Category Archives: Medicare

Amid a public health crisis, Americans’ views on health care policy haven’t changed, survey says; And What will Biden do to Healthcare?

Rebecca Morin reported that over the past several weeks, the majority of Americans have had to alter their lives due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Face masks have become part of most people’s daily wardrobe. Social distancing restrictions are still being ordered in many of the states. And millions have lost their jobs, as well as their health insurance.

Now that Joe Biden has been declared the next president, we need to consider what I have been saying, that if we have learned nothing else, a form of universal affordable health care is a necessity.

Despite the changes, the majority of Americans’ long-held beliefs surrounding health care haven’t changed, according to a new survey.

About half of Americans – 51% – said they agree that government-run health insurance should be provided to all Americans, according to a survey from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project. That’s just a 1 percentage point less than in February.

“The events themselves have not driven people to some radical new conclusions about whether the government should be providing certain types of services,” said Robert Griffin, research director for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. “These are not attitudes that have suddenly changed overnight in response to political events that have occurred.”

The new survey comes amid a public health crisis, where most of the United States was closed down for more than a month to help limit the spread of the coronavirus. Over the past couple of months, more than 36 million people have sought jobless benefits. The Labor Department said Thursday that about 3 million Americans filed initial unemployment benefit claims last week.

Are lockdowns being relaxed in my state? Here’s how America is reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Half the states across the nation have also begun loosening social distancing restrictions over the past several weeks. Experts show that the curve showing the rate of new cases may be flattening, but they are estimating at least 60,000 more people will die from coronavirus by August.

The Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project is a large-scale study of the American electorate. Throughout the 2020 election cycle, the researchers aim to conduct 500,000 interviews about policies and the presidential candidates. This survey was conducted between April 29 and May 6, with 6,366 Americans surveyed. There is a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

Another policy view that hasn’t seen a lot of change? Subsidizing health insurance for lower-income people who are not receiving Medicare or Medicaid.

Sixty-three percent of Americans said that they agree with that – a 2 percentage-point drop from February.

However, a majority of Americans believe there should be more short-term aid for those in need during the coronavirus pandemic, according to an analysis on Nationscape Insights, a project of Democracy Fund, UCLA, and USA TODAY.

Pandemic protocols: Safety measures vary from the White House to the Supreme Court

Griffin noted that during the pandemic, Americans are “much more flexible in terms of thinking about what types of policies they might consider,” even if their attitudes about basic policies haven’t shifted much.

Seventy-nine percent of Americans strongly or somewhat support increasing spending on health insurance and food aid for the poor during the coronavirus pandemic. When broken down between Democrats and Republicans, the majority of both also support to increase spending.

The coronavirus pandemic also hasn’t affected long-standing political norms for Republicans and Democrats, according to the survey.

Sixty-nine percent of Democrats said they agree with providing government-run health insurance to all Americans. In February, that number was at 68%. In terms of agreeing on subsidizing health insurance for lower income people who are not receiving Medicare or Medicaid, Democrats are at 78%, a 2-percentage point drop from February.

For Republicans, the numbers don’t change drastically either. Thirty percent of Republicans agree to providing government-run health insurance to all Americans, compared with 33% in February. There was also a three-point drop from February to May among Republicans when asked if they agree on subsidizing health insurance for lower income people who are not receiving Medicare or Medicaid, from 53% to 50%.

Biden Wants to Lower Medicare Eligibility Age To 60, But Hospitals Push Back

Phil Galewitz reported that President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to lower the eligibility age for Medicare is popular among voters but is expected to face strong opposition on Capitol Hill.

Of his many plans to expand insurance coverage, President-elect Joe Biden’s simplest strategy is lowering the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60. Is this the first step to Medicare-for-All?

But the plan is sure to face long odds, even if the Democrats can snag control of the Senate in January by winning two runoff elections in Georgia.

Republicans, who fought the creation of Medicare in the 1960s and typically oppose expanding government entitlement programs, are not the biggest obstacle. Instead, the nation’s hospitals — a powerful political force — are poised to derail any effort. Hospitals fear adding millions of people to Medicare will cost them billions of dollars in revenue.

“Hospitals certainly are not going to be happy with it,” said Jonathan Oberlander, professor of health policy and management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Medicare reimbursement rates for patients admitted to hospitals are on average half what commercial or employer-sponsored insurance plans pay.

“It will be a huge lift [in Congress] as the realities of lower Medicare reimbursement rates will activate some powerful interests against this,” said Josh Archambault, a senior fellow with the conservative Foundation for Government Accountability.

Biden, who turns 78 this month, said his plan will help Americans who retire early and those who are unemployed or can’t find jobs with health benefits.

“It reflects the reality that, even after the current crisis ends, older Americans are likely to find it difficult to secure jobs,” Biden wrote in April.

Lowering the Medicare eligibility age is popular. About 85% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans favor allowing those as young as 50 to buy into Medicare, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll from January 2019. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

Although opposition from the hospital industry is expected to be fierce, it is not the only obstacle to Biden’s plan.

Critics, especially Republicans on Capitol Hill, will point to the nation’s $3 trillion budget deficit as well as the dim outlook for the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. That fund is on track to reach insolvency in 2024. That means there won’t be enough money to pay hospitals and nursing homes fully for inpatient care for Medicare beneficiaries.

It’s also unclear whether expanding Medicare will fit on the Democrats’ crowded health agenda, which includes dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly rescuing the Affordable Care Act (if the Supreme Court strikes down part or all of the law in a current case), expanding Obamacare subsidies and lowering drug costs.

Biden’s proposal is a nod to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which has advocated for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ government-run “Medicare for All” health system that would provide universal coverage. Biden opposed that effort, saying the nation could not afford it. He wanted to retain the private health insurance system, which covers 180 million people.

To expand coverage, Biden has proposed two major initiatives. In addition to the Medicare eligibility change, he wants Congress to approve a government-run health plan that people could buy into instead of purchasing coverage from insurance companies on their own or through the Obamacare marketplaces. Insurers helped beat back this “public option” initiative in 2009 during the congressional debate over the ACA.

The appeal of lowering Medicare eligibility to help those without insurance lies with leveraging a popular government program that has low administrative costs.

“It is hard to find a reform idea that is more popular than opening up Medicare” to people as young as 60, Oberlander said. He said early retirees would like the concept, as would employers, who could save on their health costs as workers gravitate to Medicare.

The eligibility age has been set at 65 since Medicare was created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reform package. It was designed to coincide with the age when people at that time qualified for Social Security. Today, people generally qualify for early, reduced Social Security benefits at age 62, but full benefits depend on the year you were born, ranging from age 66 to 67.

While people can qualify on the basis of other criteria, such as having a disability or end-stage renal disease, 85% of the 57 million Medicare enrollees are in the program simply because they’re old enough.

Lowering the age to 60 could add as many as 23 million people to Medicare, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Avalere Health. It’s unclear, however, if everyone who would be eligible would sign up or if Biden would limit the expansion to the 1.7 million people in that age range who are uninsured and the 3.2 million who buy coverage on their own.

Avalere says 3.2 million people in that age group buy coverage on the individual market.

While the 60-to-65 group has the lowest uninsured rate (8%) among adults, it has the highest health costs and pays the highest rates for individual coverage, said Cristina Boccuti, director of health policy at West Health, a nonpartisan research group.

About 13 million of those between 60 and 65 have coverage through their employer, according to Avalere. While they would not have to drop coverage to join Medicare, they could possibly opt to pay to join the federal program and use it as a wraparound for their existing coverage. Medicare might then pick up costs for some services that the consumers would have to shoulder out of pocket.

Some 4 million people between 60 and 65 are enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income people. Shifting them to Medicare would make that their primary health insurer, a move that would save states money since they split Medicaid costs with the federal government.

Chris Pope, a senior fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute, said getting health industry support, particularly from hospitals, will be vital for any health coverage expansion. “Hospitals are very aware about generous commercial rates being replaced by lower Medicare rates,” he said.

“Members of Congress, a lot of them are close to their hospitals and do not want to see them with a revenue hole,” he said.

President Barack Obama made a deal with the industry on the way to passing the ACA. In exchange for gaining millions of paying customers and lowering their uncompensated care by billions of dollars, the hospital industry agreed to give up future Medicare funds designed to help them cope with the uninsured. Showing the industry’s prowess on Capitol Hill, Congress has delayed those funding cuts for more than six years.

Jacob Hacker, a Yale University political scientist, noted that expanding Medicare would reduce the number of Americans who rely on employer-sponsored coverage. The pitfalls of the employer system were highlighted in 2020 as millions lost their jobs and their workplace health coverage.

Even if they can win the two Georgia seats and take control of the Senate with the vice president breaking any ties, Democrats would be unlikely to pass major legislation without GOP support — unless they are willing to jettison the long-standing filibuster rule so they can pass most legislation with a simple 51-vote majority instead of 60 votes.

Hacker said that slim margin would make it difficult for Democrats to deal with many health issues all at once.

“Congress is not good at parallel processing,” Hacker said, referring to handling multiple priorities at the same time. “And the window is relatively short.”

Biden has room on health care, though limited by Congress

Biden’s proposals for a public health insurance option and empowering Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices seem out of reach

President-elect Joe Biden is unlikely to get sweeping health care changes through a closely divided Congress, but there’s a menu of narrower actions he can choose from to make a tangible difference on affordability and coverage for millions of people.

With the balance of power in the Senate hinging on a couple of Georgia races headed to a runoff, and Democrats losing seats in the House, Biden’s proposals for a public health insurance option and empowering Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices seem out of reach. Those would be tough fights even if Democrats controlled Congress with votes to spare.

But there’s bipartisan interest in prescription drug legislation to limit what Medicare recipients with high costs are asked to pay, and to restrain price increases generally. Biden also could nudge legislation to curb surprise medical bills over the finish line.

Moreover, millions of people already eligible for subsidized coverage through “Obamacare” remain uninsured. A determined effort to sign them up might make a difference, particularly in a pandemic. And just like the Trump administration, Biden is expected to aggressively wield the rule-making powers of the executive branch to address health insurance coverage and prescription drug costs.

With COVID-19 surging across the country, Biden’s top health care priority is whipping the federal government’s response into shape. In his victory speech Saturday, he pledged to “spare no effort, or commitment, to turn this pandemic around.” He appointed a pandemic task force to develop “an action blueprint” that could be put into place on Inauguration Day.

On broader health policy issues, Biden has signaled he will stick with his robust campaign platform, which called for covering all Americans by building on the Affordable Care Act, adding a new public insurance option modeled on Medicare and lowering the eligibility age for Medicare.

“We’re going to work quickly with the Congress to dramatically ramp up health care protections, get Americans universal coverage, lower health care costs, as soon as humanly possible,” the president-elect said earlier this week.

Progressives who drive the Democratic Party’s health care agenda say Biden must try as hard as he can to deliver, no matter if Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remains majority leader of the Senate.

“I would vote for anything that improves health care for the American public, but what we need to do is push boldly and clearly for progressive policies,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Khanna says he’d like to see a President Biden calling out McConnell in public. “Right at the State of the Union, he should say, ‘One person potentially stands in the way of this, and that is Mitch McConnell,’” said Khanna.

Not in the real world, Republicans say.

They say the only way Democrats could get a big health care bill through is to first win the two Senate seats in Georgia and then rely on a special budget procedure that would allow them to pass legislation in the Senate on a simple majority vote. Either that or change Senate rules to abolish the filibuster. None of that can be done with a snap of one’s fingers.

“I put the odds of large-scale comprehensive health care reform at almost zero,” said Brendan Buck, who served as a top adviser to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Biden’s to-do list on health care begins with new hires and a rewrite of Trump administration policies.

Democrats have a deep talent pool he can tap for top jobs. Among the leading contenders for health secretary is former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who is a co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force. North Carolina state health secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen, another Obama administration alum, is also being promoted.

The rewrite project involves rescinding regulations and policies put in place by the Trump administration that allowed states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, barred family planning clinics from referring women for abortions, made it easier to market bare-bones health insurance and made other changes.

But Biden can also use the government’s rule-making powers proactively. Prescription drugs is one area. The Trump administration was unable to finalize a plan to rely on lower overseas prices to limit what Medicare pays for some drugs. It’s a concept that Democrats support and that Biden may be able to put into practice.

On Capitol Hill, there doesn’t seem to be a clear path.

A Republican advocate for action to curb prescription drug costs, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is expected to take on a new role in the next Congress, with less direct influence over health care issues.

A factor that may work in Biden’s favor is that many Republicans want to change the subject on health care. Exhaustion has set in over the party’s decade long campaign to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which has left the main pillars of former President Barack Obama’s health law standing, while knocking off some parts.

Though not ready to embrace the ACA, “Republicans have tired of banging their heads against the wall in an effort to get rid of it,” said Buck.

Brian Blase, a former Trump White House health care adviser, says he thinks there is potential on prescription drugs.

“Biden, I think, will be pragmatic in this area,” Blase said.

He expects a Biden administration to wield its rule-making powers aggressively, looking at international prices to try to limit U.S. prescription drug costs.

Coronavirus relief legislation could provide an early vehicle for some broader health care changes.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversaw the rollout of the ACA under Obama, says it’s not a question of all or nothing.

“Will it be as much progress as if we had had a big Senate win?” she asked.

It may not look that way.

“But can he make progress? I think he can.”

What You Need to Know About the ‘90% Effective’ COVID-19 Vaccine

There is promise—but there are also questions.

Marty Munson noted that on Monday, a COVID-19 vaccine made by the drug company Pfizer in conjunction with BioNTech made headlines. An early analysis released by the drug maker suggested that the vaccine could be more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.

No doubt it’s promising news—in fact, a CNN report says that Anthony Fauci, M.D., the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, texted CNN and called it “extraordinarily good news.”

The early analysis is of a trial that involved nearly 44,000 subjects; half receiving a placebo and the other half receiving a two-dose regimen of the new vaccine. The report says that 94 people got COVID-19. It’s not clear how many of those received a placebo and not the vaccine, but it would have to be most of them for the reports to claim more than 90 percent efficacy.

The excitement among scientists and the financial sector isn’t just about the robustness of the results. This vaccine uses a new technology, known as mRNA, a gene-based drug technology that has never been used in a vaccine before. So, the potential success of this drug is also a huge success for science. The Wall Street Journal quotes Professor John Bell, a UK health-policy advisor involved in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as saying, “the most important message is that you can make a vaccine against this critter.”

What it means so far

The news is encouraging, but the vaccine is not a panacea yet. The New York Times pointed out on Tuesday that “independent scientists have cautioned against hyping early results before long-term safety and efficacy data has been collected. And no one knows how long the vaccine’s protection might last.”

Data hasn’t been released on whether any people in the trial developed milder forms of COVID-19, what kind of side effects are associated with it, and how long protection might last. A few more considerations that moderate enthusiasm for the results: The results were released by the company, not in a medical journal, and the trial hasn’t concluded, so the numbers may change, The New York Times report points out.

If the company does receive emergency authorization of the vaccine after it collects the required amount of safety data, there are still questions and concerns about whether it is effective in all populations, how much vaccine the company can produce and how quickly, who would get it first, how it will be transported and delivered and whether people will accept the vaccine and get it when it’s offered.

What else to know

The news is promising and especially with the latest information regarding the Moderna vaccine, but there’s more data to come out, and many more problems need to be solved before a vaccine is a reality for most Americans. The pandemic is far from over, and this news doesn’t change that yet. So for now, at a time when there have been about 110,000 COVID-19 cases a day surging in the U.S., it’s still important to wear masks and continue to use social distancing measures and common sense. It seems that we are all forgetting common sense.

So, as my favorite candidate for the presidency. Governor Larry Hogan, says-Wear the damn masks and…get your flu shots!!!!

Also, I have included a cartoon from Rick Kollinger who has suffered a setback in his fight with his cancer. But after my visit with him, and my harassment he has attempted to draw a few more cartoons for me and his fans. Thank you Rick and please get better!

[r1]

Election 2020: What Exactly Is Joe Biden’s Healthcare Plan? And Really, Telehealth to Care for Our Patients?

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So, first I wanted to relate an experience, which exemplifies the failure of telehealth, or maybe the failure of healthcare workers who are taking advantage of the “new” health care system of patient care.

Consider the case a two weeks ago. As I was about to operate on a cancer surgery patient, I was asked to evaluate a patient healthcare conundrum. One of our nurse teammate’s husband was sick and no one knew what was the problem. He had lost 23 pounds over 3 ½ weeks, was dehydrated, appetite, sore throat, weak and needed to go to the emergency room multiple times for intravenous fluids. Each time he was told that they were very sorry but they had no idea what the problem was.

His Primary care physician would not see him in person, and he had another telehealth visit, which he was charged for and was prescribed an antibiotic with no improvement.

I asked if he had a COVID test which he did and it was negative.

I then asked if I could examine him or if she had any pictures. She had pictures, with no skin rashes except I noticed something interesting on the intraoral pictures, which showed left sided ulcers on his cheeks, left lateral posterior tongue and palate, again-only on the left side.

I asked if this was true in that the ulcers were only on one side of his mouth? When his wife responded with a yes to the question I then responded that he had intraoral shingles involving the nerve to the tongue, cheek, palate ( glossophyngeal nerve ) and sometimes also affected additional nearby cranial nerve, which is probably why he was having some of his stomach problem. She thought that was interesting and wanted to know what to do since he was about to have some gallbladder studies.

I outlined a treatment plan and low and behold he is getting better. My question is why didn’t anyone in the doc’s office or ER never complete a thorough physical exam? Oh, wait- how does one do a complete physical exam through the telehealth system? What about heart or lung disease patients, how does a nurse or physician listen to their heart or lungs, etc?? Are we physicians forgetting our teachings and training regarding the proper approach to physical diagnosis?

And now what about Biden’s proposal for health care?

Leigh Page pointed out that physicians — like all Americans — are trying to size up Joe Biden’s healthcare agenda, which the Democratic presidential nominee has outlined in speeches and on his official website.

Many healthcare professionals, patients, and voters of all political stripes think our current healthcare system is broken and in need of change, but they don’t agree on how it should change. In Part I of this article, we take a look at Biden’s proposals for changing the US healthcare system. Then, we include comments and analysis from physicians on both sides of the fence regarding the pros and cons of these proposed healthcare measures.

Part 1: An Overview of Biden’s Proposed Healthcare Plan

Biden’s proposed healthcare plan has many features. The main thrust is to expand access to healthcare and increase federal subsidies for health coverage.

If elected, “I’ll put your family first,” he said in a speech in June. “That will begin the dramatic expansion of health coverage and bold steps to lower healthcare costs.” He said he favored a plan that “lowers healthcare costs, gets us universal coverage quickly, when Americans desperately need it now.”

Below are Biden’s major proposals. They are followed by Part 2, which assesses the proposals on the basis of comments by doctors from across the political spectrum.

Biden Says We Should Restore the ACA

At a debate of the Democrat presidential candidates in June 2019, Biden argued that the best way to expand coverage is “to build on what we did during the Obama administration,” rather than create a whole new healthcare system, as many other Democratic candidates for president were proposing.

“I’m proud of the Affordable Care Act,” he said a year later in his June 2020 speech. “In addition to helping people with preexisting conditions, this is the law that delivered vital coverage for 20 million Americans who did not have health insurance.”

At the heart of the ACA are the health insurance marketplaces, where people can buy individual insurance that is often federally subsidized. Buyers select coverage at different levels ― Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Those willing to pay higher premiums for a Gold plan don’t have high deductibles, as they would with the Silver and Bronze plans.

Currently, federal subsidies are based on premiums on the Silver level, where premiums are lower but deductibles are higher than with the Gold plan. Biden would shift the subsidies to the Gold plan, where they would be more generous, because subsidies are pegged to the premiums.

In addition, Biden would remove the current limit on subsidies, under which only people with incomes less than 400% of the federal poverty level qualify for them. “Many families making more than 400% of the federal poverty level (about $50,000 for a single person and $100,000 for a family of four), and thus not qualifying for financial assistance, still struggle to afford health insurance,” the Biden for President website states.

Under the Biden plan, there would still be a limit on insurance payments as a percentage of income, but that percentage would drop, meaning that more people would qualify. Currently, the level is 9.86% or more of a person’s income; Biden would lower that level to 8.5%.

“We’re going to lower premiums for people buying coverage on their own by guaranteeing that no American ever has to spend more than 8.5% of their income on health insurance, and that number would be lower for lower-income people,” Biden said in the June speech.

Add a Public Option, but Not Medicare for All

In the primary, Biden parted company from rivals who backed Medicare for All, a single-payer health system that would make the government pay for everyone’s healthcare. “I understand the appeal of Medicare for All,” he said in a video released by his campaign. “But folks supporting it should be clear that it means getting rid of Obamacare, and I’m not for that.” But he nor anyone else who supported Obamacare has come up with a way to finance this type of healthcare system.

However, Biden embraced a “public option” that would allow people to buy into or be subsidized into “a Medicare-like” plan. It is unclear how similar the public option would be to regular Medicare coverage, but the Biden campaign has made it clear that it would not take funds from the Medicare trust fund, which is expected to start losing funds by 2026.

The more than 150 million Americans who have employer-sponsored insurance could keep it, but they could still buy into the public option if they wanted to. In addition, the public option would automatically enroll ― at no cost to them ― some 4.8 million low-income Americans who were excluded from the ACA’s Medicaid expansion when many states chose to opt out of the Medicaid expansion.

In addition, the 37 states that participate in expanded Medicaid could switch coverage to the new public option, provided that they continue to pay their current share of the costs. (In June, Oklahoma became the 37th state to allow the expansion, following the results of a ballot measure.)

“We need a public option now more than ever, especially when more than 20 million people are unemployed,” Biden said in the June speech. “That public option will allow every American, regardless of their employment status, the choice to get a Medicare-like plan.”

Lower the Medicare Age

In spring 2020, Biden proposed lowering the age to qualify for Medicare from 65 to 60. This provision is not included among the official policies listed on the Biden for President website, but it has been cited by many, including the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force.

This provision would bring almost 23 million people into Medicare, including 13.4 million from employer-sponsored coverage, according to one analysis. It’s not clear whether these people would buy into Medicare or simply be covered. Their care would not be paid for by the Medicare Trust Fund but would use tax dollars instead. Oh, finally, we find out that our taxes would go up. How much is the problem as we consider all the other programs that Biden and Harris have promoted.

Provide Relief in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Biden would cover the cost of COVID-19 testing and the cost of health coverage for people laid off during the pandemic.

“Testing unequivocally saves lives, and widespread testing is the key to opening our economy again,” Biden said in his June speech. “To fix the economy, we have to get control over the virus.”

Prescription Drug Reform

Biden would repeal a Bush-era exception that bars the Medicare program from negotiating prescription drug prices for the Part D prescription drug benefit. “There’s no justification for this except the power of prescription drug lobbying,” the Biden for President website states.

In addition, Biden’s prescription drug reform plan would do the following:

• Limit launch prices for drugs. The administration would establish an independent review board that would assess the value of new drugs and would have the power to set limits on their prices. Such drugs are “being abusively priced by manufacturers,” the Biden for President site says.

• Limit price increases to inflation. As a condition of participation in government programs, drug prices could not rise more than the general inflation rate. Biden would impose a tax penalty on drug makers whose prices surpassed inflation.

• Allow consumers to buy prescription drugs from other countries. Biden would allow consumers to import prescription drugs from other countries, provided the US Department of Health and Human Services certifies that those drugs are safe.

• Stop tax breaks for pharma ads: Biden would drop drug makers’ tax breaks for advertising, which amounted to $6 billion in 2016.

Stop Surprise Billing

Biden proposes to stop surprise billing, which occurs when patients receive care from a doctor or hospital that is not in their insurer’s network. In these situations, patients can be surprised with very high bills because no payment limit has been negotiated by the insurer.

Twenty-eight states have enacted consumer protections to address surprise medical billing, but Congress has not passed such a measure. One proposed solution is to require payers to pay for out-of-network services on the basis of a benchmark, such as the average Medicare rate for that service in a specific geographic area.

Closely Monitor Healthcare Mergers

Biden would take a more active stance in enforcing antitrust laws against mergers in the healthcare industry.

“The concentration of market power in the hands of a few corporations is occurring throughout our health care system, and this lack of competition is driving up prices for consumers,” the Biden for President website states.

Overhaul Long-term Care

Biden’s latest plan calls for a $775 billion overhaul of the nation’s caregiving infrastructure. Biden says he would help create new jobs, improve working conditions, and invest in new models of long-term care outside of traditional nursing homes.

Restore Funding for Planned Parenthood

Biden would reissue guidance barring states from refusing Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other providers that refer for abortions or that provide related information, according to the Biden for President website. This action would reverse a Trump administration rule.

Boost Community Health Centers

Biden promises to double federal funding for community health centers, such as federally qualified health centers, that provide care to underserved populations.

Support Mental Health Parity

Biden says he supports mental health parity and would enforce the federal mental health parity law and expand funding for mental health services.

Part 2: Physicians’ Opinions on Biden’s Healthcare Plans: Pro and Con

Biden’s plans to expand coverage are at the heart of his healthcare platform, and many see these as the most controversial part of his legislative agenda.

Biden’s Medicare expansion is not Medicare for All, but it can be seen as “Medicare for all who want it.” Potentially, millions of people could enter Medicare or something like Medicare. If the Medicare eligibility age is dropped to 60, people could switch from their employer-sponsored plans, many of which have high deductibles. In addition, poor people who have no coverage because their states opted out of the Medicaid expansion would be included.

The possibility of such a mass movement to government-run healthcare alarms many people. “Biden’s proposals look moderate, but it is basically Medicare for All in sheep’s clothing,” said Cesar De Leon, DO, a family physician in Naples, Florida, and past president of the county’s medical society.

Reimbursements for Doctors Could Fall- No, Will Fall!

A shift of millions of people into Medicare would likely mean lower reimbursements for doctors. For example, the 13.4 million people aged 60 to 65 who would switch from employer-sponsored coverage to Medicare would be leaving some of the best-paying insurance plans, and their physicians would then be reimbursed at Medicare rates.

“Biden’s plan would lower payments to already cash-strapped doctors and hospitals, who have already seen a significant decrease in reimbursement over the past decade,” De Leon said. “He is trying to win the support of low-income voters by giving them lower healthcare prices, which doctors and hospitals would have to absorb.

“Yes, the US healthcare system is dysfunctional,” De Leon added, “but the basic system needs to be fixed before it is expanded to new groups of people.”

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons warns against Biden’s proposed government-run system. “We support expanding health insurance coverage, but the expansion should build on the existing employer-based system,” said Katie O. Orrico, director of the group’s Washington office. “We have consistently opposed a public option or Medicare for All.

“Shifting more Americans into government-sponsored healthcare will inevitably result in lower payments for physicians’ services,” Orrico added. “Reimbursement rates from Medicare, Medicaid, and many ACA exchange plans already do not adequately cover the costs of running a medical practice.”

Prospect of Higher Taxes- Absolutely, grab your wallets and your retirement funds!!

Paying for ambitious reforms means raising taxes. Biden’s plan would not make the Medicare trust fund pay for the expansions and would to some extent rely on payments from new beneficiaries. However, many new beneficiaries, such as people older than 60 and the poor, would be covered by tax dollars.

Altogether, Biden’s plan is expected to cost the federal government $800 billion over the next 10 years. To pay for it, Biden proposes reversing President Trump’s tax cuts, which disproportionately helped high earners, and eliminating capital gains tax loopholes for the wealthy.

“Rather than tax the average American, the Democrats will try to redistribute wealth,” De Leon said.

“The elephant in the room is that taxes would have to be raised to pay for all these programs,” said Gary Price, MD, president of the Physicians Foundation. Because no one likes higher taxes, he says, architects of the Biden plan would try to find ways to save money, such as tamping down reimbursements for physicians, to try to avoid a public backlash against the reforms.

“Physicians’ great fear is that efforts to keep taxes from getting too high will result in cutting physician reimbursement,” he said.

Impact of COVID-19

Perhaps an even larger barrier to Biden’s health reforms comes from the COVID-19 crisis, which didn’t exist last year, when health reform was the central issue in the presidential primary that pitted Biden against Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the chief proponent of Medicare for All.

“The top two issues on voters’ minds right now are the pandemic and the economy,” said Daniel Derksen, MD, a family physician who is professor of public health policy at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Any other concerns are pushed down the list.”

The COVID-19 crisis is forcing the federal government to spend trillions of dollars to help businesses and individuals who have lost income because of the crisis. Will there be enough money left over to fund an ambitious set of health reforms?

“It’s not a good time to start reforms,” warned Kevin Campbell, MD, a cardiologist in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Given the current pressures that COVID-19 has placed on physicians, healthcare systems, and hospitals, I don’t believe that we can achieve meaningful change in the near term.”

However, supporters of Biden’s reforms think that now, during the COVID-19 crisis, is precisely the right time to enact healthcare reform. When millions of Americans lost their jobs because of the pandemic, they also lost their insurance coverage.

“COVID-19 has made Biden’s healthcare agenda all the more relevant and necessary,” said Don Berwick, MD, who led the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under President Obama. “The COVID-19 recession has made people more aware of how vulnerable their coverage is.”

Orrico at the neurosurgeons group acknowledges this point. “The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed some cracks in the US healthcare system,” she said. “Whether this will lead to new reforms is hard to say, but policymakers will likely take a closer look at issues related to unemployment, health insurance coverage, and healthcare costs due to the COVID-19 emergency.”

Many Physicians Want Major Reform

Although many doctors are skeptical of reform, others are impatient for reform to come and support Biden’s agenda ― especially its goal to expand coverage.

“Joe Biden’s goal is to get everyone covered,” said Alice Chen, MD, an internist who is a leader of Doctors for Biden, an independent group that is not part of the Biden campaign. “What brings Democrats together is that they are united in the belief that healthcare is a right.”

In January, the American College of Physicians (ACP) endorsed both Medicare for All and the public option. The US healthcare system “is ill and needs a bold new prescription,” the ACP stated.

The medical profession, once mostly Republican, now has more Democrats. In 2016, 35% of physicians identified themselves as Democrats, 27% as Republicans, and 36% as independents.

Many of the doctors behind reform appear to be younger physicians who are employed by large organizations. They are passionate about reforming the healthcare system, and as employees of large organizations, they would not be directly affected if reimbursements fell to Medicare levels ― although their institutions might subsequently have to adjust their salaries downward.

Chen, for example, is a young physician who says she has taken leave from her work as adjunct assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, to raise her young children.

She is the former executive director of Doctors for America, a movement of thousands of physicians and medical students “to bring their patients’ experiences to policymakers.”

“Doctors feel that they are unseen and unheard, that they often feel frankly used by large health systems and by insurance companies,” Chen said. “Biden wants to hear from them.”

Many idealistic young physicians look to health system leaders like Berwick. “I believe this nation needs to get universal coverage as fast as we can, and Biden’s policies present a path to get there,” the former CMS director said. “This would be done chiefly through Biden’s public option and his plans to expand coverage in states that have not adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion.”

But what about the potential effect of lowering reimbursement rates for doctors? “The exact rates will have to be worked out,” Berwick said, “but it’s not just about who pays physicians, it’s about how physicians get paid.” He thinks the current fee-for-service system needs to be replaced by a value-based payment system such as capitation, shared savings, and bundled payments.

The Biden-Sanders Task Force

Berwick was a member of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, which brings together supporters of Biden and Sanders to create a shared platform for the Biden campaign.

The task force issued a report in early July that recommended a variety of healthcare reforms in addition to expanding access to care. One of them was to find ways to address the social determinants of health, such as housing, hunger, transportation, and pollution, which can harm health outcomes.

Chen specifically cites this provision. “We need to focus on the social determinants of heath and try to encourage better health,” she said. “I remember as a doctor advising a patient who was a young mother with several small children that she needed to exercise more. She asked me, ‘When am I supposed to exercise, and who will watch my kids?’ I realized the predicament that she was in.”

Price is also glad to see the provision in Biden’s plan. “Social determinants of health has been a key focus of the Physicians Foundation,” he said. “To my knowledge, this is the first time that a political candidate’s healthcare policy has included this point.

“Physicians are not in control of the social determinants of health, even though they affect their reimbursements,” he said. Under Medicare’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System, for example, doctors are penalized when their patients don’t meet certain health standards, such as when diabetes patients can’t get their A1C levels under control, he says.

However, Price fears that Biden, in his efforts to make peace with Sanders supporters, may have to some degree abandoned his moderate stance on health reform.

Is the Nation Ready for Another Health Reform Battle?

Clearly, many Democrats are ready to reform the system, but is the nation ready? “Are American voters ready for another major, Democratic-led health reform initiative?” asked Patricia Salber, MD, an internist and healthcare consultant who runs a blog called The Doctor Weighs In.

“I’ve been around long enough to remember the fight over President Clinton’s health plan and then President Obama’s plan,” she said. Each time, she says, there seemed to be a great deal of momentum, and then there was a backlash. “If Biden is elected, I hope we don’t have to go through the same thing all over again,” Salber said.

Derksen believes Biden’s proposed healthcare reforms could come close to rivaling President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in ambition, cost, and controversy.

He shares Biden’s goal of extending coverage to all ― including paying the cost of covering low-income people. But the result is that “Biden’s agenda is going to be a ‘heavy lift,’ as they say in Washington,” he said. “He has some very ambitious plans to expand access to care.”

Derksen speaks from experience. He helped draft part of the ACA as a health policy fellow in Capitol Hill in 2009. Then in 2011, he was in charge of setting up the ACA’s insurance marketplace for the state of New Mexico.

Now Biden wants to begin a second wave of health reform. But Derksen thinks this second wave of reform could encounter opposition as formidable as those Obama faced.

“Assuming that Biden is elected, it would be tough to get this agenda passed ― even if he had solid Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate,” said Derksen,

According to polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), 53% of Americans like the ACA, while 37% dislike it ― a split that has been relatively stable for the past 2 years, since the failed GOP effort to repeal the law.

In that KFF poll, the public option fared better ― 68% of Americans support the public option, including 42% of Republicans. These numbers help explain why the Biden campaign moved beyond its support of the ACA to embrace the public option as well.

Even when Democrats gain control of all the levers of power, as they did in 2009, they still have a very difficult time passing an ambitious healthcare reform bill. Derksen remembers how tough it was to get that massive bill through Congress.

The House bill’s public option might have prevailed in a reconciliation process between the two bills, but that process was cut short when Sen. Ted Kennedy died and Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority. The bill squeaked through as the Senate version, without the public option.

The ACA Has Survived-But at What Cost?

The ACA is much more complex piece of legislation than the public option.

“The ACA has survived for a decade, despite all efforts to dismantle it,” Salber said. “Biden wants to restore a law that the Republicans have been chipping away at. The Republicans eliminated the penalty for not having coverage. Think about it, a penalty of zero is not much of a deterrent.”

It was the loss of the ACA penalty in tax year 2019 that, paradoxically, formed the legal basis for the latest challenge of the ACA before the Supreme Court, in a suit brought by the Trump administration and 18 Republican state attorneys general.

The Supreme Court will make its ruling after the election, but Salber thinks the suit itself will boost both Biden and the ACA in the campaign. “I think most people are tired of all the attempts to repeal the ACA,” she said.

“The public now thinks of the US healthcare system as pathetically broken,” she added. “It used to be that Americans would say we have the best healthcare system in the world. I don’t hear that much anymore.”

Physicians who oppose the ACA hold exactly the opposite view. “Our healthcare system is in shambles after the Obamacare fiasco,” Campbell said. “Even if Biden has a Democrat-controlled House and Senate, I still don’t think that there would be enough votes to pass sweeping changes to healthcare.”

Biden Could Choose Issues Other Than Expanding Access

There are plenty of proposals in the Biden healthcare plan that don’t involve remaking the healthcare system.

These include making COVID-19 testing free, providing extra funding for community health centers, and stopping surprise billing. Proposals such as stepping up antitrust enforcement against mergers would involve administrative rather than Congressional action.

Some of these other proposals could be quite expensive, such as overhauling long-term care and paying for health insurance for laid-off workers. And another proposal ― limiting the prices of pharmaceuticals ― could be almost as contentious as expanding coverage.

“This proposal has been talked about for many years, but it has always met with strong resistance from drug makers,” said Robert Pearl, MD, former CEO of the Permanente Medical Group and now a faculty member at Stanford School of Medicine and Graduate School of Business.

Pearl thinks the first item in Biden’s drug plan ― to repeal a ban against Medicare negotiating drug prices with drug makers ― would meet with Congressional resistance, owing to heavy lobbying and campaign contributions by the drug companies.

In addition, Pearl thinks Biden’s plans to limit drug prices ― barring drug makers from raising their prices above the general inflation rate and limiting the launch prices for many drugs ― enter uncharted legal waters and could end up in the courts.

Even Without Reform, Expect Lower Reimbursements

Although many doctors are concerned that Biden’s healthcare reforms would reduce reimbursements, Pearl thinks reimbursements will decline even without reforms, owing in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Employer-based health insurance has been the bedrock of the US healthcare system, but Pearl says many employers have long wanted to get rid of this obligation. Increasingly, they are pushing costs onto the employee by raising deductibles and through premium sharing.

Now, with the pandemic, employers are struggling just to stay in business, and health insurance has truly become a financial burden, he says. In addition, states will be unable to balance their budgets and will try to reduce their Medicaid obligations.

“Before COVID-19 hit, healthcare spending was supposed to grow by 5% a year, but that won’t happen for some time into the future,” Pearl said. “The COVID economic crisis is likely to continue for quite some time, forcing physicians to either accept much lower payments or find better ways to provide care.”

Like Berwick, Pearl believes healthcare will have to move to value-based payments. “Instead of producing more services, doctors will have to preserve resources, which is value-based healthcare,” he said. The primary form of value-based reimbursement, Pearl thinks, will be capitation, in which physicians agree to quality and service guarantees.

Even steadfast opponents of many of Biden’s reforms foresee value-based payments taking off. “Certainly, there are ways to improve the current healthcare system, such as moving to value-based care,” said Orrico at the neurosurgeons’ group.

In short, a wide swath of observers agree that doctors are facing major changes in the payment and delivery of healthcare, regardless of whether Biden is elected and succeeds with his health agenda.

Notice that no one has mentioned tort reform in healthcare. Why Not???????

Surprise medical bills, coronavirus and bad insurance: 3 arguments for Medicare for All’ Really?

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As we saw Wednesday the WHO declared the Corona Virus/COID-19 a pandemic. We also heard the President role out plans for travel restrictions, increased testings and economic assistance. But what really gets me angry is that the Democrats in Congress are still making this a political battleground. Shame on them all! This is not the time for partisan politics so that they can embarrass the President and get their wishes and show the evilness of the political hate out there. Grow up Congress and let’s all get in on this battle to keep us all healthy and limit the death toll!! Philip Verhoef of USA Today reported that Congress is grappling with the problem of surprise medical bills, but will its Band-Aid approaches make a difference? As a physician, I’m trained to look beyond superficial symptoms to diagnose the underlying ailment. When patients pay thousands of dollars each year for “good” private insurance, how does a health care system allow them to walk away from a single hospital visit with debilitating medical debt? These concerns have become even more pressing with the spread of the new coronavirus and the costs associated with prevention, testing and treatment.

Most Americans assume that a commercial insurance card in their wallet protects them from unexpected medical bills. They pay their premiums and deductibles, scour the pages of insurance fine print and keep up with the revolving door of “in-network” doctors and hospitals.

However, going to the “in-network” hospital is no guarantee that the emergency room doctor, radiologist or anesthesiologist will be “in-network.” Today, many hospitals no longer directly employ physicians but instead contract with physician staffing firms such as TeamHealth, which employs more than 16,000 clinicians at 3,300 medical facilities.

Caught unaware in a medical crisis

These agencies are extremely profitable, which is why private equity firms are so hungry to buy them. Contract physicians operate outside of insurance coverage agreements — they’re not part of any “network” — and can act like free agents, billing patients directly for services not covered by insurance, called “balance billing.”

What does this mean for patients? Imagine you’re having a heart attack and call 911. Paramedics transport you to the nearest emergency room, which may or may not be in your insurer’s network. And because that hospital — or the ER doctor on duty — does not have a contractual relationship with your insurer, they can essentially name their price and “balance bill” you for the amount the insurance company won’t cover.

Here in Hawaii, many critically ill patients must use air ambulances for transportation from their home island to one that can provide emergency specialty services. For one of my patients, an air ambulance was a life-or-death necessity but deemed “out of network” by their insurance. Weeks later, the family received a balance bill for more than $25,000. They were forced to file bankruptcy and then enroll in Medicaid to cover subsequent health care costs — all with an insurance card in their wallet.

If this hasn’t happened to you, it’s just a matter of time. Over 40% of privately insured patients face surprise medical bills after visiting emergency rooms or getting admitted to hospitals. These bills punch a major hole in most family budgets: The average surprise hospital bill is $628 for emergency care and $2,040 for inpatient admission. That’s on top of the more than $20,000 families pay in premiums and deductibles each year just for the insurance policy.

If faced with a surprise $500 medical bill, half of Americans would either have to borrow money, go into debt or wouldn’t be able to pay it at all. Medical bills are a key contributor in two-thirds of personal bankruptcies, and yet the vast majority of households filing for medical bankruptcy have insurance.

Medicare for All is the only solution-Really??

What is the value of commercial insurance if it can’t protect us from financial ruin?

Lawmakers are considering a number of policies that would prohibit balance billing, cap the amount patients pay at out-of-network facilities and implement baseball-style arbitration when providers and insurance companies can’t agree on a payment. But surprise bills are not the real problem — they are merely one symptom of a dysfunctional system based on private insurance. And insurance companies only turn a profit by restricting patient choice, denying claims and passing costs onto enrollees.

The only policy that can end this scourge for good is single-payer Medicare for All, which would cover everyone in the nation for all medically necessary care. Medicare for All would eliminate out-of-network bills, because every doctor and hospital would be covered. Patients would never see a medical bill again, because Medicare for All would pay doctors and hospitals directly, with no deductibles, co-pays or insurance paperwork to get in the way.

Right now the current Medicare system is covering the costs of coronavirus testing, protecting patients just as it was designed to do. This health emergency is another argument for expanding such protections to all Americans.

Working in various hospitals across the country, I have met so many patients who delay or avoid needed care for fear of surprise bills and financial catastrophe. That’s risky for them and, in the face of a threat like coronavirus, for all of us. It doesn’t have to be this way. As a doctor, I prescribe Medicare for All.

We are forgetting the huge cost of Medicare for All and the ineffectiveness and short comings of Medicare for All , which I have attempted to point out these last few weeks. Doesn’t any one read my posts?

America’s Health System Will Likely Make the Coronavirus Outbreak Worse

Abigail Abrams noted that as government officials race to limit the spread of the new coronavirus, fundamental elements of the U.S. health care system—deductibles, networks, and a complicated insurance bureaucracy—that already make it tough for many Americans to afford medical care under normal conditions will likely make the outbreak worse.

More than 140 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in the United States so far, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. But as the CDC makes the test for the virus more widely available, the structure of the U.S. health care system is complicating the response.

For one, people must actually choose to get tested—a potentially expensive prospect for millions of Americans. While the government will cover the cost of testing for Medicaid and Medicare patients, and for tests administered at federal, state and local public health labs, it’s unclear how much patients will be charged for testing at academic or commercial facilities, or whether those facilities must be in patients’ insurance networks. Just recently, a Miami man received a $3,270.75 bill after going to the hospital feeling sick following a work trip to China. (He tested positive for the seasonal flu, so did not have the new coronavirus, and was sent home to recover.)

Those who test positive for COVID-19 possibly face an even more financially harrowing path forward. Seeking out appropriate medical care or submitting to quarantines—critical in preventing the virus from spreading further—both come with potentially astronomical price tags in the U.S. Last month, a Pennsylvania man received $3,918 in bills after being released from a mandatory U.S. government quarantine after he and his daughter were evacuated from China. (Both the Miami and Pennsylvania patients saw their bills decrease after journalists reported on them, but they still owe thousands.)

More than 27 million Americans currently do not have health insurance of any kind, and even more are underinsured. But those who do have adequate health insurance are hardly out of the woods. Many current health plans feature massive deductibles—the amount you have to spend each year before your insurance kicks in. In 2019, 82% of workers with health insurance through their employer had an annual deductible, up from 63% a decade ago, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The average deductible for a single person with employer insurance has increased 162% in that time, from $533 in 2009 to $1,396 last year.

More than one quarter of employees, and nearly half of those at small companies, have an annual deductible of at least $2,000. Those who are covered by Obamacare marketplace plans face an even bigger hurdle: the average deductible for an individual bronze plan last year was $5,861, according to Health Pocket, a site that helps consumers shop for health insurance.

For many Americans, paying down an unexpected bill of that size is almost unthinkable. Nearly 40% of U.S. adults say they wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings or a credit card they could easily pay off, according to the Federal Reserve.

Research has shown that even in non-outbreak situations, high deductibles lead people to reduce their spending on health care and delay treatment or prescription drugs, which can pose particularly tough problems for patients with chronic illness or diseases that need early detection. The timing of the new coronavirus at the beginning of the year makes the outlook even worse: because most deductibles reset each January, millions of Americans will be paying thousands out of pocket before their insurance companies pay a cent.

“Most likely most people haven’t started paying down their deductible,” explains Adrianna McIntyre, a health policy researcher at Harvard. “For care they seek, unless it’s covered as zero dollar coverage before the deductible, they could be on the hook for the full cost of their visit, the diagnostic testing and other costs related to seeking care or diagnosis of coronavirus.”

Half of Americans report that they or a family member have put off care in the past because they couldn’t afford it. Others have gone without care because they couldn’t find an in-network provider, or couldn’t determine how much care would cost in advance, so decided not to risk seeking medical attention.

“When patients try to go to a doctor or hospital, they often don’t know how much it’s going to cost, so they get a bill that’s way more than expected,” says Christopher Whaley, a health economist at the RAND Corporation. “On a normal basis, that’s chaotic and challenging for patients. But when you add on top this situation where you have a potential pandemic, then that’s even worse.”

In the face of that kind of uncertainty, many patients may simply decide not to go to the doctor, he added, which is “exactly the opposite of what we want to happen in this type of situation.”

Public health experts and Democrats have also criticized the Trump administration’s decision to allow people to sidestep the Affordable Care Act’s rules and buy limited, short-term health insurance coverage. Such “junk plans,” said Senator Patty Murray, speaking at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on Wednesday, are not required to cover diagnostic tests or vaccines.

The Trump administration’s embrace of such barebones plans “makes it much harder for people to get the care they need to keep this crisis under control,” she said. A large group of health, law and other experts also released a letter this week urging policymakers to “ensure comprehensive and affordable access to testing, including for the uninsured.”

Insurance industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans issued guidance on the coronavirus last week, but it did not recommend that insurance companies eliminate out-of-pocket costs related to the virus. It said insurers would be working with the CDC and “carefully monitoring the situation” to determine “whether policy changes are needed to ensure that people get essential care.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a directive on Monday requiring New York health insurers to waive cost sharing for testing of the coronavirus, including emergency room, urgent care and office visits. This could help New Yorkers who receive coverage through Medicaid and other state-regulated plans, but it won’t apply to the majority of employer-based health insurance, which is regulated by the federal government. Other states have similar limitations on the insurance plans they can regulate, according to McIntyre.

The federal government, on the other hand, could step in. The Trump Administration is considering using a national disaster recovery program to reimburse hospitals and doctors for treating uninsured COVID-19 patients. And even Republicans, who have traditionally opposed health care paid for by the government, are warming to the idea. “You can look at it as socialized medicine,” Florida Rep. Ted Yoho, who has vocally opposed the Affordable Care Act, told HuffPost this week. “But in the face of an outbreak, a pandemic, what’s your options?”

But even if the federal government takes steps to eliminate deductibles or other cost-sharing related to the coronavirus, experts say that Americans should brace themselves for long wait times to see providers, or for having to see doctors who are out-of-network, due to the limited capacity of providers and hospitals.

Those who don’t need to be treated at a hospital may still be impacted. The CDC has recommended that people maintain a supply of necessary medications in case they are quarantined, for example. But many insurance companies do not allow patients to refill prescriptions until they are almost out. The CDC also recommends that people to stay home from work if they experience symptoms of respiratory illness, but a lack of federally mandated sick leave makes it impossible for many workers to afford to take time off.

These consequences of the country’s fragmented health care system become more visible in times of stress, says Whaley. “In a pandemic type situation, that’s harmful both for patients,” he says, “and also for the members of society.

”Coronavirus: US ‘past the point of containment’ in battle to stop outbreak spreading

Tim Wyatt reported that America is “past the point of containment” in its battle against the coronavirus, senior health officials have admitted.

There are now more than 550 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States and at least 22 deaths linked to the outbreak.

Now, the government’s strategy had to change from trying to hold the virus at bay to actively seeking to minimise its impact and slow its spread, experts said.

Speaking on US television, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Dr Scott Gottlieb, said everything had changed.

“We’re past the point of containment. We have to implement broad mitigation strategies. The next two weeks are really going to change the complexion in this country.

“We’ll get through this, but it’s going to be a hard period. We’re looking at two months, probably, of difficulty.”

A similar message came from the Surgeon General Jerome Adams who warned it was time to consider cancelling large gatherings, including sporting events, and closing schools.

Each community might take a different approach to mitigating Covid-19, but inaction was not longer an option he cautioned while speaking to CNN. “Communities need to have that conversation and prepare for more cases so we can prevent more deaths,” he said.

Those in the most at-risk groups, including the elderly or unwell, should refrain from spending time in confined spaces with large numbers of the public, Dr Adams added.“Average age of death for people from coronavirus is 80. Average age of people who need medical attention is age 60. “We want people who are older, people who have medical conditions, to take steps to protect themselves, including avoiding crowded spaces, including thinking very carefully about whether or not now is the time to get on that cruise ship, whether now is the time to take that long haul flight,” he said.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, echoed this advice. “If you are an elderly person with an underlying condition, if you get infected, the risk of getting into trouble is considerable,” he told NBC.“So it’s our responsibility to protect the vulnerable. When I say protect, I mean right now. Not wait until things get worse. Say no large crowds, no long trips. And above all, don’t get on a cruise ship.”

A swathe of conferences, including many tech-focused events in California, have already been cancelled over fears flying in thousands of delegates from across the country and world would exacerbate the spread of Covid-19. Some schools in the US are already closing, with major sporting events such as the Indian Wells tennis tournament being cancelled.

The comments from senior Trump administration health officials marks a shift from an earlier tone of calm. Several people, including the president, had sought to downplay fears about the coronavirus, insisting it probably would not turn into a full-blown epidemic in America.

Dr Fauci even suggested limited lockdowns could be imposed on regions or towns where a serious outbreak occurs, saying the government was ready to take “whatever action is appropriate” to try and mitigate the crisis.’We’re gearing up for something extremely significant’:

Top hospitals across the US told us how they’re preparing for the coronavirus outbreak

Lydia Ramsey and Zachary Tracer reviewed the U.S. hospitals preparation for this pandemic. Hospitals around the US are preparing for the novel coronavirus outbreak, which has sickened more than 200 people in the US and 100,000 worldwide.

They want to make sure workers and equipment are ready to go in the event of a worst-case scenario. “We’ve not yet seen an epidemic or pandemic in our lifetimes of this size and scope,” said Becca Bartles, the executive director of infectious disease prevention at Providence St. Joseph Health System. “We’re gearing up for something extremely significant.”

When the first case of novel coronavirus showed up in the US in January, Becca Bartles was ready for it.

As the executive director of infectious disease prevention at Providence St. Joseph Health System, she had been preparing for years. Bartles helps prepare Providence, which runs 51 hospitals across the West Coast, for potential outbreaks by keeping an eye out for new pathogens that could hit the communities the health system serves.

“We’ve not yet seen an epidemic or pandemic in our lifetimes of this size and scope,” Bartles said. “We’re gearing up for something extremely significant.”

Hospitals and healthcare workers are already starting to feel the effects of the coronavirus outbreak as it hits communities around the US. The US has reported more than 200 cases of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19. More than 100,000 people have come down the virus worldwide, mainly in China.

And they’re preparing for the outbreak to get worse. Some of the hospitals Bartles works with are in the Seattle area and are already treating coronavirus patients. She said the virus is positioned to be the biggest outbreaks we’ve seen in recent US history.

‘It will stretch our capacity to provide healthcare overall in the US’

“I don’t think we can appreciate, based on what we’ve seen in our lifetimes, how big that’s going to be,” Bartles said. “That does cause me significant concern.” “It will stretch our capacity to provide healthcare overall in the US,” she added.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported symptoms related to the novel coronavirus include fever, cough, and shortness of breath, appearing within 14 days of exposure to the virus.

In a presentation hosted by the American Hospital Association, which represents thousands of hospitals and health systems, one expert projected there could be as many as 96 million cases in the US, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 480,000 deaths associated with the novel coronavirus. The American Hospital Association said the webinar reflects the views of the experts who spoke on it, not its own.

Preparing for the worst

Health systems like Providence perform drills and trainings in anticipation of outbreaks like the novel coronavirus. The goal is to make sure employees, especially those working in the emergency department or who might care for critically ill patients, are trained correctly and have the right protective equipment.

And they’re ramping those up now. In Philadelphia, Jefferson Health has been conducting extra protective-equipment trainings, focused on intensive care unit clinicians who might treat people with the coronavirus.

The 14-hospital system also started a coronavirus task force this week and is readying its outbreak plans. The idea is to prepare for a worst-case scenario.

“We’re saying, look, let’s plan as if there’s going to be a lot of cases, it’s going to be overwhelming to our hospital,” said Dr. Edward Jasper, an emergency medicine physician who leads the task force. “We don’t think that’s going to happen. And then whatever else comes, it’s going to be nothing compared to that. So we’re prepared.”

For now, Jasper said he’s not expecting the worst. “We watch it so closely and right now it’s not triggering keeping me awake at night,” he said.

At Providence, Bartles said leaders within the organization are now meeting multiple times a day to discuss issues like making sure the hospitals have enough supplies on hand, especially protective equipment for those working in emergency departments.

The goal of the meetings is also to inform other hospitals across Providence’s network of what’s going on in Washington, which has been hit hard with the virus.

How the largest health system in New York is preparing

The senior leadership at New York’s Northwell Health System, which operates 23 hospitals, has been meeting continuously for the last several weeks, chief quality officer Dr. Mark Jarrett told Business Insider. The discussions cover what happens if one individual comes in with symptoms all the way to a pandemic.

Northwell’s relying on some of the preparation it did in advance of the SARS epidemic in 2003, and its response to the H1N1, or Swine Flu pandemic in 2009. But, Jarrett said, the hospital has changed a lot since then. Northwell, New York’s largest health system by revenue and the state’s largest private employer, has been steadily moving more of its services outside the four walls of a hospital.

That means the health system will have to account for patients showing up for care in places other than the main hospital in a community — places like urgent care centers and primary care clinics.

Readying hospitals for a surge of patients

Should the outbreak intensify, hospitals are grappling with how to prepare for the surge in coronavirus patients while also keeping other patients safe. At first, hospitals will isolate patients with the coronavirus, but if lots of patients come down with the virus, hospitals will probably put them in rooms together, said Kelly Zabriskie, Jefferson’s director of infection prevention.

Dr. Kathleen Jordan, a vice president at CommonSpirit Health, a 142-hospital health system and chief medical officer at the system’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, told Business Insider that the health system is having conversations about what might happen if they’re confronted with an influx of patients.

That might include setting up tents, building out larger emergency rooms or adding more beds for patients who need to stay at the hospital. For now, the health system has a few cases of the novel coronavirus under investigation. Eventually, hospitals might have to consider reducing or pausing elective procedures to make room for the surge in patients, Northwell’s Jarrett said. Hospitals are also thinking about staff being out, either due to the virus itself, or in the event that they have to care for their family.

Northwell on Tuesday told its employees that it’s restricting travel for business both internationally and domestically through the end of March. That’s a move other hospitals are making as well. “These updated travel guidelines are designed to help us remain in good physical health so we can most effectively care for the patients and families we serve,” Northwell said in an email to employees.

But you shouldn’t rush to the emergency room if you start having flu symptoms. Bartles said the plan is to focus on following CDC recommendations. As the virus continues to spread in communities, it will be harder to distinguish what might be flu from coronavirus.

Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, said hospitals are encouraging patients to call ahead or use an online doctor visit, rather than show up to an emergency room with potential coronavirus. That can help prevent them from infecting others, and let hospitals focus their resources on the most serious cases.

And lastly, few have mentioned that in China they are already taking down some of the temporary housing for the quarantined patients as the infection rate decreases. Important to note as we prepare for the worst!

And next week we should discuss the economic issues resulting from the pandemic!

What the Trump budget says about the administration’s health priorities; The Dems and Bloomberg and More on the Corona Virus

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As Michael Bloomberg continues to attempt to buy the Primaries and the Elections let us look at Trump’s new budget and its effect on health care. University of Pennsylvania Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Simon F. Haeder reported that the Trump administration recently released its budget blueprint for the 2021 fiscal year, the first steps in the complex budgetary process.

The final budget will reflect the input of Congress, including the Democratic House of Representatives, and will look significantly different.

However, budget drafts by presidential administrations are not meaningless pages of paper. They are important policy documents highlighting goals, priorities and visions for the future of the country.

As a health care expert, I find the vision brought forward by the Trump administration deeply concerning. Cuts to virtually all important health-related programs bode ill for nations future. To make things worse, ancillary programs that are crucial for good health are also on the chopping block. To be sure, most of the proposed damage will find it hard to pass muster with Congress. Yet given the nation’s ever-growing debt Congress may soon be amenable to rolling back the nation’s health safety net.

Rolling back the ACA and the safety net

To no one’s surprise, some of the biggest cuts in the proposed budget focus on health care programs. The budget document uses a number of terms to disguise its true intentions. Yet a closer look indicates that terms like “rightsizing government,” “advancing the President’s health reform vision,” “modernizing Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program,” and “reforming welfare programs” all come down to the same end result: cuts to the safety net.

One of the main targets remains the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. In 2017, after several failed attempts to repeal and replace the ACA, the Trump administration has scaled back its open hostility. Instead of asking directly to repeal the ACA, this year’s budget proposal calls for initiatives to “advance the president’s health reform vision,” by cutting more than half a trillion dollars from the budget.

These initiatives come on top of actions the Trump administration has already taken to roll back the Affordable Care Act, including the repeal of the individual mandate penalty, severely limiting outreach and enrollment efforts, and creating a parallel insurance market by expanding the roles of short-term, limited duration and association health plans.

The Trump administration has also targeted Medicaid, the nation’s largest safety net program serving mostly low-income Americans, pregnant women, children, the disabled and those in need of long-term care, as well as its cousin, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Overall “modernization” for these two programs alone would entail cuts of almost US$200 billion.

Medicare, the program serving America’s seniors, technically would not undergo significant restructuring. However, “streamlining” and “eliminating waste” would reduce the program by more than half a trillion dollars or 6%. All put together, cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and Medicare will exceed a trillion dollars over a decade. Coverage losses, mostly affecting lower-income Americans, would range in the millions of dollars.

Health is more than just medical care

In the U.S, we often equate health with access to medical care. However, researchers have long recognized that medical care contributes only about 10% to 20% to the health of individuals.

One crucial component of good health is access to education. However, the Trump budget includes cuts of more than $300 billion across the entire education spectrum from Head Start to grants that support college education. This just doesn’t make any sense!

Access to food and nutrition also plays a major role in maintaining good health. However, two programs providing important food security to millions of Americans would face significant cuts. For one, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which supplements food budgets for 34 million Americans with an annual budget of $58 billion, is slated for $22 billion in cuts over a decade. There are also cuts exceeding $2 billion over a decade to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which reaches more than 6 million Americans with an annual budget of $6.4 billion.

Cuts to nutritional benefits would be further compounded by a 15.2% reduction to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The department provides a range of housing assistance programs to needy individuals. Moreover, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program which provides cash benefits to needy families, faces 10% in cuts. Again, this doesn’t make any sense!

A healthy environment and access to clean air and water unquestionably are crucial to living a healthy life. However, the proposed budget would trim spending on the agency tasked with protecting the nation’s environment, the Environmental Protection Agency, by more than 40%, or $36 billion.

A myriad of public health crises has been slowly but steadily harming communities all across the country. Much of the attention has been garnered by the devastating opioid crisis. More recently, the coronavirus and the seasonal flu epidemic have caught the headlines. Yet, there are countless other epidemics harming communities around the country including syphilis, hepatitis C and gonorrhea. Yet the nation’s major public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control, would see its budget decline by 9%.

The Trump administration is also proposing to significantly reduce funding for health-related research programs. One target is the National Science Foundation, which would see a reduction by 6.5%. Moreover, the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier medical research agency, is set for 7.2% in cuts. Both agencies play crucial roles in positioning the nation to tackle current and future health challenges. Do any of these budget cuts make any sense?

A blueprint for the future?

Since the Kennedy administration, taxes have generally been cut and only rarely increased. Particularly large tax cuts under the George W. Bush administration, without commensurate budget cuts, have created a systemic imbalance in the federal budget. This imbalance was further exacerbated by the recent tax cuts under the Trump administration.

So far, we have been able to stall the eventual reckoning because of strong economic growth and our ability to borrow heavily. Eventually, it seems inevitable that this massive imbalance will catch up with us.

Faced with the choice to either raise taxes or cut programs, Congress may choose the latter. With defense spending largely untouchable, health programs and other social support systems will likely bear the brunt.

Democrats Get Personal on Healthcare

Shannon Firth reported that the Democratic presidential candidates engaged in one of the most brutal and bruising fights to date, attacking each other’s integrity and physical fitness while still reserving time to tear into each other’s healthcare plans.

The debate took place in Las Vegas, with caucuses in Nevada only a few days away, and was broadcast by NBC/MSNBC.

Ahead of the debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was leading nearly every poll according to RealClearPolitics.

In addition to Sanders, participants included former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Sanders’ health came under scrutiny in the wake of his October 2019 heart attack and stent placements.

When asked whether he would offer voters “full transparency” around his medical records, he was quick to point out that Bloomberg also has two stents. Sanders then said he had released the “full report” of his heart attack and decades of records from the attending physicians on Capitol Hill. (Last month, though, cardiologist Anthony Pearson, MD, noted that the recent report didn’t include Sanders’ left ventricular ejection fraction, a key indicator of cardiac function.)

In addition, two “leading Vermont cardiologists” had also released reports stating that he is “more than able to deal with the stress and the vigor of being president of the United States,” Sanders said, challenging anyone who doubts his stamina to “follow me around the campaign trail.”

Buttigieg quipped that Sanders was in “fighting shape,” but continued to stress the need for transparency.

When President Obama was in office the standard, he was to release “the read out” after a physical. While President Trump lowered that bar, Buttigieg said it should be raised.

“I am certainly prepared to get a physical, put out the results,” he said, “and I think everybody here should be willing to do the same.”

‘A PowerPoint,’ a ‘Post-It,’ and a ‘Good Start’

When it came to healthcare reform plans, Warren took aim at each of the other candidates.

Buttigieg has a “slogan” dreamed up by consultants, she said. “It’s not a plan, it’s a PowerPoint,” referring to Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It.”

Buttigieg’s plan, which includes a public option, would initially preserve the role of private insurers, but later serve as a “glide path to Medicare for All.”

She likened Klobuchar’s plan, which also involves a public option, to a “a Post-It Note, ‘Insert plan here,'” then she took aim at Sanders’ more comprehensive plan. Although she had endorsed it in the first debate, this time she called it merely “a good start” that leaves gaping holes in how it would be implemented.

As candidate’s hands shot, with each rebuke, signaling a request to defend themselves, Warren shared her own vision for healthcare reform.

“[W]e need as much help for as many people as quickly as possible and bring in as many supporters as we can. And if we don’t get it all the first time,” presumably here she’s referring to a complete transition to a single-payer system, “… take the win and come back into the fight and ask for more,” Warren said.

Medicare for All has been a particular point of contention in Nevada, where the powerful Culinary Workers Union has been vocal in opposing any plan that takes away its members’ negotiated healthcare coverage. (The union declined to endorse any candidates in the state’s caucuses.) Asked about it in Wednesday’s debate, Sanders said, “I will never sign a bill that will reduce the healthcare benefits that they have, we will only expand it for them, for every union in America and for the working class of this country.”

Buttigieg, however, suggested that Sanders hadn’t been listening. “This idea that the union members don’t know what’s good for them is the exact kind of condescension and arrogance that makes people skeptical of the policies we’ve been putting forward.”

At another point, Biden took a shot at Bloomberg for having attacked the Affordable Care Act during a 2010 speech.

Bloomberg countered that he was in fact “a fan” of the landmark law. “I was in favor of it, I thought it didn’t… go as far as we should,” he said.

Now, his position is that Obamacare should be preserved and strengthened. “We shouldn’t just walk away and start something that is totally new, untried. People depend on this,” he said. One of his first moves as president would be to “bring back those things” that President Trump eliminated.

Other features of Bloomberg’s plan include a public option, caps on healthcare prices, and elimination of “surprise medical bills.” The overall goal is to achieve universal coverage while preserving private insurance.

Bloomberg To Grieving Family: Elderly Cancer Patients Are Too Expensive

Peter Hasson of the National Interest reported that Billionaire and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said in a 2011 video that elderly cancer patients should be denied treatment in order to cut health care costs.

“All of these costs keep going up, nobody wants to pay any more money, and at the rate we’re going, health care is going to bankrupt us,” said Bloomberg, who was then New York City’s mayor.

“We’ve got to sit here and say which things we’re going to do, and which things we’re not, nobody wants to do that. Y’know, if you show up with prostate cancer, you’re 95 years old, we should say, ‘Go and enjoy. Have a nice [inaudible]. Live a long life. There’s no cure, and we can’t do anything.’ If you’re a young person, we should do something about it,” Bloomberg said in the video.

“Society’s not ready to do that yet,” he added.

Bloomberg made the comments while visiting a grieving family whose brother had died after reportedly waiting 73 hours in an emergency room.

His presidential campaign didn’t return a request for comment.

The New York billionaire has faced increased scrutiny over past statements as he has continued to rise in Democratic primary polls.

Fake Facts Are Flying About Coronavirus. Now There’s A Plan to Debunk Them

We have been hearing all sorts of information regarding the Corona Virus and I thought that I would share some of the Fake Facts and some of the truths. Malaka Gharib reported that the coronavirus outbreak has sparked what the World Health Organization is calling an “infodemic” — an overwhelming amount of information on social media and websites. Some of it’s accurate. And some is downright untrue.

The false statements range from a conspiracy theory that the virus is a man-made bioweapon to the claim that more than 100,000 have died from the disease (as of this week, the number of reported fatalities is reported at 2,200-plus).

WHO is fighting back? In early January, a few weeks after China reported the first cases, the U.N. agency launched a pilot program to make sure the facts about the newly identified virus are communicated to the public. The project is called EPI-WIN — short for WHO Information Network for Epidemics.

“We need a vaccine against misinformation,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s health emergencies program, at a WHO briefing on the virus earlier this month.

The Coronavirus Outbreak
What you should know

Where the virus has spread
Coronavirus 101
Coronavirus FAQs

While this is not the first health crisis that has been characterized by online misinformation — it happened with Ebola, for example — researchers are especially concerned because this outbreak is centered in China. The world’s most populous country has the largest market of Internet users globally: 21% of the world’s 3.8 billion Internet users are in China.

And fake news can spread quickly online. A 2018 study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that “false news spreads more rapidly on the social network Twitter than real news does.” The reason, say the researchers, may be that the untrue statements inspire strong feelings such as fear, disgust and surprise.

This dynamic could cause fake coronavirus cures and treatments to fan out widely on social media — and as a result, worsen the impact of the outbreak, says Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Over the past decade, he has been tracking the effect of digital technology on issues such as global health and economic development.

The rumors offer remedies that have no basis in science. One untrue statement suggests that rubbing sesame oil on the skin will block the coronavirus.

If segments of the public turn to false treatments rather than follow the advice of trusted sources for avoiding illness (like frequent hand-washing with soap and water), it could cause “the disease to travel further and faster than it ordinarily would have,” says Chakravorti.

There could be a political agenda behind the fake coronavirus news as well. Countries that are antagonistic toward China could try to hijack the conversation in hopes of creating chaos and eroding trust in the authorities, says Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux, research director for Harvard Belfer Center’s Security and Global Health Project.

“Disinformation that specifically targets your health system or your leaders who are trying to manage an emergency is a way of destroying, undermining, disrupting your health system,” she says.

In the instance of vaccines, Russian bots have been identified as fueling skepticism about the effectiveness of vaccination for childhood diseases in the U.S.

The World Health Organization’s EPI-WIN team believes that the countermeasure for misinformation and disinformation is simply to tell the truth.

It works rapidly to debunk unjustified medical claims on social media. In a series of bright blue graphics posted on Instagram, EPI-WIN states categorically that neither sesame oil nor breathing in the smoke of fire or fireworks will kill the new coronavirus.

Part of this truth-telling strategy involves enlisting large-scale employers.

The approach, says Melinda Frost, an officer on the EPI-WIN team, is based on the idea that employers are the most trusted institution in society, a finding reflected in a 2020 study on global trust from the public relations firm Edelman: “People tend to trust their employers more than they trust several other sources of information.”

Over the past few weeks, Frost and her team have been organizing rounds of conference calls with representatives from Fortune 500 companies and other multinational corporations in sectors such as health, travel and tourism, food and agriculture, and business.

The company representatives share questions that their employees might have about the coronavirus outbreak — for example, is it safe to go to conferences? The EPI-WIN team gathers the frequently asked questions, has their experts answer them within a few days, and then sends the responses back to the companies to distribute in internal newsletters and other communication.

Because the information is coming from their employer, says Frost, the hope is that people will be more likely to believe what they hear and pass the information on to their family and community.

Bourdeaux at Harvard calls this approach a “smart move.”

It borrows from “advertising techniques from the 1950s,” she adds. “They’re establishing the narrative before anybody else can. They are going on offense, saying, ‘Here are the facts.’ “

WHO is also collaborating with tech giants like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok to limit the spread of harmful rumors? It’s pursuing a similar tactic with Chinese digital companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Weibo.

“We are asking them to filter out false information and promote accurate information from credible sources like WHO, CDC [the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and others. And we thank them for their efforts so far,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, in a briefing earlier this month.

Google and Twitter, for example, now actively bump up credible sources such as WHO and the CDC in search results for the term “coronavirus.” And Facebook has deployed fact-checkers to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories about the outbreak. Kang-Xing Jin, head of health at Facebook, wrote in a statement about one such rumor that it has eliminated from its platform: that drinking bleach cures coronavirus.

Chakravorti applauds WHO’s coordination with the digital companies — but says he’s particularly impressed with Facebook’s efforts. “This is a radical departure from Facebook’s past record, including its controversial insistence on permitting false political ads,” he wrote in an op-ed in Bloomberg News.

[Facebook and Twitter did not respond to requests from NPR for comments. Facebook is one of NPR’s financial sponsors.]

Still, there is no silver bullet to fighting health misinformation. It has become “very, very difficult to fight effectively,” says Chakravorti of Tufts University.

A post making a false claim about coronavirus can just “jump platforms,” he says. “So you might have Facebook taking down a post, but then the post finds its way on Twitter, then it jumps from Twitter to YouTube.”

In addition to efforts by WHO and other organizations, individuals are doing their part.

On Wednesday, The Lancet published a statement from 27 public health scientists addressing rumors that the coronavirus had been engineered in a Wuhan lab: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin …. Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors and prejudice that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”

Dr. Deliang Tang, a molecular epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, says his friends from medical school and his research colleagues in China find it difficult to trust Chinese health authorities, especially after police reprimanded the eight Chinese doctors who warned others about a pneumonialike disease in December.

As a result, Tang’s network in China has been looking to him and others in the scientific community to share information.

Since the outbreak began, Tang says he has been answering “30 to 50 questions a night.” Many want to fact-check rumors or learn about clinical trials for a potential cure.

“My real work starts at 7 p.m.,” he says — morning in China.

And the latest news on the Corona virus: Coronavirus update: 80,238 cases, 2,700 deaths; CDC warns Americans to prepare for disruption

And: Harvard scientist predicts coronavirus will infect up to 70 percent of humanity

Red and Blue America see eye-to-eye on one issue: the nation’s health care system needs fixing and What is Missing in Medicare for All and What is Stressing Us All?

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USA TODAY’s Jayne O’Donnell noted that Health care is one of the most divisive issues of the 2020 presidential campaign, with candidates disparaging insurers and polarizing labels creating deep divisions even among Democrats. But remove the buzzwords from the policies, and voters who will decide the election aren’t so far apart in their own positions, new research shows. But remember what I have been questioning for the last at least 6 months- with all the concern why hasn’t neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have done anything when they had control, i.e. had the majorities in the House or the Senate? And will Mike Bloomberg come to the Democrats’ recur and solve everyones’ problems?

Regardless of party affiliation, nearly everyone wants to see the nation’s health care system improved, and a majority want big changes. That includes people for whom the system is working well, and those who may be political opposites.

That’s the big picture finding of a new Public Agenda/USA TODAY/Ipsos survey of Americans’ attitudes on health care. The survey is part of the Hidden Common Ground 2020 Initiative, which seeks to explore areas of agreement on major issues facing the nation.

The nationally representative survey of 1,020 adult Americans 18 years and older was conducted December 19-26, 2019. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

The survey removed politically charged language such as “Medicare for All” and “Obamacare” and simply explained the basics of health care approaches in an effort to capture voters’ true opinions.

“There’s the making of a public conversation about this and it does not need to be around ideology,” said Will Friedman, president of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and public engagement organization. “People just aren’t so set on what they want.”

The sharpest divides were on the size of government and taxes.

In general, Democrats were more comfortable with a larger role for the federal government, such as the single-payer government insurance program also called Medicare for All, or a public option.

Instead of saying “public option” though, pollsters asked respondents how strongly they agreed with the concept of a new federal health insurance program that gives people a new choice beyond the current private insurance market.

Any adult could buy into the program on a sliding scale, they were told, and 48% were in favor. A survey released last week by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found similar support, with the same percentage of Americans favoring such an option.

When described in general terms, 46% of respondents said they would support market-based plans and 45% could back Medicare for All-type plans.

Five goals were rated by more than 90% of those surveyedas very or somewhat important: making health care more affordable for ordinary Americans; lowering the cost of prescription drugs; making sure people with preexisting medical conditions can get affordable health insurance; covering long-term care for the elderly and disabled; and making sure all communities have access to enough doctors and hospitals.

So why the gridlock?

“There are these sort of flashpoints with politicized terminology that send people to their partisan corners,” said former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican who is on the board of the bipartisan, nonprofit United States of Care. “If we avoid them, we’re going to be more successful.”

John Greifzu, a survey respondent and school janitor in Fulton, Illinois, used to be a Democrat and “almost middle of the road.” Now, after being a single father of three children until his recent marriage, health insurance costs have made him distrust his party.

His wife is “paying an arm and a leg” — up to a third of a paycheck — for “bottom of the barrel” insurance that comes with a $2,000 deductible through her retail job. And even on the Medicaid plans that cover his children, there are things that aren’t covered, he said.

Greifzu watched his insurance costs rise as it became offered to the unemployed.

“I work hard for what I’ve got,” said Greifzu. “I’m not going to give up more money for people who don’t do anything.”

Emily Barson, United States of Care’s executive director, said the survey “validates our worldview … that people agree more than the current political rhetoric would have you believe.”

It also shows success at the state level is particularly promising, Barson added.

Before the midterm congressional elections, some Republican members of Congress avoided unscripted town halls with voters as concerns rose about the fate of the Affordable Care Act and protections for people with preexisting conditions. In states, Douglas said governors and state officials can’t avoid voters — or each other.

State officials need to get elected too, but “more importantly, we (states) have to balance our budgets every year,” said Douglas, now a political science professor at Middlebury College.

Friedman noted, however, that voters made it clear in their responses that they don’t want policymakers to leave health care issues to the states. When queried on the specifics, respondents said they didn’t want moving from state to state to make health care any more complicated.

“In terms of the overarching solution, the public would like to see it solved nationally,” he said.

Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said most of all it’s clear voters want something done about the prices they pay.

“Americans across the political spectrum desperately want relief from health care costs,” Levitt said, “and at some point they’re going to hold political leaders to account for not delivering.”

Obamacare, Medicare and more

The findings from the Public Agenda/USA TODAY/Ipsos poll are part of an election-year project by USA TODAY and Public Agenda. The Hidden Common Ground initiative explores areas of agreement on major issues facing the nation.

The survey of 1,020 adult Americans 18 years and older was taken December 19-26, 2019. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points for Democrats, plus or minus 6.2 percentage points for Republicans and plus or minus 5.7 percentage points for independents.

The Hidden Common Ground project is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Kettering Foundation serves as a research partner to the Hidden Common Ground initiative.

Cost of health care, lack of data security stress us out. It’s time to claim our rights.

USA TODAY opinion contributor, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn reported that Americans are stressed out about health care.

Whether it concerns costs, access to treatment or ability to navigate the system, the American Psychological Association, in its 2019 Stress in America survey, found that 69% of people in the United States say health care is a major source of stress in their life.

We’re also stressed about privacy and data security. We live with a patchwork quilt of laws but no overarching protection that allows us to control our personal information.

As Americans, we need to demand our health citizenship. What does this mean? That people claim health care and data privacy as civil rights.

Polls show that most Americans, from top income earners to people living with much less, believe that it’s unfair for wealthier people to have access to better health care.

In an election year where there seems to be little consensus, two issues on which most American voters agree is the need to lower prescription drugs costs and to protect patients with preexisting conditions. These are priorities that cross party lines in 2020.

What’s driving this cross-party consensus? It’s the reality of patients spending increasingly higher amounts of household income on high-deductible health plans, medical services and prescription drugs. Forcing patients to have more financial “skin in the game” has led millions of Americans to forgo care altogether or to self-ration care by not getting recommended tests and not filling prescriptions.

The second driver for the declaration of health citizenship is the urgent need to protect our personal health information.

In 1996, when the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted, the introduction of the iPhone was 11 years away. The internet was dial up to AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy. And per-capita spending on health care averaged $3,759 (in 2018, it was $11,172).

Health care in 2020 is digitally based, with most physicians and hospitals in America using electronic health records and providers conducting care online via web-based services. Health care is quickly moving to the home, to our cars and even inside our bodies with implants. Wearable technology, remote health monitoring and mobile apps increasingly support our self-care and shared-care with clinicians.

Our health data is vulnerable

Those interactions create new data points. So do daily interactions with our phones and retail purchases. That information, when mashed up with our health care data, can be used to predict our health status, identify emergent conditions like a heart attack or stroke, and customize medications for patients.

But the data generated by our daily lives, outside of HIPAA-covered entities such as doctors, hospitals and pharmacies, is not for the most part covered by existing laws. We are exposed to third-party brokers who monetize our data without telling us how it’s used and without sharing the revenue they make from our personal information.

Universal care is basic right

What would a new era of health citizenship look like? Every American would be covered by a health plan — however we fashion it.

Universal health care, American-style, could come in many forms, including through proposals under debate during the election cycle. All residents in our peer nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development enjoy some form of health care plan. Most of these countries spend less on health care per person and realize better health outcomes.

One reason is that those nations spend more per person on social factors that help determine a person’s health.

Education, for example, is a major predictor of people’s health. Sir Angus Deaton and Anne Case’s research into the “deaths of despair” in America identified lack of education as a risk factor. Lawmakers need to “bake” health into food and agriculture, transportation, housing and education policies to improve the health of all Americans regardless of income or education levels.

We also need to help people understand the growing role of data in everyday life. Virtually everyone leaves digital dust in the use of mobile phones, credit cards and online transactions. Our peers in Europe enjoy the privacy protection afforded by the General Data Protection Regulation, which defends the “right to be forgotten.” In the United States, we lack laws that sufficiently protect our personal data.

Voting is part of health citizenship, too. The Stress in America survey cited the 2020 presidential election as a major source of Americans’ stress. Let’s make the act of voting a part of our pursuit of good health’

Medicare for All is really missing the point’: Experts say program needs work

Ken Alltucker of USA TODAY, reported that when Robert Davis’ prescription medication money ran out weeks ago, he began rationing a life-sustaining $292,000-per-year drug he takes to treat his cystic fibrosis.

Tuesday, the suburban Houston man and father of two got a lifeline in the mail: a free 30-day supply of a newer, even more expensive triple-combination drug with an annual cost of $311,000.

The drug will bring him relief over the next month, but he’s uncertain what will happen next. Although the 50-year-old has Medicare prescription drug coverage, he can’t afford copays for it or other drugs he must take to stay healthy as he battles the life-shortening lung disorder.

Davis is among millions of Americans with chronic disease who struggle to pay medical bills even with robust Medicare benefits. More than one in three Medicare recipients with a serious illness say they spend all of their savings to pay for health care. And nearly one in four have been pressured by bill collectors, according to a study supported by the Commonwealth Fund.

As Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others tout “Medicare for All” to change the nation’s expensive and inequitable health care system, some advocates warn the Medicare program is far from perfect for the elderly and disabled enrolled in it.

The word “Medicare” was mentioned 17 times during Wednesday night’s debate in the context of a national health plan or a public option people could purchase. However, there’s been little to no discussion among the candidates in debates about the actual status of the health program that covers about 60 million Americans.Ad

One in two Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents want to hear more about how candidates’ plans would affect seniors on Medicare, making it the top health-related concern they’d like candidates to discuss, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday.

“We fear the debate about ‘Medicare for All’ is really missing the point,” says Judith Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “What most people don’t know is the current Medicare program has a lot of problems with it. We need to improve Medicare before it becomes a vehicle for a broad group of people.”

Medicare for All faces broad political challenges. About 53% support a national Medicare for All plan, but that support drops below 50% with more details about paying taxes to support a single-payer system, according to the Kaiser poll.

Nearly two in three moderate voters in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are skeptical of a plan to use Medicare as a vehicle for comprehensive health coverage, another Kaiser and Cook Political Report poll released this month shows. A group funded by pharmaceutical companies, health insurers and hospitals has lobbied against Medicare for All, and a survey released by HealthSavings Administrators reported participating employers oppose the plan.

This month, Warren released more details about her health plan, calling for a public option within the first 100 days of her presidency. She said it was not a retreat from Medicare for All, even as a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed her support in Iowa dropped to 16%.

Stephen Zuckerman is a health economist and co-director of the Urban Institute Health Policy Center. He says the Medicare for All proposals expand coverage beyond what Medicare beneficiaries get.

“If you hear about Medicare for All, you might think it’s the current Medicare program for all people,” Zuckerman said. “But that’s not what the Medicare for All proposals are presenting. They are looking at plans that are far more generous, in terms of the benefits they cover and to some extent the cost sharing.”

The fundamental promise of Medicare for All builds on a public program that works well for adults over 65 and people who are unable to work because of disability. Although Medicare rates high in satisfaction among most who have it, a portion of people who need frequent, expensive care struggle financially.

The Commonwealth Fund-supported survey of 742 Medicare beneficiaries reported 53% of those with “serious illness” had a problem paying a medical bill. The study defined serious illness as one requiring two or more hospital stays and three or more doctor visits over three years.

Among these seriously ill patients, the most common financial hardship involved medication. Nearly one in three people reported a serious problem paying for prescriptions. People had problems paying hospital, ambulance and emergency room bills, according to the survey.

Eric Schneider, a Commonwealth Fund senior vice president for policy and research, says the survey’s findings show seriously ill Medicare recipients face “significant financial exposure.

“The expectation is that people would be relatively well-covered under Medicare,” Schneider says. “We’re seeing it has gaps and holes, particularly considering the level of poverty many elderly still live in.”

‘More illness, more sickness’

Davis, the Houston-area man, has rationed expensive but critical modulator drugs, which seek to improve lung function by targeting defects caused by genetic mutations.

When he ran out of the drug Symdeko last November, he coughed up blood, had digestive problems and was hospitalized for a week. This month, he took half the amount he was prescribed, hoping he’d have enough pills to last through the year.

“It alters my breathing a lot,” Davis says. “I’m more congested. I start slowing down, more illness, more sickness.”

Davis has Medicare prescription coverage, but he couldn’t afford Symdeko’s $1,200 monthly copay. He needs to pay an additional $600 each month for a less expensive drug, pulmozyme, which breaks down and clears mucus from his lungs. The medication he takes is critical to keep his lungs functioning and to limit infections.

A private foundation offers copay assistance up to $15,000 each year, a threshold Davis reached this month. Like a year ago, as rent, food and utility bills took most of his disability income, the math didn’t work. He could no longer afford drugs when the foundation’s annual help ran out.

A 30-day supply of the newer drug, Trikafta, was provided by the drug’s manufacturer free of charge. Davis worries he will run into the same problem when he’s again forced to cover a copay he can’t afford.

His Medicare coverage is sufficient for doctor visits and hospital stays, but he says drug costs for cystic fibrosis patients are “out of control.”

“Research is expensive – I understand that,” Davis says. “They are making lifesaving drugs that very few cystic fibrosis patients can afford and that a lot of insurance plans will balk at.”

Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes Symdeko and Trikafta, says the drugs’ list prices are appropriate.

“Our CF medicines are the first and only medicines to treat the underlying cause of this devastating disease and the price of our medicines reflect the significant value they bring to patients,” the company says in a statement.

Vertex provides financial assistance to patients such as Davis who need the company’s medications.

“Our highest priority is making sure patients who need our medicines can get them,” the company says. “Every patient situation is different, and our (patient-assistance) team works individually with patients who are enrolled in the program to evaluate their specific situations and determine what assistance options are available.”

‘Public Medicare plan is withering’

Advocates such as Stein want presidential candidates to address Medicare’s coverage gaps and other challenges mill

ions of beneficiaries face.

The Commonwealth Fund survey did not report whether participants had traditional Medicare plans or Medicare Advantage plans, which are administered by private insurance companies such as Aetna or UnitedHealthcare. The report did not ask participants whether they had supplemental insurance, which covers out-of-pocket medical expenses not capped by Medicare.

People on Medicare typically have robust coverage for hospital stays and doctor charges. But even with “Part D” prescription drug coverage, Davis and others who must take expensive drugs are responsible for copays.

“What is happening is the public Medicare program is withering,” Stein says. “The private, more expensive, less valuable Medicare Advantage program is being pumped up.”

More than one-third of Americans choose private Medicare plans, which entice consumers through add-on services such as vision and dental coverage and perks such as gym memberships. A survey commissioned by the Better Medicare Alliance, which is backed by the private insurance industry, reported 94% of people in private Medicare plans are satisfied with their coverage.

Private Medicare plans restrict the network of available doctors, hospitals and specialists people can see. Traditional Medicare plans allow people to see any doctor or hospital that takes Medicare.

Stein says tailored networks can be problematic for seniors who travel out of state and encounter a medical emergency.

She says private plans frequently change doctors and hospital networks from year to year. Such frequent network changes can surprise Medicare recipients and force them to switch doctors.

“There’s too much confusion, too little standardization,” Stein says. “The inability, when you are really ill or injured, to get the care where you want it and from whom you want it, I think that is completely lost in the discussion.”

This month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “protecting and improving” Medicare, but some worry it could push more consumers into private plans and lead to more expensive medical bills. Among other things, the order calls for Medicare to pay rates closer to those paid by private insurers. Medicare typically pays doctors less than what private commercial plans pay.

The federal rules based on the executive order haven’t been finalized, so it’s unclear how it might be implemented.

The executive order “doesn’t seem all that well thought out,” Zuckerman says. Raising Medicare’s payment rates to be on par with private insurance would make the program more expensive and potentially financially vulnerable, he says.

“Public opinion wants to see that program preserved,” Zuckerman says. “At a minimum, I don’t think anyone wants to see Medicare contract.”

US health care system causing ‘moral injury’ among doctors, nurses

Megan Henney of FOX Business noted that the emphasis on speed and money — rather than patient care — in emergency medicine is leading to mass exasperation and burnout among clinicians across the country.

According to a new report published by Kaiser Health News, a model of emergency care is forcing doctors to practice “fast and loose medicine,” including excessive testing that leaves patients burdened with hefty medical bills; prioritizing speed at the cost of quality care and overcrowding in hospitals, among other issues.

“The health system is not set up to help patients,” Dr. Nick Sawyer, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of California-Davis, told Kaiser Health. “It’s set up to make money.”

In October, a 312-page report published by the National Academy of Medicine, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., found that up to half of all clinicians have reported “substantial” feelings of burnout, including exhaustion, high depersonalization and a low sense of personal accomplishment.

Physician burnout can result in increased risk to patients, malpractice claims, clinician absenteeism, high employee turnover and overall reduced productivity. In addition to posing a threat to the safety of patients and physicians, burnout carries a hefty economic cost: A previous study published in June by the Annals of Internal Medicine estimated that physician burnout costs the U.S. economy roughly $4.6 billion per year, or $7,600 per physician per year.

Physicians suffering from burnout are at least twice as likely to report that they’ve made a major medical error in the last three months, compared to their colleagues, and they’re also more likely to be involved in a malpractice litigation suit, the report found. Each year, about 2,400 physicians leave the workforce — and the No. 1 factor is burnout.

The authors of the report, who spent 18 months studying research on burnout, found that between 35 and 54 percent of nurses and doctors experience burnout. Among medical students and residents, the percentage is as high as 60 percent.

“There is a serious problem of burnout among health care professionals in this country, with consequences for both clinicians and patients, health care organizations and society,” the report said.

But the issue in emergency medicine goes beyond burnout. A 2018 report published by Drs. Wendy Dean and Simon Talbot found that physicians are facing a “profound and unrecognized threat” to their well-being: moral injury.

The term “moral injury” was first used to describe soldiers’ response to war and is frequently diagnosed as post-traumatic stress. It represents “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.”

At the crux of moral injury in physicians is their inability to consistently meet patient’s needs, a symptom of a health-care environment that’s increasingly focused on maximizing profit that leaves clinicians trapped between navigating an ethical path or “making a profit from people at their sickest and most vulnerable.”

“The moral injury of health care is not the offense of killing another human in the context of war,” Dean and Talbot wrote. “It is being unable to provide high-quality care and healing in the context of health care.”

In the one year since they published their paper, Dean and Talbot sparked an international conversation among health care professionals about the moral foundations of medicine, receiving a flood of responses.

“All of us who work in health care share, at least in the abstract, a single mission: to promote health and take care of the ill and injured. That’s what we’re trained to do,” they wrote. “But the business of health care — the gigantic system of administrative machinery in which health care is delivered, documented, and reimbursed — keeps us from pursuing that mission without anguish or conflict.”

And as I am watching the New Hampshire Primary results I am amazed that Bernie is heading the Dems, as they are saying, based on his push for Medicare for All. Just a flawed proposal and evidently there are many that believe this Socialist. I am truly worried.

My Millennial Doctor Peers Think They’re Walking Into a Crisis Regarding Health Care, Doctors Need to Understand Health Care and Buttagieg’s Health Care Plan, Corona Virus and Kobe.

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Dr. Daniel E. Choi announced that ”Hey man, just wanted you to be one of the first to know that I put in my 90-day resignation notice at the hospital. Planning to pursue exec MBA…”

I did a double take at this shocking text from an orthopedic surgery colleague who was also a close friend. What? He was quitting?

We had just slaved through 5 years of orthopedic surgery residency, 1 year of fellowship, and just passed our oral boards. We were now supposed to be living the dream. All of that delayed gratification: throwing away our 20s holed up in the library, taking call endlessly on weekends and holidays. We did it for the ultimate privilege of being attending surgeons for our patients one day.

I called him right away and he confirmed my suspicions about why he quit. As an employed physician in a hospital system, he felt that he was sadly just becoming a cog in the machine, a “provider” generating relative value units. Administrators who had never done a day of residency or even stepped foot in his clinic wanted to provide “guidance” on how he should practice medicine. Overall, he felt that medicine was a sinking ship on which doctors were losing autonomy quickly and that this was a path leading straight to burnout.

I felt I had to let the Twitterverse know.

This tweet went viral and it was clear that I was on to something. I had struck a nerve with many of my physician colleagues. Surprisingly, many physicians empathized with my friend and didn’t blame him for looking elsewhere in finding a fulfilling career. Some physicians even thought he was doing the right thing.

I was getting really curious. I followed up with a Twitter poll: “Physicians, are you actively making plans for early retirement or considering how to possibly exit medicine in the near future?” Sixty-five percent of physicians who replied were considering an early exit from medicine.

This poll result was consistent with my own observation that early retirement online physician groups are burgeoning. Physician Side Gigs on Facebook, which seeks to help “physicians interested in pursuing opportunities outside of traditional clinical medicine…as a way to supplement or even replace their clinical income,” has over 50,000 members. Another Facebook group, Physicians on FIRE, aims to help physicians reach “Financial Independence. Retire Early” and has over 4000 members.

It is difficult to determine whether these physicians seeking early retirement are just wishfully complaining or actually planning an exit strategy. Many physicians answering the Twitter poll clarified that they loved treating and helping their patients but that the system had just become too difficult to deal with. Did this many physicians really want to leave the practice of medicine? What does that mean for our impending physician shortage? Why do so many of us feel the urge to get out?

Many discussions with disenchanted physicians ensued after that poll. In these discussions, I have found several common reasons that have pushed my colleagues to leave medicine.

Devaluation of Physicians on All Fronts

Devaluation appears to be happening on many fronts, according to my discussions with doctors online. There is the use of the term “provider” to replace “physician,” which more of us are finding offensive.

Mid-level providers who are cheaper for health systems to hire are replacing physicians. Reimbursements from commercial payers are declining. Health policy “experts” unfairly blame rising healthcare costs on physicians and have pushed legislators to find ways to lower physician compensation further. There are fewer physician meeting spaces in hospitals, such as doctors’ lounges or physician dining rooms, which used to serve as important spaces for physicians to commiserate and collaborate.

Overall, I sense great disappointment and anger among physicians about what many perceive to be increasing disregard for the tremendous amount of sacrifice physicians have made to complete their training. Physicians increasingly regret all of that time away from family or dropping their personal interests and hobbies during medical school and residency.Most shocking to me, however, is that physicians who speak out about such devaluation are often labeled “greedy doctors” by health policy “experts,” the press, and even fellow physicians (usually in the later stages of their career).

Loss of Autonomy and Independent Physician Opportunities

Personally, I’ve always wanted to be my own boss and I knew fairly early on in training that I wanted to enter private practice. I thought private practice would allow me to insulate myself from many of the forces that pushed my orthopedic surgery colleague to quit.

Mine is not the popular path, however, as the number of millennial physicians who are entering private practice has rapidly declined over the past decade. According to Medscape’s Residents Salary & Debt Report 2019, 22% of residents say they anticipate becoming either a practice owner or partner. According to a survey by the Physicians Foundation and Merritt Hawkins, only 31.4% of physicians identified as independent practice owners or partners in 2018. In 2012, independent physicians made up 48.5% of all doctors.

The survey even revealed that 58% of doctors do not think that hospital employment is a positive trend and concluded that “many physicians are dubious about the employed practice model even though they have chosen to participate in it, perhaps fearing that employment by hospitals will lead to a loss of clinical and administrative autonomy.”

I used to wonder why more of my millennial physician colleagues did not choose private practice as a career path and why so many were choosing hospital-based employment. A line I saw on Twitter sums it up: “Private practice is no longer about profitability. It’s about financial sustainability.” With greater consolidation within healthcare, independent doctors have lost much of their leverage when trying to negotiate fair rates with commercial payers.

In addition, the costs of purchasing an electronic health record and running a staff to deal with authorization and billing issues have made private practice extremely difficult. If more private practice opportunities existed, I am sure that my millennial colleagues would absolutely take them to maintain their independence. However, such independent practice opportunities continue to diminish, and millennial physicians may be pressured to take the only available positions: hospital employment with possible restrictions on autonomy.

Is Your Career Worth Your Own Life?

On average, one doctor a day in the United States ends his or her own life. Physicians commit suicide at a rate twice that of the general population, and over 1 million patients will lose their doctors to suicide every year. Pamela Wible, MD, who studied 1363 physician suicides, points out that “assembly-line medicine kills doctors” and that “pressure from insurance companies and government mandates further crush the souls of these talented people who just want to help their patients.”

Just a couple of months ago, my fellowship director forwarded me an email about a young orthopedic surgeon who had committed suicide, Thomas Fishler. He was known to be a brilliant surgeon whom colleagues and patients loved, and is survived by his young daughter. My fellowship director included in his email, “I know you have an awareness of the risks that those in our profession often face.”

Many physicians are crying for help and nobody is listening. Some sadly feel that the only way out is to end their lives.

Physician suicide is heartbreaking and screams crisis. What is driving brilliant doctors to the edge? I believe it’s further evidence of compounding external pressures that are making the practice of medicine increasingly intolerable. Many physicians are crying for help and nobody is listening. Some sadly feel that the only way out is to end their lives.

I get chills as I push the thought quickly out of my mind: Am I being subjected to this risk? All physicians have their tough days but I have never been anywhere close to being suicidal. But seriously—is it really worth it if I am at even a small risk of becoming that miserable?

Is There an Impending Crisis?

The average millennial physician completes training, looks around, and sees his or her profession in complete shambles. Burnout is rampant. Doctors are committing suicide daily. Many seem to be miserable over their lack of autonomy and loss of standing. The physician starts to take a hard look at the career they are about to embark on and begins to have serious doubts. Then the physician remembers that student loan debt. The average medical student loan debt in 2018, according to AAMC , was $198,000. There’s really no way out at this point; even if your job is going to make you miserable, you are going to push through because you’re on the hook.

And this is where I start to get seriously worried. We will have an entire generation of graduating physicians who will be subjected to forces that have never been present in medicine before. And these forces are actively causing distress and misery among some of my colleagues.

I know that my millennial colleagues have tremendous resilience and grit, as every generation of physicians has in the past. But how long will they put their heads down and fight against these ominous forces before they decide that they’ve had enough and jump ship just like my orthopedic colleague did?

Hope in Advocacy to Avert Crisis

Don’t get me wrong—practicing medicine is still the greatest privilege, and I know that every one of my millennial physician colleagues loves their patients dearly. I am honored that my patients entrust me to take away their pain and suffering in the operating room. I’ve studied and trained for 14 years to become an attending orthopedic spine surgeon; I’m not giving up this privilege that easily. And neither are most millennial physicians.

Millennials may be viewed as entitled, but many of us see that as “ comfort in advocating for themselves and questioning the status quo.” I believe that millennial physicians will not quietly accept the current state of affairs.

I see many impassioned millennial physician advocates becoming active in organizations like the Medical Society of the State of New York or the American Medical Association. These organizations already do excellent advocacy work, and I predict that millennial physicians will become a powerful force within such organizations to protect their profession. Through a unified voice, organized medicine is truly our strongest hope in enacting systemic changes that can prevent further physician demoralization and burnout.

We’re not giving up just yet. The crisis can be averted. Our patients and profession depend on it.

America’s healthiest and unhealthiest states

Cortney Moore noted that when it comes down to the popular saying that “health is wealth,” the states that have high revenue streams and median household incomes also have populations that are wellness-focused. Particularly, the states with the healthiest people are concentrated in the northern half of the U.S. and West Coast, according to America’s Health Rankings annual report conducted by the United Health Foundation.

The United Health Foundation analyzed the 50 states on five core categories, including model behaviors, community and environmental factors, public policies for health care and preventative care, clinical care and the overall health outcomes that result from the previous four.

America’s Health Rankings used a composite index of over 30 metrics to create its annual snapshot of statewide healthy populations, which ultimately helped the organization determine the healthiest to the unhealthiest.

Moreover, the report cited the World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” in addition to individual genetic predispositions to disease.

The healthiest state is Vermont, which has moved up from 20th place in 1990 to first place in 2019, according to America’s Health Rankings data. In the past 15 years, the state has decreased its air pollution by 47 percent – with fine particles per cubic meter going down from 9.7 to 5.1 micrograms. Additionally, Vermont’s disparity in health status decreased from 49 percent to 17.4 percent in the past year. Other strengths the report noted include low incidences of chlamydia, violent crime and the percentage of uninsured residents.

For the 2019 fiscal year, with the exception to the month of December (which data has yet to be released for at the time of publication), the state of Vermont made over $955 million in revenue from general funds, according to the Agency of Administration. More than $113 million came from health care taxes and assessments that were collected between January 2019 and November 2019.

The median household income in Vermont is $60,076, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which is close to the national median of $61,937. Moreover, average employee health care premium contributions for a family in the state is said to be $4,996, according to independent researchers at the Commonwealth Fund.

When it comes down to those who have government-funded health insurance plans, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services do not have up-to-date figures since it is collected on a quinquennial basis. However, the agency found that Vermont reported a little over $5.7 million in 2015 for health care expenditures, as noted in an infographic by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Outside the Green Mountain State, the other states that rounded out America’s Health Rankings top 10 are Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Utah, New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado.

The unhealthiest state is Mississippi, which has maintained close to 50th place from 1990 to 2019, according to America’s Health Rankings data. Since 1993, low birthweight in Mississippi increased from 9.6 percent to 21 percent of live births. In the past five years, premature death increased by seven percent from 10,354 to 11,043 years lost to people who died before age 75. Premature mortality has increased on a national scale in addition to diabetes and obesity. Other challenges the report noted include a high cardiovascular death rate and percentage of children in poverty.

For the fiscal year of 2019, the state of Mississippi made $166 million in revenue collections, according to the Mississippi Legislative Budget Office, which surpassed the state’s estimate by $30.5 million.

The median household income in Mississippi is $43,567, according to data from the U.S. Census, which is $18,370 less than the national median. Average employee health care premium contributions for a family in the state is $5,133, according to the Commonwealth Fund, which is only $137 more than the premiums employees in Vermont are paying. But, when coupled with Mississippi’s lower median income, the cost of health coverage is substantial.

Mississippi also surpassed Vermont in spending on government-funded health insurance plans. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that Mississippi reported over $21.5 million in 2015 for health care expenditures.

The other states that rounded out America’s Health Rankings bottom 10 were primarily in the South, including, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana. Indiana was the only Midwestern state to land on the lower one-fifth of the unhealthiest states list.

On a national scale, American health is a mixed bag. Since 2012, smoking among adults has decreased from 24 percent to 16.1 percent, however, obesity among adults increased to 30.9 percent from 11 percent while diabetes among adults increased to 15 percent from 9.5 percent.

In the past three years, drug-related deaths have increased by 37 percent from 14 to 19.2 deaths per 100,000 people. When compared to America’s Health Rankings data from 2007, that is a 104 percent increase.

Environmental conditions have improved as air pollution decreased by 36 percent since 2003 and violent crime decreased by 50 percent since 1993. In the past four years, frequent mental distress increased from 11 percent to 13 percent, which has resulted in an increase of mental health providers, according to the report.

Infant mortality has decreased by 43 percent from 10.2 to 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in the past 29 years. However, low birth weight has increased by four percent from eight to 8.3 percent in the past three years, which also happens to be a 19 percent increase from 1993.

The average American spends more than $11,000 per year on health care and accounted for 17.7 percent of the U.S. GDP, according to estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. With spending projected to grow at an average rate of 5.5 percent per year, the U.S. will reach nearly $6 trillion in health care spending by 2027.

Buttigieg’s health care plan would save money while Warren and Sanders plans would cost trillions, analysis finds

Associate Editor Adriana Belmont reported that Health care has been a contentious topic among the Democratic presidential candidates: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) support Medicare for All while Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) and former Vice President Joe Biden offer alternatives to universal health care.

A new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) took a look at the different plans and found that while each proposal would reduce the number of uninsured Americans, the least costly would be Buttigieg’s plan.

“Mayor Buttigieg’s plan would reduce deficits by $450 billion,” according to CFRB, adding that the policy would also “increase gross spending by $2.85 trillion, reduce costs by $1.2 trillion, and raise $2.1 trillion through direct and additional offsets.”

Through Buttigieg’s Medicare for All Who Want It plan, everyone would automatically be involved in universal health care coverage for those who are eligible. The policy would also expand premium subsidies for low-income individuals, cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicare, and limit what health care providers change for out-of-network care at double what Medicare pays for the same service. At the same time, those who still want to stay on private insurance can do so.

“This is how public alternatives work,” Buttigieg said. “They create a public alternative that the private sector is then forced to compete with.

CRFB estimated that the Indiana mayor’s plan would reduce the number of uninsured by between 20 to 30 million “by improving affordability and implementing auto-enrollment as well as retroactively enrolling and charging premiums to those who lack coverage.”

‘Building on Obamacare’

Joe Biden’s health care plan, described as “building on Obamacare,” has an estimated gross cost of $2.25 trillion and would add $800 billion to deficits over 10 years. The CRFB also found that “it would reduce costs by $450 billion” and “raise $1 trillion through direct and additional offsets.”

Biden’s plan would reduce the number of uninsured by 15 to 20 million Americans and reduce national health expenditures by 1%.

Some of his biggest revenue drivers in his plan include coverage expansion revenue feedback, which would create a public option, and end deductibility of prescription drug advertising. Additionally, his capital gains tax and “tax at death” would generate $550 billion.

‘Federal health expenditures would increase somewhat more’

Sen. Sanders, one of the original proponents of Medicare for All, has a plan that’s projected to add $13.4 trillion to deficits over a decade at a gross cost of $30.6 trillion. It would also raise $12.5 trillion in revenue through direct offsets and raise another $3 trillion through additional offsets.

His proposals to eliminate medical debt would cost $100 billion and would raise $1.7 trillion by reducing the costs of prescription drugs. To generate more money for the plan, Sanders would establish a 4% income surtax (projected to raise $4 trillion) and 7.5% employer payroll tax (estimated $4 trillion added). One significant cost in his plan, though, is offering universal long-term care — which would cost $29 trillion.

“The reality is that Medicare for All will save American families thousands of dollars a year because they will no longer be paying premiums, deductibles and co-payments to greedy private health insurance companies,” Warren Gunnels, senior advisor for the Sanders campaign, told Yahoo Finance in a statement.

“If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all and achieve better health outcomes, while spending substantially less per capita than we do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the United States of America cannot do the same.”

Overall, between 2021 to 2030, the CFRB estimated that Sanders’ plan would increase national health expenditures by 6%, “meaning that federal health expenditures would increase somewhat more than non-federal health spending would fall.”

‘Magical math’ or ‘the biggest middle class tax cut ever’?

Sen. Warren’s plan closely resembles Sanders’ in terms of cost. She stated her plan would cost $20.5 trillion in federal spending over a decade. CFRB found that the plan “would add $6.1 trillion to deficits over ten years under our central estimate.”

Experts disagree over the cost of Warren’s numbers, with one calling it “magical math” and another referring to Warren’s plan as “the biggest middle class tax cut ever.”

According to CRFB, the plan would increase gross spending by $31.75 trillion, reduce costs by $4.7 trillion, raise $14.2 trillion in revenue through direct offsets, and raise another $6.75 trillion through additional offsets. Her health care plan is estimated to increase costs by about 3%, but “the magnitude of these increases would decline over time.”

A major way to fund the plan would be through tax reform. By essentially eliminating tax breaks with private health insurers and requiring employers to contribute to her Medicare for All, she’s projected to generate an estimated $14.2 trillion. Other means of generating revenue for her plan include her wealth tax and a tax on bonds, stocks, and derivatives.

Both the Warren and Sanders plans would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 30 to 35 million and “nearly eliminate” average premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

Patients can’t afford for doctors to misunderstand the healthcare business

Caroline Yao reported that When I was in medical school, my teachers started a lot of their stories with the same phrase:

“Back in my day, I still helped patients who couldn’t pay.”

“Back in my day, we didn’t have 100 checklists.”

“Back in my day, I didn’t need permission from insurance companies to do my job.”

“Back in my day, a yelp review couldn’t ruin my reputation.”

It happened so often that I wondered if I had shown up to the medical profession 30 years too late. Had I signed up for a sham fairytale?

I had thought doctors were autonomous, benevolent masters with kind voices and encyclopedic knowledge. After entering the field, I’ve found most young doctors struggle to balance convention versus empowerment, and doing good versus doing well. Doctors are the ugly stepchild of healthcare reform; too privileged to warrant help, but too powerless to do our jobs better.

I performed more than 2,500 surgeries during my residency training, and I am embarrassed to say that I do not know what a single one of my patients paid for their operations.

I later learned at the public hospital, surgeons were reimbursed $35 for each emergency appendectomy performed. Where did all that money go? Why didn’t the doctors question the system, or try to regain some control?

The provider will see you now

Somewhere along the way, my title as a doctor has been reduced to “provider,” and my worth dictated by administrators, insurance companies—and the government. The Hippocratic Oath I earnestly recited upon starting medical school is challenged everyday by a system of perverse incentives, where hospitals are paid more for treating the sick than keeping the patient well.

In 2013, 87% of graduating doctors felt uncomfortable with their knowledge of the business of medicine; 81% felt they lacked an understanding of healthcare legislation.

Is the answer that doctors should participate more in determining patient fees and reimbursement schedules? History shows that when doctors controlled payments more directly, graduated systems based on ability to pay were subtle but more ubiquitous. In the era of Aristotle, wealthy physicians did not accept payment, while poorer ones requested them. When 9th-century physician and scholoar Ishaq bin Ali al-Ruhawi wrote the first book of medical ethics, he described physicians as business owners who provided free services during times of patronage from caliphs and sultans. Throughout medieval Europe and during the Ottaman Empire, doctors treated the poor with the help of subsidies from royal courts and churches. Notable physicians such as Sir William Osler, legendary French surgeon and anatomist Guillaume Dupuytren, and physician and founder of Dickinson College, Benjamin Rush also charged rich and poor patients based on a self-made sliding scale.

Today, governments, universities, religious groups, and philanthropists are essentially modern-day barons who fund healthcare for the indigent through public hospitals, grants, and charitable work.

In the US, some physicians are granted partial and full student debt forgiveness from the government for working in underserved or rural communities. However, the majority of physicians who volunteer at free clinics, teaching hospitals, charities, or medical missions often do so only because their practice is flexible or lucrative enough to allow them both time away from paying jobs and the financial means to offer free services.

While physicians in private practice have autonomy over who they treat and how much they charge, physicians who work in hospital systems are more and more removed from managing the whole patient.

In 1983, 76% of doctors owned their own practice versus only 47% in 2016. Young physicians today are fundamentally unaware of the business side of medicine, and that’s bad news for everyone. As is the fact that medical students and residents are consistently and idealistically mentored to ignore the costs of materials and treatments we recommend.

We are taught to deliver care based on strict scientific evidence: the “gold standard” of care. Said gold standard, however, does not account for price, diminishing returns, convenience, or pain. The treatment that works best for a lab rat in a cage does not always translate to the most appropriate care for a person who has far more complex needs.

The cost of your health

A more pragmatic physician understands that patients who are underinsured, uninsured, or improperly educated will often forgo procedures, clinic visits, and medications when those interventions are too expensive or inconvenient.

Cost-conscious surgeons know that using instruments to tie stitches instead of hand-tying stitches can often result in a 10-fold cost savings without sacrificing quality.

I did not know how prohibitively expensive everyday surgical consumables cost until I went on humanitarian missions abroad and worked with surgical teams that could not afford these luxuries. I learned that hemostatic fabric we used like disposable napkins in the US cost $40 for a post-it sized square. A five-inch silicone band-aid costs $20. Bioengineered skin substitutes cost $10,000 for a palm-sized sheet.

My lack of price-awareness is fairly common. Many doctors have stopped accounting for the cost portion of a cost-benefit analysis.

And where doctors have leaned away from understanding cost, others have stepped in. Hospital administrators, governments, and insurance companies now manage the costs of healthcare. Correspondingly, physician compensation is estimated to be under 10% of total US national healthcare spending today. Overhead, administration, ancillary staff, malpractice insurance, and pharmaceuticals account for the majority of costs. For an appendectomy and associated care in 2018, the Medicare allowable compensation for a surgeon’s work is $394; meanwhile, healthcare watchdog organizations quote $13,000 as the fair price for hospitals to charge a patient and US hospitals bill an average of $31,000.

Most surgeons working in large hospitals are unaware of these numbers. They are therefore unable to tell patients how much they will be billed for a given operation. A surgeon in the 1830s in the company of the likes of Dr. Dupuytren would know these numbers.

Patients are often dismayed or surprised that their doctor cannot earnestly explain the cost-benefits of different treatments. A 2013 survey by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 87% of graduating doctors felt uncomfortable with their knowledge of the business of medicine and 81% felt they lacked an understanding of healthcare legislation. As surgeons, we have slowly let ourselves become exclusively technicians. Just like Aristotle and Plato said.

By turning our noses up at the business of medicine, we have lost ownership over our patients, and the agency to advocate for them. As Osler said, “The good physician treats the disease. The great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

We as physicians and surgeons need to recover our identity and learn the business skills that our teachers have forgotten, but our forefathers stood up for.

As China’s Coronavirus Cases Rise, U.S. Agencies Map Out Domestic Containment Plans

Richard Harris reported that China has reported a large surge of cases of the novel coronavirus — upping its count from under 3,000 to over 4,500 as of Tuesday morning. More than 100 deaths have been reported. It is spreading rapidly in many provinces, and sporadic cases have now been reported in 18 other locations outside of China, including Australia, France and Canada.

In the United States, the case count remains at five — all people who had recently returned from Wuhan, China. And at a news conference Tuesday, top U.S. health officials reiterated that the disease — while serious — is not currently a threat to ordinary Americans.

“At this point, Americans should not worry for their own safety,” said Alex Azar, health and human services secretary, at the press briefing Tuesday.

While risk to most Americans remains low, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted that “risk is dependent on exposure” and that health care workers or others who know they have been in contact with a person exposed to the virus should take precautions.

The federal government continues to adjust its approach to preventing the disease from taking hold in the U.S. On Monday night, the CDC and the State Department announced that a travel advisory recommending that Americans avoid travel to China when at all possible.

Airport screening is also being expanded from five airports to 20, with the goal of screening all passengers returning from China and letting people know what they should do if they fall ill after they get home.

The CDC is conducting contact investigations of people known to have been in contact with the five patients with confirmed infections, monitoring them for symptoms and testing them if concerning symptoms emerge.

Officials at the CDC are eager to get into China in order to help scientists there answer key questions — such as whether the virus can spread from people who don’t show any symptoms of illness. Azar said at the news conference that he had been pressing his counterpart in China for permission to send investigators.

That plea has been answered, at least to a certain extent. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced that it had the green light to send outside experts to China. It was not immediately clear whether that will include scientists from the CDC.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that federal agencies are taking a three-pronged approach to respond to the novel coronavirus: developing and improving diagnostic tests, investigating experimental antiviral drugs, and working to develop a vaccine.

He said if it turns out that the virus can spread from someone who is not showing any symptoms, there would be some changes in the public health response. Similar coronaviruses from past outbreaks — severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome — did not spread in the absence of symptoms, but that doesn’t mean the new one will behave the same way. Viruses such as measles and influenza can be spread from people who aren’t showing signs of disease.

“Even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks,” Fauci said. “The driver of outbreaks has always been a symptomatic person.”

And lastly condolences go out to the Bryant family and the other members of the helicopter crash in southern California. Kobe will be sure missed but loss of kids really upsets a father like me the most!

‘I owe the American people an apology’: A former healthcare executive says he’s sorry for devising the biggest argument against Medicare for All and Some Additional Thoughts

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As the politicians are getting ready for the Senate impeachment trial, I realize how much time has been wasted on non-health care, non-immigration, non-education improvement, non-environmental issues. Both parties, Democrats and Republicans have wasted and multiple millions of our taxpayer dollars. Pathetic. These are the people that we voter for to do our bidding…improve our lives. Instead they fight and embarrass all of us. Pathetic!

And again, what about Medicare for All? Zeballos-Roig noted that Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive and now pro-Medicare for All activist, apologized for his role in designing the biggest argument against industry reform in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday.

He was referring to the idea of choice, or put another way, the freedom of Americans to pick their own health insurance plans and which doctors they want to see.

The activist called it “a PR concoction,” one filling him with “everlasting regret.”

A former executive at a prominent health insurance company had one thing to say recently: I’m sorry.

Wendell Potter, once a vice president for corporate communications at Cigna and now a pro-universal healthcare activist, laid out his apology in the New York Times on Tuesday for crafting one of the biggest arguments used against the creation of a single-payer system in the United States.

He was referring to the idea of choice, or put another way, the freedom of Americans to pick their own health insurance plans and which doctors they want to see.

It’s a common argument the health industry employs to oppose any attempt to change the system. Most recently, its spearheaded a multimillion-dollar effort to throttle proposals for Medicare for All, which would enroll everyone in the US onto a government insurance plan and virtually eliminate the private insurance sector.

“When the candidates discuss health care, you’re bound to hear some of them talk about consumer ‘choice,'” Potter wrote, referring to the Democratic primary field. “If the nation adopts systemic health reform, this idea goes, it would restrict the ability of Americans to choose their plans or doctors, or have a say in their care.

He called it “a good little talking point,” effective at casting any reform proposal expanding the government’s role in healthcare as drastically damaging.

But Potter said that defense was ultimately “a P.R. concoction,” and one that filled him with “everlasting regret.”

“Those of us in the insurance industry constantly hustled to prevent significant reforms because changes threatened to eat into our companies’ enormous profits,” Potter wrote.

Potter resigned his position at Cigna in 2008. And he testified to Congress a year later about the practices of an industry that “flouts regulations” and “makes promises they have no intention of keeping.” He’s since become a leading reform advocate.

Get this, the activist said in the Times op-ed that healthcare executives were well aware their insurance often severely limited the ability of Americans to personally decide how they accessed and received medical care, unless they wanted to pay huge sums of money out of their own pockets.

Do you all believe this?

“But those of us who held senior positions for the big insurers knew that one of the huge vulnerabilities of the system is its lack of choice,” Potter said. “In the current system, Americans cannot, in fact, pick their own doctors, specialists or hospitals — at least, not without incurring huge ‘out of network’ bills.”

The “choice” talking point, Potter wrote, polled well in focus groups that insurers set up to test their messaging against reform plans, leading them to adopt it.

Now he is shocked to see an argument that he had a hand in engineering used among Democrats battling to claim their party’s nomination to face off against President Trump in the 2020 election — and Potter says the insurers likely see it as a huge victory for them.

“What’s different now is that it’s the Democrats parroting the misleading ‘choice’ talking point — and even using it as a weapon against one another,” Potter wrote. “Back in my days working in insurance P.R., this would have stunned me. It’s why I believe my former colleagues are celebrating today.”

One of the biggest divides among Democratic candidates is on health reform.

The progressive wing of the party, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, largely supports enacting Medicare for All. So does Sen. Elizabeth Warren, though she’s tempered her rhetoric backing it in the last few months after rolling out her own universal healthcare plan and drawing criticism for its hefty $20.5 trillion price tag.

Moderates like former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are pushing to create an optional government insurance plan for Americans instead. They’ve argued that a single-payer system could kick millions of Americans off their private insurance and restrict their ability to manage their care — echoing the line of attack used by the healthcare industry.

Potter had a warning for voters as they head to the polls in this year’s election.

“My advice to voters is that if politicians tell you they oppose reforming the health care system because they want to preserve your ‘choice’ as a consumer, they don’t know what they’re talking about or they’re willfully ignoring the truth,” Potter wrote in the op-ed. “Either way, the insurance industry is delighted. I would know.”

Humana CEO talks M&A, government-controlled health care

More from another healthcare executive. Reporter Chris Larson noted that Louisville-based Humana Inc. — a giant in the health insurance market — expects its long-term success to be based in providing health services to keep its members from needing more care.

Humana CEO Bruce Broussard said as much — and much more — on Monday in two appearances at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.

Appearing beside Humana Chief Financial Officer Brian Kane, the duo answered a wide range of questions (which you can hear for yourself here). Below are a few takeaways from their remarks.

Humana’s core business is expected to grow despite market leader status

Administering Medicare Advantage, a privately administered version of the federal health plan Medicare, is at the heart of Humana’s (NYSE: HUM) business: it has about 4.1 million members on individual or group Medicare Advantage plans, according to the company’s latest financial disclosure.

One analysis shows that Humana holds about 18 percent of the Medicare Advantage market, the second largest share in the nation.

Presentation moderator Gary Taylor, a managing director and senior equity analyst with J.P. Morgan, noted that continued growth in a market-leading position is not typical and noted that continued growth in the Medicare Advantage business is possible because more seniors are using it rather than traditional Medicare.

Taylor said that about one-third of Medicare enrollees are on Medicare Advantage plans. Broussard said that he expects that portion to grow to one-half in the next seven to 10 years.

“We’re seeing just both a great consumer attraction, but, more importantly, great health outcomes by being able to serve someone more holistically,” Broussard said.

Broussard added that Humana’s growth in Medicare Advantage depends on brand recognition and customer experience. He added he expects that the company can grow along with the popularity of Medicare Advantage in the Midwest and Texas specifically.

Public policy: Americans want a private option

Some Democratic presidential candidates say they would push for expanded health benefits from the government while others — notably Vermont Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders — want to see private insurance eliminated altogether. Broussard largely downplayed the likelihood that these proposals would become policy.

He referred to polling, the company’s experience and the increased popularity of Medicare Advantage — a privately administered version of a government health plan — as proof that people want private options in health care.

Humana’s M&A plans will focus on clinical capabilities

Broussard said clinical capabilities were key to the company’s success and later added that its merger and acquisition activity would largely focus on that.

“What we see long term is the ability to compete in this marketplace will be really determined on your clinical capabilities — helping members stay out of the health care system as well as what we’ve done in past in managing costs in the traditional managed care way,” Broussard said.

Broussard added later in the presentation: “As we think about growth, we really think about how do we build the health care services side more. We’ll still buy plans especially on the Medicaid side and the markets that we want to be in. But for the most part, I think our capital deployment is expanding the capabilities we have.”

He added that there are only a few options for additional blockbuster mergers in the health care industry given the current regulatory environment.

Humana was the subject of such a merger a few years ago with Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc. But that deal fell apart and Aetna has since merged with Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS Health Inc.

Humana was party to a $4.1 billion acquisition that took Louisville-based Kindred Healthcare private and separated Kindred At Home into a standalone entity.

How an insured pro athlete ended up with $250,000 in medical debt

With all the concern regarding patients without health care insurance that there are people with insurance who due to the complexities of the system still end up with huge bills sometimes ending in bankruptcies. In the U.S., going bankrupt because of medical bills and debt is something that doesn’t just happen to the unlucky uninsured, but also to people with insurance.

Though health plans have an “out of pocket max” – the most you’d be required to pay for medical services in a given year – that’s no guarantee that number will ensure a safety net.

This is what pro cyclist Phil Gaimon discovered after a bad crash in Pennsylvania last June that left him with his collarbone, scapula, and right ribs broken. The bills totaled $250,000.

“I have good insurance,” Gaimon told Yahoo Finance. “I pay a lot of money for it. I just haven’t gotten good explanations for any of this.”

Gaimon pays $500 a month for a plan with a $10,000 deductible, and is fighting the bills.

This type of medical debt isn’t uncommon. The Kaiser Family Foundation, a healthcare think tank, has reported that insurance can be incomplete and that the complexity of the system often leaves people seeking treatment in financial hardship. In a survey KFF found that 11% of consumers with medical bill problems have declared bankruptcy, and cited the medical bills as at least a partial contributor. Another report found that medical problems contributed to 66.5% of all bankruptcies. (Currently, there’s some legislation addressing surprise billing issues.)

Gaimon was taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital after his crash. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an out-of-network hospital. Gaimon told Yahoo Finance that he thought it would be okay, because the emergency nature could be seen as an extenuating circumstance. His insurer, Health Net, has an appeals process for situations like that.

Gaimon figured the no-other-option aspect of the situation would solve the problems, and believed it enough to post on Instagram soon after that people should donate to No Kid Hungry, a children’s food insecurity charity, rather than a GoFundMe for his bills.

“I said, ‘Hey, I crashed, what would you donate to my GoFundMe if i didn’t have health insurance? Take that money and give it to this instead,’” said Gaimon. “We raised around $40,000 in 48 hours.”

The $103,000 raised in the next few months would have taken a big chunk out of his medical bills, but Gaimon has no regrets. “Someone out there needs more help than I do,” he said.

Medical bills are fun!

It’s hard to comparison shop when you’re in physical pain

Things may have been easier if it would have been possible for Gaimon to steer the ambulance towards an in-network hospital. But an ambulance isn’t a taxi — it’s a vehicle designed to bring a patient to health care providers in the least amount of time possible.

Also consider that Gaimon, as he put it, was in “various states of consciousness” following his accident — hardly in a position to check which hospitals are in his insurer’s network.

Gaimon may be able to win the appeals process with his insurer for the out-of-network hospital. But that’s just the beginning of his insurance woes.

The cyclist’s scapula break was complex enough to require a special surgeon, and Gaimon said the hospital was unable to find someone capable.

“I was laying in the hospital for three days hitting the morphine,” Gaimon said. Multiple times a potential surgeon would come to examine him only to say that they weren’t up to the task.

After multiple cycles of fasting before a surgery only to be told that the surgeons couldn’t operate, Gaimon took matters into his own hands. Eventually he found a surgeon in New York to do it, and even though it was out-of-network as well, he figured the fact that there was seemingly no other alternative would mean his insurer would cover the surgery.

So the track race didn’t go very well. Broken scapula, collarbone, 5 ribs, and partially collapsed lung. What if I told you that I don’t have health insurance? Would you donate do help me out? How much?

Okay well I do have health insurance and I’m fundamentally alright, so I ask you to take that money and give it to @ChefsCycle @nokidhungry who need it more than I do. I’m in a lot of pain and this is all I can think to cheer me up. Link in profile and updates as I have them. Xo

Six months later, Gaimon finds out that it did not, and is fighting the charges. He’s hired a lawyer to help, as has had mixed results with the system so far.

“No one talks prices until it’s over — that’s the other horrible flaw,” he said.

Gaimon said that he’s numb to things at this point, though he doesn’t know what will happen.

“Ultimately I’m going to have to negotiate with that hospital, or the health insurance will choose to cover,” said Gaimon. “Or they’ll have to sue me and I’ll go bankrupt — the traditional way you deal with medical stuff.”

Gaimon’s sarcasm aside, sky-high health care costs are a central issue in the current presidential election and a frequent talking point for Democratic candidates. In this week’s Democratic debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders highlighted the issue. “You’ve got 500,000 people going bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills,” Sanders said. “We’re spending twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other country.”

The whole ordeal has shown Gaimon how fragile the healthcare system really is.

“The whole idea that you could be in a car accident and you wake up in a hospital and owe $100,000 — and that could happen to anyone — that’s a ridiculously scary thing,” he said. “I was making no decisions, I was on drugs, and in fetal-position-level pain. Every decision was made to live. And then you emerge and you’re financially ruined.”

Medicare for All? A Public Option? Health Care Terms, Explained

Now, a review of some of the terms that we keep discussing. As I complete a chapter in my new book, I thought that it would worth taking the time to review some of the terms. Yahoo Finance’s Senior writer, Ethan Wolff-Mann reported that if the last few Democratic presidential debates are any guide, tonight’s will likely delve into health care proposals. Do voters know what we’re talking about when we talk about various plans and concepts, including “Medicare for All?” Or any of the other health policy terms that get thrown around?

Pretty much no.

According to one poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 87% of Democrats support “Medicare for All,” while 64% of Democrats support “single-payer health care.” Here’s the catch — those two phrases describe almost the same thing. The language in this debate is murky, confusing and hugely consequential. So, we’re laying out some key terms to help you keep up.

Single-payer

This is a kind of health care system where the government provides insurance to everyone. Think about it as if you’re a doctor: a patient comes in, and you treat them. Who’s paying you for that care? Under our current system, it could be a variety of payers: state Medicaid programs, Medicare, or a private insurance company like Aetna or Cigna or Blue Cross and Blue Shield — each with different rates and different services that they cover. Instead, under the single-payer model, there’s just one, single payer: the government.

Medicare for All

If single-payer is fruit, Medicare for All is a banana. In other words, single-payer is a category of coverage, and Medicare for All is a specific proposal, originally written by presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (as he often reminds us). It envisions the creation of a national health insurance program, with coverage provided to everyone, based on the idea that access to health care is a human right. Private health insurance would mostly go away, and there would be no premiums or cost-sharing for patients.

Important note: it would not actually just expand Medicare as it exists now for all people (as you might guess from the name). Medicare doesn’t cover a whole lot of things that this proposed program would cover, like hearing and vision and dental and long-term care.

Public option

The idea of a “public option” was floated back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act was being debated. The idea is that along with the private health insurance plans that you might have access to through your employer or through the individual insurance exchanges, there would be an option to buy into a government-run insurance program, like Medicare. Private insurance would still exist, but people could choose to get a government insurance plan instead.

There are many kinds of public option proposals, and different presidential candidates have their own ideas on how it would work, whether it’s lowering the age for Medicare access or creating a new program that’s not Medicare or Medicaid that people could buy into, among others. The idea is that the government might be able to offer a more affordable option for people, which could push down prices in the private insurance world.

Pete Buttigieg’s plan — “Medicare for All Who Want It” — is his version of a public option. And Elizabeth Warren announced November 15 that she’d start with a public option plan before trying to push the country toward Medicare for All.

“Government-run” health care

Many opponents of Medicare for All and other health proposals use the term “government-run” as a dig against them, including President Trump. (Sometimes the term “socialized medicine” is used as well.) In the U.K. and some other places, the government doesn’t just pay people’s health care bills, it also owns hospitals and employs doctors and other providers — that’s a government-run health care system. The single-payer concept being discussed in this country’s presidential campaign would not operate like that — the industry would still be mostly private, but the government would pay the bills. How the government would generate the money to pay those bills is subject to debate.)

Universal coverage

This isn’t a plan, it’s a goal that everyone has health insurance — that health insurance coverage is universal. The Affordable Care Act made a system for states to expand Medicaid and created the individual health insurance exchanges, , both of which significantly cut down on the number of uninsured people, but currently 27 million Americans do not have health insurance, and the rate of people who lack insurance is rising. Most Democratic presidential candidates would like to achieve universal coverage — the debate is about the best approach to get there.

Medicare for All Would Save US Money, New Study Says

Reporter Yuval Rosenberg, The Fiscal Times noted that a Medicare for All system would likely lower health care costs and save the United States money, both in its first year and over time, according to a review of single-payer analyses published this week in the online journal PLOS Medicine. You have to read on to understand the flimsy data and weak argument to try to convince us all to adopt the Medicare for All program, especially those of us who really know the reality of living with a Medicare type of healthcare program and the reality of restrictions in needed care for the patients.

The authors reviewed 18 economic analyses of the cost of 22 national and state-level single-payer proposals over the last 30 years. They found that 19 of the 22 models predicted net savings in the first year and 20 of 22 forecast cost reductions over several years, with the largest of savings simplified billing and negotiated drug prices.

“There is near-consensus in these analyses that single-payer would reduce health expenditures while providing high-quality insurance to all US residents,” the study says. It notes that actual costs would depend on the specifics features and implementation of any plan.

The peer-reviewed study’s lead author, Christopher Cai, a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, is an executive board member of Students for a National Health Program, a group that supports a single-payer system.

Questions about methodology: “This might be the worst ‘academic’ study I’ve ever read,” tweeted Marc Goldwein, head of policy at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “It’s a glorified lit review of 22 studies – excluding 6 of the most important on the topic and including 11 that are redundant, non-matches, or from the early 90s.” The results would look quite different if the authors had made different choices about what analyses to include in their review.

What other studies have found: Other recent analyses have been far less conclusive about how health care spending might change under a single-payer system. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last year that total national health care spending under Medicare for All “might be higher or lower than under the current system depending on the key features of the new system, such as the services covered, the provider payment rates, and patient cost-sharing requirements.”

An October analysis by the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth Fund, meanwhile, found that a robust, comprehensive single-payer system would increase national health spending by about $720 billion in its first year, while federal spending on health care would rise by $34 trillion over 10 years. But a less generous single-payer plan would reduce national health spending by about $210 billion in its first year. Remember the costs that Elizabeth Warren spouted?? $52 trillion over a decade! Can we all afford this?

Progress On Lung Cancer Drives Historic Drop In U.S. Cancer Death Rate, Obamacare and More Numbers

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First some good news, which in today’s boiling kettle we all need. Cancer death rates in the United States took their sharpest drop on record between 2016 and 2017, according to an analysis by the American Cancer Society.

Richard Harris reported that the cancer death rates in the U.S. have been falling gradually for about three decades, typically about 1.5% a year. But during the latest study period, the cancer mortality rate dropped 2.2%, “the biggest single-year drop ever,” says Rebecca Siegel, scientific director for surveillance research at the cancer society.

“It seems to be driven by accelerating declines in lung cancer mortality,” Siegel says. That’s “very encouraging, because lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., causing more deaths than breast, colorectal and prostate cancers combined.”

“This is unambiguously good news,” says Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, senior investigator with the Center for Surgery and Public Health, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He was not involved in the analysis.

What’s behind the decline? In part, smoking rates have fallen steadily, which means the biggest risk factor for lung cancer has fallen appreciably. New cancer treatments are also playing a role, Siegel says.

Advanced lung cancer, however, remains deadly. People diagnosed with lung cancer that has spread elsewhere in the body have only a 5% chance of surviving for five years. And many smokers and former smokers are not following the advice to get screened with a low-dose CT scan to catch cancer early.

In fact, a recent study found that only 4.4% of people eligible for this screening test (which under the Affordable Care Act is available at no cost) actually got screened in 2015. Nearly twice as many people instead got a test that has been found to be unsuited as a screen for lung cancer: a chest X-ray.

And others who didn’t fit the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations took the CT screening test anyway. “The number of adults inappropriately screened for lung cancer greatly exceeds the number screened according to the USPSTF recommendations,” the study notes.

Screening for cancer has played a controversial role in cancer trends. Mammography and the PSA blood test for prostate cancer do identify some cancers early, when treatment is usually more effective. But the tests also identify many growths that would never turn deadly — a phenomenon called “overdiagnosis.”

A paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October delves into that issue to help distinguish between cancer trends that are true improvements and trends simply due to changes in screening practices.

That issue plays out in the latest statistics. The reported number of prostate cancers surged in the 1980s as doctors started detecting it with the PSA test. That led to treating many prostate cancers that would never have turned deadly. Even so, the test caught a lot of cancers, and the death rate from prostate cancer fell at about 4% per year.

No longer. “The rapid declines in death rates over the past couple of decades actually halted,” Siegel says.

Siegel says that’s partly because reduced PSA screening, while preventing many unnecessary treatments, is also finding fewer treatable cancers. “I think there is a big need for a better test,” she says.

That plateau doesn’t surprise Welch, at Brigham and Women’s, who agrees that it might be time to reevaluate screening for prostate cancer. “I think we’ve gotten about the decline we’re going to get from screening and treatment,” he says. Some types of prostate cancer are more treatable than others and with recent improvements, he says, “we’ve gotten the low-hanging fruit.”

Improvements in cancer treatment are apparent when it comes to melanoma, a skin cancer that’s far less common than prostate or lung cancer. The new statistics show that melanoma death rates have been dropping by 7% per year. The report attributes this largely to anti-cancer drugs called checkpoint inhibitors and other new drugs. Some 92% of people diagnosed with this cancer are still alive five years later (compared with 19% of those diagnosed with lung cancer).

While the report measures trends in cancer rates (which are measured as deaths per 100,000 people), that’s not the same as tracking the actual number of cancer cases and deaths. Cancer is mostly a disease of older people, and the U.S. population is aging rapidly. So, while rates are declining, the absolute number of cancer deaths is not.

“We have more than 600,000 deaths from cancer in this country every year, and that number continues to grow,” Siegel says.

And with treatments getting progressively more expensive, that’s a challenge not just for individuals but for the entire health care system.

A detailed analysis of the statistics is being published Wednesday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

Study Finds Talcum Powder Not Likely A Risk For Ovarian

And some more god news Patti Neighmond noted that in recent years, women have taken talcum powder manufacturers to court over concerns that the use of the product in the genital area could cause ovarian cancer. Now, a new study finds no meaningful association between using talc-based or other powders and ovarian cancer.

Researchers from NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute conducted the largest study to date of genital powder use and ovarian cancer. The study, published Tuesday in JAMA, used data from 252,745 women who answered questions about whether they used powder on their genitals. This was a pooled analysis of four large studies gathering data about the frequency and length of time women used the powder.

According to epidemiologist Katie O’Brien who headed the study, women report applying the powder either directly on their genital area or on sanitary napkins, tampons, underwear or diaphragms. O’Brien doesn’t know exactly which type of powder women used. It could have been talcum powder alone, cornstarch alone or a combination of both.

The research finds that women who had ever used powder had an 8% increased risk of ovarian cancer compared to those who never used it. “That is not a statistically significant increase” says O’Brien. And she adds that this increase needs to be understood in context. Ovarian cancer is very rare and the lifetime risk of getting it is 1.3% so an increase of 8% to that is “small.” O’Brien says it represents an estimated 0.09% increase in risk by age 70.

But among the subset of women who had their uterus and fallopian tubes intact, their increased risk of ovarian cancer from using powder in their genital area was 13% — which is an estimated 0.15% increase in risk by age 70 and is still considered a very small increase.

Unlike most other studies of talc and ovarian cancer, which focused on women already diagnosed with cancer, this study was prospective, and asked about powder use before study subjects had developed ovarian cancer. This means the study is free from recall bias, says O’Brien. It removes the likelihood that study subjects “search for reasons why they have ovarian cancer, and may over-report certain things they have heard may be associated with it.”

Rates of powder use have declined over the last 50 years, yet it remains a routine practice for some women, says Dr. Dana Gossett, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco. She wrote an editorial accompanying the study but was not involved in the study itself.

“Women have used powders for genital hygiene for decades to absorb odor and moisture,” she says.

Earlier investigations of an association between the use of talc-containing powders for genital hygiene and epithelial ovarian cancer risks have provided inconsistent results, says Gossett and have resulted in an “ongoing controversy.” Concerns have been raised about possible contamination of mineral talc with asbestos, a known cancer risk. Most powder products include some mineral talc.

Researchers say it’s been hypothesized that the powder could induce an inflammatory response by irritating epithelial ovarian tissue or fallopian tubes directly which, in turn, could set off a cascade of increased oxidative stress levels, DNA damage and cell division, all of which could contribute to carcinogenesis.

Gossett says the new study finding “doesn’t really support any association [of powder use with ovarian cancer].”

“No study can ever say definitively what the cause of cancer is, but this study at least shows there’s not a substantial increase in ovarian cancer risk,” she says.

The study has several limitations. Researchers were not able to document how frequently or how long women used powder nor were they able to identify exactly what ingredients were in the powder. It also included mostly white women. Anecdotally, black women are more likely to use baby powder.

Obstetrician Gossett says the study findings should be “reassuring to women that if they are choosing to use powders on their genitals that they’re not doing something horrendous.”

Gossett also notes that due to the very small number of cancer cases in the data, the study was “underpowered.” She suggests that future analyses would be strengthened by focusing on women with intact reproductive tracts, with particular attention to timing and duration of exposure to powder in the genital area.

In the meantime, since there’s no medical reason to use talcum powder, researcher O’Brien suggests women weigh perceived benefit with possible risk. Study participants will continue to be followed to track ovarian cancer development in the future, she says.

The Staggering Cost of US Health Care Bureaucracy

Yuval Posenberg, reporter for the Fiscal Times, wrote that seemingly everyone has a horror story to tell about dealing with the bureaucracy of the U.S. health care system, from mundane matters like medical records to financial fights over surprise medical bills or insurance claims.

Those individual experiences come at a high collective cost, according to a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine: U.S. health insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration in 2017, representing more than a third of national health expenditures, or double the 17% percent that Canada spends under its single-payer system. The U.S. administrative costs translate to nearly $2,500 per person — or almost five times as high as in Canada.

“The gap in health administrative spending between the United States and Canada is large and widening, and it apparently reflects the inefficiencies of the U.S. private insurance–based, multipayer system,” the study’s authors conclude. “The prices that U.S. medical providers charge incorporate a hidden surcharge to cover their costly administrative burden.”

The study finds that U.S. could have saved more than $600 billion in 2017 if it were able to cut its administrative costs to match Canada’s. “The difference between Canada and the U.S. is enough to not only cover all the uninsured but also to eliminate all the copayments and deductibles, and to amp up home care for the elderly and disabled,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and co-author of the study, told Time. “And frankly to have money left over.”

Why it matters: This isn’t the first study to show that the U.S. system has higher administrative costs than other countries, but it is the first major study calculating those system-wide costs in almost two decades. The spending disparity detailed in the study “could challenge some assumptions about the relative efficiency of public and private healthcare programs,” writes Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times. “It could also become a hot political talking point on the American campaign trail as presidential candidates debate the pros and cons of government-funded universal health insurance.”

A steep rise in U.S. costs: Administrative costs have grown in both the U.S. and Canada over the last 20 years, but the increase in the United States has been much higher, mostly as the result of insurance overhead. “The study showed that private insurers contributed to most of the increase in administrative costs between 1999 and 2017,” Modern Healthcare’s Rachel Cohrs reports. “Of the 3.2 percentage point increase in administrative costs as a share of overall health spending, 2.4 percentage points were due to the expanding role that private insurers have assumed in Medicare and Medicaid.”

The insurance industry response: America’s Health Insurance Plans, a group representing private health insurance companies, told the Los Angeles Times that government-run systems aren’t as efficient as private ones, citing a recent report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent body that advises Congress, that found that private Medicare Advantage plans deliver benefits at 88% of the cost of traditional Medicare. “Study after study continues to demonstrate the value of innovative solutions brought by the free market,” AHIP said in its statement. “In head-to-head comparisons, the free market continues to be more efficient than government-run systems.”

The researchers are single-payer advocates: Himmelstein and one of his co-authors, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, also of the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, have long advocated for a single-payer health-care system in the United States. They co-founded the group Physicians for a National Health Program and have been unpaid policy advisors to Sen. Bernie Sanders and have coauthored research manuscripts with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Both senators are calling for a transition to a single-payer Medicare-for-All system. But the researchers say that their conclusions in the new study are based on the data — and that their estimates of U.S. administrative costs are likely conservative.

“It’s actually the data that guided us to the solution, the solution didn’t give rise to the data,” Himmelstein said, according to Modern Healthcare.

Himmelstein also says that, while it may be possible to reduce administrative costs without switching to a single-payer system, the benefits would be much smaller. “We could streamline the bureaucracy to some extent with other approaches, but you can’t get nearly the magnitude of savings that we could get with a single payer,” he told Time.

‘Obamacare’ mandate: hot for lawyers, ho-hum to consumers

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Associated Press reported that the repeal of an unpopular fine for people without health insurance has had little impact on “Obamacare” sign-ups or premiums, a gap between the real world and legal arguments from conservatives again challenging the Affordable Care Act.

The 10-year-old law has proved more resilient than its creators or detractors imagined, even as the Supreme Court considers whether to take up the latest effort to roll it back.

Opponents argue that the constitutionality of the entire 900-page law hinges on the now-toothless penalty for not having health insurance. Collected as a tax by the IRS, the penalty was intended to enforce the law’s “individual mandate” that Americans be insured. A previous Republican-led Congress set the fines to $0, effective last year.

“We’ve gotten a lot of evidence by now about what the market looks like without a mandate penalty, and on the whole it looks pretty stable, which is surprising because that’s not what most people would have expected when the ACA was being written,” said Cynthia Cox, who directs research on the health law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

A Kaiser study released this week found that removal of the penalty pushed premiums up about 5% going into 2019, but the bottom line was a wash because of other factors. Insurers appeared to be making healthy profits.

The penalty was thought to be critical when the law was being written in 2009-2010. The idea was to nudge healthy people to sign up, helping keep premiums in check. But Cox said there’s no indication that healthy people have dropped out in droves. In one telling statistic, the Kaiser study found that average hospital days per 1,000 people enrolled dipped slightly in 2019, even after the penalty was eliminated.

Partial sign-up numbers for 2020 released Wednesday by the government point to stability. Nearly 8.3 million people enrolled in the 38 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website. That’s down only about 2% from last year, when one additional state was using HealthCare.gov. A final count including that state — Nevada — and others that run their own sign-up efforts is expected by the spring.

The insurance mandate was the central issue when the Supreme Court first upheld the health care law in 2012, over a year before HealthCare.gov opened for business.

Chief Justice John Roberts cast the key vote in that 5-4 decision. He found that Congress lacked constitutional authority to require that Americans have health insurance. But because Congress has broad powers to levy taxes, Roberts ruled that a tax on people who did not purchase coverage offered them was constitutional. That allowed the law to survive what’s still seen as its most serious legal challenge.

Kathleen Sebelius, health secretary for President Barack Obama, said in 2012 that it was generally accepted that the insurance mandate was part of a three-legged stool key to stable markets. The other two legs were taxpayer-provided subsidies for premiums and a guarantee that patients with preexisting medical conditions could no longer be turned down or charged more.

“It was thought that the trade-off for changing the rules on preexisting conditions would have to be … some penalty incentive so you would get healthy people in the pool, along with not-healthy people,” Sebelius said. “What became clear when the law went into effect (in 2014) is that the subsidies in many ways provided a greater incentive for people get health insurance.”

Those subsides are designed so that low- and moderate-income households only spend a fixed percentage of their incomes on premiums, shielding consumers from high sticker prices.

Cox agreed that the law’s “carrots” seem to have made more of a difference than its “stick.”

Fast-forward to 2018 and a coalition of conservative states led by Texas won a lower court decision that the insurance mandate was still critical, in a legal and constitutional sense.

U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas ruled that by zeroing out the tax penalty, Congress rendered the insurance mandate unconstitutional, and without it the entire health law must fall. President Donald Trump agreed.

Recently, a federal appeals court in New Orleans agreed with O’Connor that an unenforceable insurance mandate is unconstitutional. But the appeals court sent the case back to him to see whether other parts of the law can stand.

Defending the law, a coalition of Democratic-led states, along with the U.S. House, appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking a fast-track decision amid this year’s presidential election. The court has asked lawyers for the conservative states to respond by Friday on the timing question.

University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley said the stability of the health insurance markets exposes “the artificiality” of the conservatives’ argument.

“It really goes to show how ridiculous it is to claim that Congress understood the mandate to be so essential that if it were to be red-lined out, the rest of the law would have to fall,” said Bagley.

Not so fast, said Andrew Schlafly, a lawyer representing groups siding with Texas and the other GOP-led states opposing the law.

“The question is not whether in reality (the ACA) can work without the mandate,” said Schlafly. “The test is whether it was intended to work without the mandate.

“Theory does matter to these Supreme Court justices,” he added, “and they do take theory seriously.”

ObamaCare still working despite individual mandate’s repeal

Megan Henney noted that one year after Republicans repealed the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law remains surprisingly stable and profitable for insurers.

When Republicans gutted the ACA in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, eliminating the provision that required Americans to either buy health insurance or pay a fine, critics warned that decision would cause younger and healthier people to flee from the marketplace, leaving sicker, more expensive patients, remaining and causing the market to enter a “death spiral.”

But a report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation on Monday found that despite the removal of the mandate, those fears are largely unfounded.

Individual enrollment fell by 5 percent between the first quarter of 2018 and 2019, but the relatively modest growth in claims costs at the beginning of 2019 indicates that enrollment declines and policy changes did not cause healthy individuals to flee the market. In fact, the average number of days enrollees spent in a hospital in the first nine months of 2019 was slightly lower than inpatient days in the previous four years.

“Results from the first nine months of 2019 suggest that the individual market remains profitable and stable despite the effective repeal of the individual mandate,” the analysis said.

A key measure of insurers’ financial strength, margins — the average amount by which premium income exceeds claims costs per each enrollee in a given month — are the healthiest they’ve been in nearly eight years. (Insurer financial performance dipped slightly at the end of 2019, but the margins remained higher than all other previous years through 2017).

“These data suggest that insurers in this market remain on average financially healthy,” the report said.

The report comes amid attacks by Republicans and President Trump on arguably the biggest legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in the case of Texas v. Azar, struck down the individual mandate as unconstitutional, though it did not invalidate the rest of the law, leaving its fate, once again, in limbo. The ruling was issued almost exactly one year after Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, struck down the entire law.

A coalition of Democratic states, led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, has made it clear that it intends to challenge the appeals court decision by petitioning the Supreme Court to take the case.

The ultimate outcome of the lawsuit will affect millions of Americans, and the repeal of the 9-year-old law could leave up to 32 million people without health insurance by 2026, according to a Congressional Budget Office report from 2017 about the effects of repealing the ACA.

I’m still confused as to why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are pushing Medicare for All and not fixing the ACA/Obamacare. Let’s see with tomorrow’s debate whether we get and more suggestions. Moreover, why hasn’t the Republicans when they had the majority on the House and the Democrats now that they have control in the House, why no one party has tried hard to fix the healthcare problem. Politics and more political “strategies” continue to get in the way of the real solution.

Drug prices rise 5.8% on average in 2020, Obamacare and True Economics and the opinions of Delaney!

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The Holidays are finally over and Rudolf was just arrested for assaulting his teammate reindeers for calling him names and laughing at him. Was this a hate crime??? Oh, how sensitive these days!! Poor, poor Rudolf!

As I was picking up a prescription today I was reminded of this article, one copy sent to me by a friend, I then went to pay for the prescription with my GoodRx card though which I was given an 80% discount. This brings up the question how will we all be able to pay for the future drugs with their outrageous prices?

It also brings up the question, how do organizations like GoodRx and Singlecare give people the discount. And what is the true value of prescription drugs and what prices should be charged in order for the always-profitable pharmaceutical companies to make an acceptable profit and what is an acceptable profit?

Consider this report published in MarketWatch by Jared S. Hopkins.

Pharmaceutical companies started 2020 by raising the price of hundreds of drugs, according to a new analysis, though the increases are relatively modest this year as scrutiny grows from patients, lawmakers and health plans.

Pfizer Inc. led the way, including increasing prices by over 9% on more than 40 products. The drug industry traditionally sets prices for its therapies at the start of the year and again in the middle of the year.

More than 60 drugmakers raised prices in the U.S. on Wednesday, according to an analysis from Rx Savings Solutions, which sells software to help employers and health plans choose the least-expensive medicines. The average increase was 5.8%, according to the analysis, including increases on different doses for the same drug.

The average is just below that of a year ago, when more than 50 companies raised the prices on hundreds of drugs by an average of more than 6%, according to the analysis.

Pfizer said that 27% of the drugs Pfizer sells in the U.S. will increase in price by an average of 5.6%. More than 90 of the New York-based company’s products rose in price, according to the Rx Savings Solutions analysis. Among them are Ibrance, which sold nearly $3.7 billion globally through the first nine months last year, and rheumatoid arthritis therapy Xeljanz.

A Pfizer spokeswoman said that nearly half of its drugs whose prices went up are sterile injectables, which are typically administered in hospitals, and the majority of those increases amount to less than $1 per product dose.

Pfizer’s largest percent increases, 15%, are on its heparin products, which are generic blood thinners typically administered in hospitals.

Pfizer said the heparin increases are to help offset a 50% increase in the cost of raw materials and expand capacity to meet market demand. The company said it is monitoring the global heparin supply, which has been challenged by the impact of African swine flu in China, as the drug is derived from pig products and disruption could lead to a shortage. Pfizer said that its U.S. heparin supply is not sourced from China.

Overall, the increases by drugmakers Wednesday affect “list prices,” which are set by manufacturers, although most patients don’t pay these prices, which don’t take into account rebates, discounts and insurance payments. Drugmakers have said prices are increased in conjunction with rebates they give to pharmacy-benefit managers, or PBMs, in order to be placed on the lists of covered drugs known as formularies.

In fact, drugmakers have said that their net prices have declined because of large rebates to PBMs, which negotiate prices in secret with their clients, such as employers and labor unions.

Pfizer said its price increases will be offset by higher rebates paid to insurers and middlemen. The company said the net effect on revenue growth in 2020 will be 0%, which is the same percentage expected for 2019. The company said the average net price of its drugs declined by 1% in 2018.

In 2018, Pfizer was assailed by President Trump after the company raised the prices on some 40 drugs. Pfizer temporarily rolled back the increases, but raised prices again later.

In Washington, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress have drawn up proposals for lowering drug costs, while the Trump administration recently introduced a plan for importing drugs from Canada.

“Prices go up but demand remains the same,” said Michael Rea, CEO of Rx Savings Solutions. Clients of the Overland Park, Kan., company include Target Corp. and Quest Diagnostics Inc. “Without the appropriate checks and balances in place, this is a runaway train. Consumers, employers and health plans ultimately pay the very steep price.”

While some increases in his firm’s analysis were steep, most product prices rose by less than 9%.

AbbVie Inc. raised the price of rheumatoid arthritis treatment Humira, the world’s top-selling drug, by 7.4%, according to the analysis. Through the first nine months of 2019, Humira sales totaled nearly $11 billion.

AbbVie didn’t respond to a request for comment.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC raised the prices on more than two dozen different therapies, although none by more than by 5%. That includes its shingles vaccine, Shingrix, which sold about $1.7 billion globally in the first nine months of 2019.

A Glaxo spokeswoman confirmed the increases and said net prices for its U.S. products fell about 3.4% on average annually the past five years.

Other major companies that raised prices included generic drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., which raised the price of more than two dozen products, but none by more than 6.4%, according to the analysis. Sanofi S.A. raised prices on some of their therapies, but none by more than 5%, while Biogen Inc. took increases that didn’t exceed 6%, including on multiple-sclerosis therapy Tecfidera.

Teva didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A Sanofi spokeswoman confirmed the increases and said that the changes are consistent with its pledge to ensure price increases don’t exceed medical inflation. A Biogen spokesman confirmed the price changes and said adjustments are made to products for which it continues to invest in research, and otherwise increases follow inflation.

In addition to Pfizer’s increases on heparin, companies increased prices for several therapies by more than 10%, according to the analysis.

Cotempla XR-ODT, which is approved in the U.S. to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children between 6 and 17 years old, increased by more than 13% to $420 for a month supply. The therapy is sold by Neos Therapeutics Inc., based in Grand Prairie, Texas.

Representatives for Neos didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Democrats ask U.S. Supreme Court to save Obamacare

Lawrence Hurley of Reuters reported that the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and 20 Democratic-led states asked the Supreme Court on Friday to declare that the landmark Obamacare healthcare law does not violate the U.S. Constitution as lower courts have found in a lawsuit brought by Republican-led states.

The House and the states, including New York and California, want the Supreme Court to hear their appeals of a Dec. 18 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that deemed the 2010 law’s “individual mandate” that required people to obtain health insurance unconstitutional.

The petitions asked the Supreme Court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, to hear the case quickly and issue a definitive ruling on the law, formally called the Affordable Care Act, by the end of June.

Texas and 17 other conservative states – backed by President Donald Trump’s administration – filed a lawsuit challenging the law, which was signed by Democratic former President Barack Obama in 2010 over strenuous Republican opposition. A district court judge in Texas in 2018 found the entire law unconstitutional.

“The Affordable Care Act has been the law of the land for a decade now and despite efforts by President Trump, his administration and congressional Republicans to take us backwards, we will not strip health coverage away from millions of Americans,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said.

Obamacare, considered Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, has helped roughly 20 million Americans obtain medical insurance either through government programs or through policies from private insurers made available in Obamacare marketplaces. Republican opponents have called it an unwarranted government intervention in health insurance markets.

Congressional Republicans tried and failed numerous times to repeal Obamacare. Trump’s administration has taken several actions to undermine it.

In 2012, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld most Obamacare provisions including the individual mandate, which required people to obtain insurance or pay a financial penalty. The court defined this penalty as a tax and thus found the law permissible under the Constitution’s provision empowering Congress to levy taxes.

In 2017, Trump signed into law tax legislation passed by a Republican-led Congress that eliminated the individual mandate’s financial penalty. That law means the individual mandate can no longer be interpreted as a tax provision and therefore violates the Constitution, the 5th Circuit concluded.

In striking down the individual mandate, the 5th Circuit avoided answering the key question of whether the rest of the law can remain in place or must be struck down, instead sending the case back to a district court judge for further analysis.

That means the fate of Obamacare remains in limbo. The fact that the litigation is still ongoing may make the Supreme Court, which already has a series of major cases to decide in the coming months, less likely to intervene at this stage.

John Delaney: On health care, bold vision with pragmatism is what America needs

Pulitzer prize winning editor, Art Cullen noted that in living rooms and coffee shops across all of Iowa’s 99 counties, I am forever reminded that health care is the paramount issue facing Americans. Our current system is deeply broken, and our country needs a bold vision and a pragmatic approach for improving health care. In many ways, a candidate’s approach to health care defines their governing and leadership style. It answers important questions about their values, vision, pragmatism and management style.

The Democratic Party should have as its true north universal access — where every American has health care coverage as a right of citizenship. We should support plans that encourage innovation — curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s — and that create a framework for getting costs under control. My Better Care Plan uniquely achieves all of these goals.

Universal access needs to be realistic

Currently, only three candidates have detailed plans for universal access — Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and I. Universal access is the right answer, both morally and economically. The plans advocated by Warren and Sanders, however, call for an extreme “single-payer” system, where the government is the only provider of coverage.

Aside from the extraordinary practical, fiscal and political issues associated with eliminating and replacing over 180 million private insurance plans, a single-payer system will massively underfund the health care system. Today, government reimbursement is dramatically less than reimbursements paid by insurance companies. Making the government the only payer in health care would underfund hospitals, particularly in rural America, resulting in hospital closures, practitioners closing up shop, and a reduction of investment in innovation.

On the other hand, most other candidates are advocating for a “public option” as our way forward. This is a modest proposal, insufficient for the challenges of our broken health care system. A public option is simply another insurer that is government-run. It will have co-payments, deductibles, and premiums. And it relies on people choosing to sign up. While it would provide more options than are currently available in the marketplace, undoubtedly helping many, it would not address the tragedy of the uninsured in our country.

Under BetterCare we achieve the ambition of universal coverage without the negatives of a single-payer system.

Under BetterCare, Medicare is left alone, because it works, and every American from birth to 65 (seniors are on Medicare) is auto-enrolled in a free federal health care plan that covers basic health care needs. This ensures every American has health care coverage. But unlike the single-payer Medicare for All, Americans could still choose private insurance. They could “opt out” of the BetterCare plan and buy private insurance or receive insurance from their employer. If they “opt out” they would receive a health care tax credit to offset the cost of health care they purchase or that their employer provides.

Alternatively, they could use the BetterCare plan and enhance it with supplemental plans, similar to how Medicare beneficiaries acquire supplemental plans. BetterCare is like Medicare. It provides guaranteed coverage but allows our seniors to have supplemental plans or “opt out” and accept a Medicare Advantage Plan.

BetterCare is similar to the plans of most developed nations that have universal coverage. As Art Cullen wrote, it provides “universal coverage while not eliminating private insurance.” By providing universal access, choice, protecting provider reimbursements, and encouraging innovation, BetterCare is bold, ambitious, practical and a political winner. Importantly, it can be fully paid for by applying the Obamacare subsidies and current federal and state Medicaid payments and by eliminating the corporate deductibility of health care.

It is bold, yet practical, and reflective of my approach to governing. As a former entrepreneur, CEO of two public companies and member of Congress, I bring a unique approach and real leadership experience, which is why I respectfully ask for your support.

Use Simple Economics to Contain Health Care Costs

Gary Shilling wrote for Bloomberg and makes so much sense when he looked at health care costs in terms of simple economics. (Bloomberg Opinion) — Spending on U.S. health care is out of control, expanding steadily from 5% of GDP in 1960 to 18% in 2018. There are, however, ways to curb the explosion in costs from both the demand and the supply side.

Health care costs per capita in the U.S. are almost double those of other developed countries, but life expectancy is lower than many, even South Korea, according to the CIA and Eurostat. Without restraint, costs will accelerate as more and more postwar babies age. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Medicare spending alone will leap from 3% of GDP to 8% by 2090.

Medical costs are understandably high since the system is designed to be the most expensive possible for four distinct reasons. First, with the constantly improving but increasingly expensive modern technology, the best is none too good when your life or mine is at stake. Also, few patients have the knowledge to decide whether a recommended procedure will be medically much-less cost-effective. The medical delivery system encourages a gulf between the providers who supposedly know what’s needed and their patients who don’t.

Second, patients are quite insensitive to costs since their employers or governments pay most health care bills. And those who are privately insured want to get their money’s worth from their premiums, especially since Obamacare does not allow insurers to set premiums on a health risk basis.

Third, the pay-for-service system encourages medical providers to over-service. After my dermatologist burned off the pre-cancerous growths on my face, he wanted me back in two weeks to be sure, but also to bill another office visit.

Finally, domestic training programs and facilities for medical personnel are inadequate. As a result, many MD residents and nurses come from abroad, while medical schools of dubious quality in the Caribbean train U.S.-born physicians.

To control costs on the demand side, use the appeal of money. The importance of their health to most Americans means they will spend proportionally more on medical services than other goods and services, but they’ll think twice if it’s money they otherwise can keep. Increasing deductibles and co-payments are moving in that direction. In 1999, employees on average paid $1,500, or 22%, of $6,700 in family health coverage premiums, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The total rose to $26,600 in 2019, but employees’ share has climbed to $6,000, or 29%.

Medical savings accounts also make patients more aware of costs. Companies give employees a set amount of money and they can keep what they don’t spend on health care.

Accountable Care Organizations, now authorized by Medicare, attack the fee-for-service problem. The medical providers who participate are encouraged to be efficient since they can retain part of any savings due to cost controls as long as they provide excellent care.

To increase the supply of medical personnel, American medical and nursing schools can be expanded with government help. Also, shortening the whole training process would save time and get huge student debts under control. Does a physician need a four-year bachelor’s degree before beginning medical school?

Cartels among hospital medical specialties can be attacked. Now, physicians in, say, the general surgery department limit competition by controlling who has the privileges to use their institution’s facilities.

In another development, the entrepreneurial model of a small group of MDs operating a practice is fading in the face of high costs of medical record-keeping and other regulatory requirements. Over half of physicians now work for hospitals, either on their main campuses or in satellite facilities. This may shift the emphasis of many from money to medicine.

Limiting malpractice insurance premiums, a major outlay for medical providers, can also cut medical costs. Texas placed a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages, i.e., pain and suffering, in 2003. Texas Department of Insurance data reveals that medical malpractice claims, including lawsuits, fell by two-thirds between 2003 and 2011, and the average payout declined 22% to $199,000.

Also, average malpractice insurance premiums plunged 46%, according to the Texas Alliance for Patient Access, a coalition of health care providers and physician liability insurers. And physicians were then attracted to Texas. The Texas Medical Association reports that in the decade since malpractice awards were capped, 3,135 physicians came to the Lone Star State annually, 770 more than the average in the prior nine years.

At present, Americans basically pay the development costs of new drugs while other countries with centralized pharmaceutical-buying skip the expenses of R&D, field trials, etc., and only pay the much-lower marginal cost of production. Allowing Medicare to join Medicaid to negotiate drug prices could reduce costs if foreigners can be convinced to share development costs. Otherwise, new drug development would be curtailed. The Trump administration’s new rules that force health insurers and hospitals to publish their negotiated prices may force costs to the lowest level.

One approach that doesn’t work in easing the burden on consumers of medical costs is increasing overall government subsidies. They tend to be offset by higher costs, much as higher college tuition and fees often dissipate more scholarship aid. Ever notice that the most modern, prosperous institutions in town tend to be hospitals, hugely subsidized by governments?

Health care is critical, but that doesn’t mean its costs aren’t subjected to supply and demand. Then how do we assess the value as well as the costs and cost limitations? Are drug companies as well as insurance companies making way too much in profits by taking advantage of we the honest patients??

There many parts of the eventual answer to our need for a health care program which can service all at reasonable costs and each “part” needs thorough investigation and real solutions and that just addressing only one or two of these “parts” will never be sustainable!!

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:

How to lower blood pressure
What is keto?
How to get rid of hiccups
How long does the flu last?
What causes hiccups?
What causes kidney stones?
What is HPV?
How to lower cholesterol
How many calories should I eat a day?
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!

Musings of a Doc with an MBA

Business strategy and healthcare

Category Archives: Medicare

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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

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