Category Archives: Nurse Practitioners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affordable Care Act funding in question after health insurance taxes repealed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were more questions that had people Googling in 2019.

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

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

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

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

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

The Homeless, Illegal Immigrants and Disease: LAPD officers being treated for typhoid fever, typhus-like symptoms. More on Medicare History and the Replacement for the Shortage of Physicians.

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Anthony Rivas reported that at least one officer with the Los Angeles Police Department has contracted the bacteria that causes typhoid fever, Salmonella typhi, and another one is showing typhus-like symptoms, the police department announced on Thursday.

The officer who had contracted the illness is being treated, and the other officer has yet to be confirmed to be infected, according to the LAPD. Both officers work at the LAPD’s Central Division, according to a statement released by the department.

Salmonella Typhi is uncommon in the U.S. and other modern industrialized nations, affecting only about 350 Americans each year — most of whom recently returned from overseas travel. Worldwide, it affects an estimated 22 million people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The police department is working with the city to “disinfect any work areas that may have been exposed,” a process that is expected to be completed Thursday evening, the LAPD said in a statement.

Salmonella Typhi is commonly spread through food or water that has been contaminated by someone shedding the bacteria. The bacteria can be spread by both people who are actively ill as well as so-called “carriers” of the bacteria but not showing symptoms — one in 20 go on to become carriers. Salmonella typhi is responsible for causing typhoid fever, according to the CDC,.

It’s unclear what caused the officers’ illnesses.

Los Angeles has been dealing with a growing rat infestation and typhus outbreaks since at least October 2018, according to ABC Los Angeles station KABC.

Typhus is different from typhoid fever, which can come from a variety of sources. Murine typhus (Rickettsia typhi) is caused by bites from infected fleas, epidemic typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii) comes from infected body lice and scrub typhus (Orientia tsutsugamushi) comes from infected chiggers or larval mites.

“Unfortunately, our police officers often patrol in adverse environments and can be exposed to various dangerous elements,” the LAPD said in a statement on Thursday. “We have notified the Police Protective League as well as our employees working at Central Division, about the outbreak and we have further provided them with strategies to stay healthy while we mitigate this issue.”

Typhoid fever and typhus are often diagnosed through blood tests and treated with antibiotics. Symptoms associated with the two infections include fever and chills, body and muscle aches, nausea and vomiting.

The best way to prevent infection by Salmonella typhi is to wash your hands frequently, and for any form of typhus, to avoid contact with the animals that can pass on the infection.

I just read an article regarding the future of healthcare and the focus was on Artificial Intelligence, but this next piece is about what we are seeing right now due to the shortage of physicians. This is happening here in the US but also throughout Europe also.

As nurse practitioners fill the gap, patients say they’re more than satisfied with the care

Findings from a new research study led by Thomas Kippenbrock, a nursing professor at the University of Arkansas, suggest that patients are just as satisfied—or even happier—with care from nurse practitioners as compared with doctors.

Kippenbrock wrote an article titled “A National Survey of Nurse Practitioners’ Patient Satisfaction Outcomes” for Nursing Outlook, a bi-monthly journal that examines current issues and trends in nursing practice, education and research. The journal seeks to help solve challenges facing the profession.

Currently, nurse practitioners are helping to fill a gap in providing primary care across the country and especially in the rural communities, which is why it’s important to determine patients’ satisfaction rate.

Kippenbrock and fellow U of A School of Nursing colleagues, Jan Emory and Peggy Lee, gathered feedback from 53,885 patients through the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, asking them to identify and rate their perceptions of interactions with their health provider.

Using responses to the survey, which was developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to advance scientific understanding of the patient care experience, researchers found that patients are reporting equal or greater satisfaction rates with care from nurse practitioners when compared to their physician colleagues. The study notes that Medicaid patients rated nurse practitioners’ communication skills as high as other providers.

“The leap in this study was a large national scale investigation,” Kippenbrock said. “Previous findings were derived from small sample sizes isolated to local community clinics. Consequently, we believe patients are highly satisfied with a nurse practitioners’ primary care services.”

So, what about using barbers as our physicians?

Will Barbers Regain Their Role as Medical Practitioners?

Milton Packer highlighted the rediscovery of a 1,000-year-old cure for medical elitism and maybe physician shortage. For most of human history, people did not see the expertise of a physician in the hope of a cure. Physicians relied on patients’ natural healing processes for recovery. Doctors primarily provided comfort — by the compassionate communication of a diagnosis, often accompanied by the symbolic prescription of herbs and salves. The physician acted as a supportive guide to the unfolding of a natural course of events.

This approach is embodied in the many quotations attributed to Hippocrates. “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” “Cure sometimes, treat often, comfort always.”

But in the first millennium C.E., physicians were in short supply. The talented few lived an elitist existence, typically attached to wealthy or powerful royal families. Famed physicians, such as Galen and Avicenna, were able to formulate ideas and write books because they were supported by wealthy patrons.

Who provided medical care for the common man, especially the poor? With no access to physicians, the poor turned to the clergy, who spent much of their time practicing medicine. Building on existing relationships of trust, priests could attend to someone’s physical and spiritual needs simultaneously. However, the Church believed that spiritual men should not be focused on worldly cares. Thus, during the latter half of the 12th century, it insisted that priests were “expert physicians of souls rather than to cure bodies.” The practice of medicine was strictly forbidden, especially when it required cutting or burning.

So where would a “commoner” go if he/she required some procedural intervention? Barbers — with their expertise with knives and razors — stepped up to fill the need, by offering a wide range of surgical procedures to their customers. On a given day, they might provide a haircut, an amputation, a tooth extraction, or the application of leeches. All of these filled the barbershop with blood and bandages. When wrapped around a pole, they formed a spiral of red and white stripes and voilà! The modern barbershop pole was born. (Barbershop poles in the U.S. added a blue stripe — for patriotic reasons.)

From the 12th century onwards, the expertise and practices of physicians and barbers became distinct, leading to a troubled relationship between the two groups. Physicians who received university training believed they had privileged access to specialized knowledge and felt superior to the barbers, who had no specialized education and treated only commoners. To highlight the distinction, physicians insisted that they wear long robes, while barbers could wear only short robes. The practice of long white coats for physicians and short white jackets for barbers persisted into the late 20th century.

Surgeons eventually differentiated themselves from barbers in the 17th and 18th centuries, but physicians and surgeons remained distinct specialties for several hundred years. When surgeons eventually commingled with physicians at medical schools, they wore long white coats — to emphasize to the world that they were not barbers, but were now part of an elite profession.

The elitism of physicians and surgeons provided great satisfaction to those with a medical degree, but it provided little comfort to patients. From the 1940s through the 1970s, the relationship between doctors and patients was distinctly hierarchical. Physicians presented themselves as the authoritative source of medical knowledge and did not expect to have their recommendations questioned. That is not to say that physicians lacked compassion. Indeed, if a patient could find a knowledgeable and kind medical doctor, the bond between the two was therapeutically powerful. Under these ideal circumstances, physicians could provide both comfort and a cure, and in return, patients provided gratitude and trust. That trust was the centerpiece of the therapeutic relationship.

However, over the past 30 years, much of the trust that grounded the patient-physician relationship has been shattered. Today, physicians often seem determined to spend as little time with patients as possible. The history and physical exam are perfunctory, and questions are frequently swatted away. All too often, physicians seem more interested in generating revenues than listening to patients. In response, admiration for physicians has waned; and patients have become suspicious of physicians’ motives when prescribing medications or recommending procedures. Adherence to medications is abysmally low.

Adherence is particularly problematic when people need to take multiple medications on a daily basis for years for an asymptomatic condition, such as hypertension. Hypertension is an important and treatable cardiovascular risk factor, but it is poorly controlled in the community — particularly in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, who are particularly susceptible to hypertension and its sequelae and are also often mistrustful of their interactions with the medical profession.

How can this problem be resolved? Dr. Ronald Victor, a hypertension specialist, came up with a brilliant idea. What if we could identify a trusted individual within the underserved community who could be trained to measure blood pressures and provide emotional support for treatment? People would interact with this trusted individual on a regular basis to obtain repeated measurements of blood pressure and reinforce the use of medications.

Ron Victor’s solution was the barbershop. The barbershop plays a central role in the social fabric of black men in underserved communities. Men visit barbershops on a regular basis, and each has a relationship of trust with his barber, established through repeated (and often personal) conversations that transpire during the haircuts. As a result, the barber was perfectly positioned to measure the blood pressure of every client at regular visits and then could immediately connect those with hypertension to specially-trained pharmacists who would prescribe generic medications on site.

Dr. Victor and his colleagues carried out a cluster randomized trial to prove that his idea would work. A total of 319 black male patrons with hypertension were recruited from 52 black-owned barbershops. In half of the barbershops, men were assigned to the barber-pharmacist intervention, and in the other half, barbers simply encouraged lifestyle modification and doctor appointments. After 6 months, a blood-pressure level of less than 130/80 mm Hg was achieved among 64% of the participants in the intervention group versus only 12% of the participants in the control group. A truly dramatic result!

Why did Ron Victor’s idea work? The men paid attention to their blood pressure and took their medications because the treatment was based on a relationship of trust and transpired in a place of trust. By contrast, their hypertension was not controlled if the men were simply reminded to see their physicians.

The historical parallels are striking. About 1,000 years ago, barbers stepped up to provide essential medical care to underserved communities who had no access to academically-trained physicians. Now, barbers are stepping up again as trusted members of the community to link people to essential treatments that they would be reluctant to take if prescribed by a physician.

In many ways, the divide between those who provide care and those who need it has not changed over the past 1,000 years. Ten centuries ago, academically-trained physicians were not interested in treating commoners. In the current era, underserved populations do not trust physicians to care for them, perhaps because they believe that physicians are driven by self-interest. The patterns of disconnect a millennium apart are eerily similar.

I was privileged to know and work with Ron Victor when we were both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School (2004-2009). He was an exceptionally talented and heroic physician-scientist, whose brilliance, innovation, compassion, and humility were beyond words.

Ron Victor died in September 2018 in Los Angeles. His contributions to medicine are numerous, but perhaps most importantly, his work reminded us of the clinical and social consequences of medical elitism, for which he provided a path towards rectification. He is sorely missed.

Families list health care as a top financial problem: poll

Tal Axelrod noted that Health care costs are the top financial issue facing most American families, according to a new Gallup poll released Thursday.

About 17 percent of Americans said health care was their most significant financial issue, followed by 11 percent citing lack of money or low wages, 8 percent saying college expenses, 8 percent saying the cost of owning or renting a home and 8 percent saying taxes.

Health care costs were also the most significant financial issue for Americans in 2017 and nearly tied with lack of money or low wages for the top spot in 2018, according to the poll.

Health care costs are most likely to be the top concerns for older Americans, with 25 percent of adults between the ages of 50 and 64, and 23 percent of those aged 65 and older listing them as their top financial problems. Health care costs are tied with lack of money, college expenses and housing costs as the greatest financial worries among adults younger than 50.

Health care also ranked as the top financial concern for Americans among all income levels.

Health care costs, energy costs or oil and gas prices and lack of money or low wages are the only three issues to ever top the “most important family financial problem” question in the 48 times Gallup has asked it since 2005.

However, mentions of energy costs have declined as gas prices have gone down over the last decade.

Reflecting a time of high economic confidence, 20 percent of Americans say they do not have a “most important financial problem,” one of the highest responses to the question in the Gallup poll’s 14 years. That figure was only surpassed in February 2005, when 21 percent of Americans said they do not have a top financial issue.

Despite strong economic numbers, Democrats are likely to highlight health care issues in the 2020 race after focusing on the issue to win back the majority in the House in 2018.

“Even in generally good economic times, Americans still face significant personal financial challenges. Foremost among these are healthcare costs, which have been a consistent concern over time but currently stand above all other concerns. As such, healthcare will likely continue to be a major focus in national elections, including the 2020 presidential election,” Gallup concluded.

Medicare and healthcare reform

So, when did we really make inroads in healthcare reform? Things started to get more positive in 1952 when the President’s Commission on Health Needs of the Nation later that year echoed the Social Security Administration’s annual report recommended enactment of health insurance for social security beneficiaries and the recommendation. However, General Eisenhower, who was to take office made clear that he would not support government health insurance.

Despite the opposition by the Eisenhower administration things began to happen that eventually led to some major changes. In 1956 Congress enacted a permanent program of health care coverage for the dependents of servicemen (what has been described as a military “medicare” program) and at the same time began on the Social Security Act cash benefits to totally and permanently disabled persons over the age of fifty. The AMA opposed the amendment and the battle began between those supporting and opposing this extension of the social security program, which was viewed as a test of strength between physicians and health reformers.

Then when the disability insurance measure passed a Democratic member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Aime J. Forand, introduced a medicare bill just prior to adjournment of the House in late 1957.

Next was the number of public hearings on the bill, which were held in June of 1958 before the House Ways and Means Committee, which proved inconclusive. The number of national groups started lining up on either side of the issue. The AFL-CIO, the National Farmers Union, the Group Health Association of America, the American Nurses Association, the American Public Welfare Association, and the National Association of Social Workers all supported the bill. On the other side, the opponents were the National Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association, the American Farm Bureau Association, the Health Insurance Association of America, and of course the AMA.

The fear of government cutting into the sales of insurance contracts as had been the case with government life insurance for servicemen during the First and Second World Wars and also with the passage of social security and its extensions. At the Forand bill hearings, the spokesman estimated the cost of the measure would exceed $2 billion per year, which was a tremendous underestimate.

However, because of the President’s opposition and the controversial nature of the Forand bill, the measure died in committee.  More hearings were held in 1959 with the same result as well as in 1960 where the Forand bill was able to obtain a vote on the bill in Committee with the result of a defeat again.

Despite the defeat after defeat, momentum in support of the proposal seemed to be increasing.

The next and most important stage of this historic saga is the one that brings the most changes and I will continue the discussion starting with House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson who both spoke and lobbied in favor of the bill which increased more support. First to come will be medical assistance through the states proposed by Wilbur Mills but not until John F. Kennedy was real progress made.

More next week.