insurance’ idea

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reported that Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to pay for “Medicare for All” without raising taxes on the middle class departs from how the U.S. has traditionally financed bedrock social insurance programs. That might impact its political viability now and in the future.

While echoing her party’s longstanding call for universal health care, the Massachusetts Democrat is proposing to raise most of the additional $20.5 trillion her campaign believes would be needed from taxes on businesses, wealthy people and investors.

That’s different from the “social insurance” — or shared responsibility — the approach taken by Democratic presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Broad financing through payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers has fostered a sense of ownership of Social Security and Medicare among ordinary Americans. That helped derail several Republican-led privatization efforts. And signs declaring “Keep Government Out Of My Medicare” proliferated during protests against President Barack Obama’s health care legislation, which scaled back Medicare payments to hospitals.

The Warren campaign says the reason programs like Social Security and Medicare are popular is that benefits are broadly shared. A campaign statement said her plan would put money now spent on medical costs back in the pockets of middle-class families “substantially larger than the largest tax cut in American history.”

But Roosevelt was once famously quoted explaining that he settled on a payroll tax for Social Security to give Americans the feeling they had a “legal, moral and political right” to benefits, thereby guaranteeing “no damn politician” could take it down.

Medicare passed under Johnson, is paid for with a payroll tax for hospital services and a combination of seniors’ premiums and general tax revenues for outpatient care and prescriptions. Truman’s plan for universal health insurance did not pass, but it would have been supported by payroll taxes.

“If you look at the two core social insurance programs in the United States, they have always been financed as a partnership,” said William Arnone, CEO of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan organization that educates on how social insurance builds economic security.

On Warren’s plan, “the question is, will people still look at it as an earned right, or will they say that their health care is coming out of the generosity of the wealthy?” Arnone added. His group takes no position on Medicare for All.

“It’s not an accident that Social Security is on the chopping block a lot less frequently than so-called welfare programs,” said retirement expert Charles Blahous, a political conservative and a former public trustee overseeing Social Security and Medicare finances.

With Warren’s approach, “you are going to have this clash of interests between the people paying the bills and the beneficiaries,” Blahous added. His own estimates indicate Medicare for All would cost the government about $12 trillion more over 10 years than Warren projects.

The Warren campaign downplays the role of shared responsibility and instead points to promised benefits under Medicare for All.

“Every person in America will have full health coverage, get the doctors and the treatments they need, and no more going broke over medical bills,” the campaign said in a statement. “Backed up by leading experts, Elizabeth has shown how her plan will do this by having the richest 1% and giant corporations pay a little bit more and without raising taxes on the middle class by one penny.”

Under Warren’s plan, nearly $9 trillion would come from businesses, in lieu of what they’re already paying for employees’ health care. About $7 trillion would come from increased taxes on investors, wealthy people, and large corporations. An IRS crackdown on tax evasion would net about $2 trillion. The remainder would come from various sources, including dividends of a projected immigration overhaul and eliminating a Pentagon contingency fund used for anti-terrorism operations.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ list of options to pay for Medicare for All includes a 4% income-based premium collected from most households.

John Rother, CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care umbrella group, said he can follow Warren’s argument about making the wealthy pay, but it still looks like a hard sell.

“What is different today is the tremendous gap between the well-off and middle-class people,” he said. “In a way, it makes sense as a step toward greater equality, but it is still a little tricky politically because you don’t have that same sense that ‘this is mine, I paid into it, and therefore no one is going to take it away.'” His group has taken no position on Medicare for All.

History records that various payment options were offered for Social Security in the 1930s and FDR favored a broad payroll tax. One competing idea involved a national sales tax.

An adviser’s memo in the Social Security archives distills Roosevelt’s thinking.

“We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits,” Roosevelt was quoted as saying.

“With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program,” he added. “Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.”

Medicare-for-all could cause ‘enormous’ doctor shortage

Julia Limitone pointed out something I mentioned that I am concerned about in the Medicare for All plan outlined by Sen. Warren. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-all plan is a disaster and would lead to an “enormous” doctor shortage, according to FOX News medical correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel.

If Warren’s plan came to pass, doctors would be working for the government, which in turn would decide their pay, Dr. Siegel told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney.

“The government doctors will be paid up to 40 percent less,” he said on Thursday. “Many will leave the profession,”

In countries with socialized medicine doctors earn about half of what primary care doctors make in America, he said.

“I’ve interviewed an Australian physician who’s from Canada, and she’s making about 30 to 40 dollars for a visit at the most,” he said.

But even more than that, a patient wouldn’t necessarily be able to get the care they need, Siegel said.

“I have to wait a month to figure out if someone has a problem up here,” he said.

What’s more, he said, it would hit hospitals hard. Hospitals rely on private insurance to pay for research, medical students and quality care, Dr. Siegel said. Under the plan, they’d get a flat fee from the government, and would not be able to differentiate between medical centers and great care and something that’s of lower quality, he explained.

“Hospitals are going to go belly up,” he warned.

Warren’s campaign said the single-payer plan would cost the country “just under” $52 trillion.

VA launches new health care options under MISSION Act

Because we are celebrating Veterans Day I thought that I would review some of the changes in the VA healthcare system. The VA system represents a health care system that is run by the government and look where that is going…….back to the private health care system. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched its new and improved Veterans Community Care Program on June 6, 2019, implementing portions of the VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018 (MISSION Act), which both ends the Veterans Choice Program and establishes a new Veterans Community Care Program.

The MISSION Act will strengthen the nationwide VA Health Care System by empowering Veterans with more health care options.

“The changes not only improve our ability to provide the health care Veterans need but also when and where they need it,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “It will also put Veterans at the center of their care and offer options, including expanded telehealth and urgent care, so they can find the balance in the system that is right for them.”

Under the new Veterans Community Care Program, Veterans can work with their VA health care provider or other VA staff to see if they are eligible to receive community care based on new criteria. Eligibility for community care does not require a Veteran to receive that care in the community; Veterans can still choose to have VA provide their care. Veterans may elect to receive care in the community if they meet any of the following six eligibility criteria:

  1. A Veteran needs a service not available at any VA medical facility.
  2. A Veteran lives in a U.S. state or territory without a full-service VA medical facility. Specifically, this would apply to Veterans living in Alaska, Hawaii, New Hampshire and the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
  3. A Veteran qualifies under the “grandfather” provisions related to distance eligibility under the Veterans Choice Program.
  4. VA cannot furnish care within certain designated access standards. The specific access standards are described below:
  • Drive time to a specific VA medical facility
  • Thirty-minute average drive time for primary care, mental health, and noninstitutional extended care services.
  • Sixty-minute average drive time for specialty care.

Note: Drive times are calculated using geomapping software.

  • Appointment wait time at a specific VA medical facility
  • Twenty days from the date of the request for primary care, mental health care, and noninstitutional extended care services, unless the Veteran agrees to a later date in consultation with his or her VA health care provider.
  • Twenty-eight days for specialty care from the date of request, unless the Veteran agrees to a later date in consultation with his or her VA health care provider.
  1. The Veteran and the referring clinician agree it is in the best medical interest of the Veteran to receive community care based on defined factors.
  2. VA has determined that a VA medical service line is not providing care in a manner that complies with VA’s standards for quality based on specific conditions.

In preparation for this landmark initiative, senior VA leaders will visit more than 30 VA hospitals across the country to provide in-person support for the rollout.

The VA MISSION Act:

  • Strengthens VA’s ability to recruit and retain clinicians.
  • Authorizes “Anywhere to Anywhere” telehealth across state lines.
  • Empowers Veterans with increased access to community care.
  • Establishes a new urgent care benefit that eligible Veterans can access through VA’s network of urgent care providers in the community.

VA serves approximately 9 million enrolled Veterans at 1,255 health care facilities around the country every year. We send our military representatives-soldiers, sailors and airmen and women to fight for us and now we are arguing about how to care for them when they are injured, whether physically or mentally. Imagine if we adopt another government-run health care system??

Thank you, all you Vets for all you have done for us to keep us and our beloved country free!