Category Archives: Pros and Cons of Medicare for All

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

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!

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?

US Health-Care Prices Are Off the Charts, Pros and Cons of Public vs Private healthcare and possible Financing of Medicare for All

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After listening to the debates and the House debating and finally voting to approve the Articles of Impeachment I can actually say that I am embarrassed for we Americas and our Country. We all look like such fools! I say this because I have read critically the transcripts of the phone call that President Trump made to the President of Ukraine, listened to the witnesses in the case and have found no credible data to support an Impeachment. But how can one argue with the Hate of the party that lost the 2016 election? But on to discuss additional information on healthcare.

Michael Rainey of the Fuscal Times reported that a CT scan of the abdomen typically costs more than $1,000 in the U.S., but the same procedure in the U.K. costs $470, while in the Netherlands it costs just $140. Those numbers come from a new report, released Tuesday by the Health Care Cost Institute and the International Federation of Health Plans, that compares private insurance health-care prices in the U.S. to those in a sample of other wealthy countries – and finds that the U.S. is just about always the most expensive.

“The median prices paid by private insurance for health care services in the United States was almost always higher than the median prices in the eight other countries included in the iFHP study,” the report says. “Figure 1 [below] shows the prices paid for medical services in each country as a percent of the US price.”

Note that U.S. prices are marked by the red dots. In almost every case, the prices in other countries are just a fraction of the U.S. price. (Avoid getting cataract surgery in New Zealand, apparently.)

The report also looks at drug prices, and finds that with only one exception, prices in the U.S. are the highest in the group. Harvoni, used to treat hepatitis C, costs $4,840 in South Africa and $12,780 in the Netherlands, but it costs more than twice that ($31,620) in the U.S. Similarly, a Humira pen, used to treat arthritis, costs $860 in the U.K., but $4,480 in the U.S.

“Drug prices for most countries were less than half the US price for most of the administered and prescription drugs included in the study,” the report says.

Writing about the report Tuesday, Vox’s Dylan Scott said that high medical prices in the U.S. have many causes, but one in particular stands out: “The US is still the wealthiest country in the world. It’s home to the world’s leading biopharmaceutical industry. It tends to have the most cutting-edge treatments. All this contributes to higher prices here than elsewhere. But one big and unavoidable culprit is the lack of price regulation.”

American health care is a farce

Rick Newman reported that the cost of private health insurance is skyrocketing. Medicare will run short of money soon. About 28 million Americans still lack health insurance.

Are your elected officials on it? NOPE! Why should they be. They get generous coverage through a choice of plans and enjoy taxpayer subsidies covering most of the cost. So they’ve taken care of themselves, which is the only thing that matters in Washington.

Wait, that’s not quite correct. Republicans are also determined to keep hacking away at the Affordable Care Act, now in place for 9 years. A GOP lawsuit—backed by the Trump administration—claims the entire ACA is unconstitutional, because in 2017 Congress repealed the penalty for people who lack insurance. It’s a convoluted argument, yet an appeals court recently upheld part of the case and sent the rest back to a lower-court judge, to assess which other parts of the ACA to kill. The law isn’t dead yet, and it might ultimately survive, but it could take the Supreme Court to rescue the ACA from its third or fourth near-death experience.

So here’s the story: There’s a health care crisis in the United States, with millions of people lacking care and many millions more facing costs that are rising far faster than their incomes. Health care costs are devouring both the family and the federal budget. And many workers stay in jobs they’re not suited for simply for the health benefits. Yet Republicans are trying to take care away from about 18 million Americans, and repeal the ACA’s prohibition against denying coverage to people with preexisting coverage. Their answer to giant problems of access and affordability is to make coverage even harder to obtain and drive up costs even more.

The Democrats have answers! Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren want to annihilate the private insurance system and create a government program, Medicare for All, which would be 15 times larger than the ACA Republicans hate so much. Sure, that’ll work. In response to obstinate political opposition, peddle a fantasy plan that generates even more furious resistance. And tell voters you refuse to compromise because it’s more important to stand for the right thing than to actually accomplish something that could improve people’s lives.

There are better ideas out there. Democrats such as Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar favor enhancements to the ACA and a new public option that would provide coverage to nearly all the uninsured while leaving private insurance in place, for those who want to stick with that. It will never get Republican support, since Republicans favor the law of the jungle over government aid. But a Bidenesque plan could happen in the unlikely event a few reddish states grow momentarily sensible and elect a few pragmatic Democrats, including a majority in both the House and Senate.

If that doesn’t happen, we can look forward to posturing on both sides that will fool some voters into thinking politicians care, without accomplishing anything likely to help. The Trump administration is pushing a new plan that would allow states to import prescription drugs from Canada, which enforces price controls that make drugs cheaper. Great idea, as long as Canada has no problem diverting drugs meant for Canadians back to America, where many of the drugs come from in the first place. Why doesn’t America just impose its own price controls? Because pharmaceutical companies own Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and many other members of Congress, who won’t let it happen. So Trump is hoping more principled Canadian legislators will help Americans gets cheaper drugs made in America by American companies.

At least you’ll be free of all these worries once you turn 65, and Medicare kicks in. Except Medicare is going to run short of money starting in 2026, and will eventually be able to pay only about 77% of its obligations. So here’s the real health care plan: Don’t get sick until you turn 65, and then, get just 77% as sick as you would have otherwise. Or just move to Canada.

Pros and cons of private, public healthcare

A study by Flinders University found that the rising cost of private health cover and public hospital standards raise concerns among heart patients to obtain the best outcomes.

In one of the few direct comparisons, medical researchers in South Australia have analyzed data from pacemaker and defibrillator implant surgeries in all public and private hospitals in New South Wales and Queensland between 2010 and 2015 to make an assessment of medical safety outcomes, including infection levels and mortality.

Overall the outcomes were quite similar, says lead researcher Flinders cardiologist and electrophysiologist Associate Professor Anand Ganesan, who joined other Flinders University and University of Adelaide researchers in a new article just published in the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Internal Medicine Journal.

“There is growing community interest in the value of private health insurance and, to date, there are few head-to-head studies of the outcomes of care in public and private hospitals to compare the same service with adjustments for differences in patient characteristics,” says Associate Professor Ganesan, a Matthew Flinders Research Fellow and National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow.

“We believe our results are of community interest for patients to assess the value and benefit of private health insurance, as well as for policymakers who decide on resource allocations between the public and private healthcare systems.”

He stressed that further “head-to-head” studies are needed across all major medical procedures to provide patients and clinicians in both the public and private system with the most up-to-date safety information.

The population level study of pacemaker complications found few key differences in overall major safety issues, although there were slightly higher infection rates in public hospitals but slightly lower acute mortality rates compared to the private hospital system.

This could be connected to the greater number of older, frail patients relying on private health cover—and greater number of people in the public system—although further studies were needed to explain these differences.

Associate Professor Ganesan says more regular comparative assessments of public versus private hospital care quality are very important, particularly for Australian health consumers.

Australia’s hospitals account for more than 40% of healthcare spending with a cumulative cost exceeding $60 billion per annum. Hospital care in Australia is delivered by a combination of 695 public (or 62,000 beds) and 630 private sector hospitals (33,100 beds).

The research paper, “Complications of cardiac implantable electronic device placement in public and private hospitals” has been published in the Internal Medicine Journal.

Budget watchdog group outlines ‘Medicare for All’ financing options

So, one of my oppositions to the program Medicare for All has been the question as to financing the program. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) on Monday released a paper providing its preliminary estimates for various ways to finance “Medicare for All,” as the issue of how to pay for such a health plan has taken center stage in the Democratic presidential primary.

“Policymakers have a number of options available to finance the $30 trillion cost of Medicare for All, but each option would come with its own set of trade-offs,” the budget watchdog group wrote.

The issue of how to pay for Medicare for All — single-payer health care that eliminates premiums and deductibles — has become a key discussion topic in the Democratic presidential race.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the top tier 2020 hopefuls, recently said that she would release a financing plan for her Medicare for All proposal after being criticized by some of her rivals in the primary race for refusing to give a direct answer about whether she’d raise taxes on the middle class to pay for the massive health care overhaul.

CRFB said most estimates find that implementing Medicare for All would cost the federal government about $30 trillion over 10 years.

“How this cost is financed would have considerable distributional, economic, and policy implications,” the group wrote.

CRFB provided several options that each could raise the revenue needed to pay for Medicare for All. These included a 32 percent payroll tax, a 25 percent surtax on income above the standard-deduction amount, a 42 percent value-added tax, mandatory premiums averaging $7,500 per capita, and more than doubling all individual and corporate tax rates.

The group estimated that Medicare for All could not be fully financed just by raising taxes on the wealthy.

CRFB also estimated that cutting all nonhealth spending by 80 percent, or by more than doubling the national debt, so that it increased to 205 percent of gross domestic product, could finance Medicare for All.

The group said that the financing options it listed could be combined, or that policymakers could reduce the cost of Medicare for All by making it less generous.

“Adopting smaller versions of several policies may prove more viable than adopting any one policy in full,” CRFB wrote.

CRFB said that most of the financing options it listed would on average be more progressive than current law, but most of the financing options would also shrink the economy.

Out-of-pocket costs for Medicare recipients will rise in the New Year

Dennis Thompson reviewed the future costs of Medicare since the Democratic primary discussion seems to point to Medicare or All. He noted that the standard monthly premium for Medicare Part B would rise $9.10, to $144 a month, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced.

The annual deductible for Part B also will increase $13 to $198 per year, CMS said.

Both increases are relatively large compared to 2019, when the Part B premium rose $1.50 a month and the deductible $2 for the year.

“This year there’s an unusual tick up in the Part B premium that could be a real concern for people living on a fixed income,” said Tricia Neuman, director of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy.

The Part B premium increase will affect people enrolled in original Medicare as well as those who are covered under Medicare Advantage, said David Lipschutz, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

“One thing I definitely wanted to make clear is that the increase in the Part B premium itself also applies to everyone on Medicare Advantage,” he said. “People on Medicare Advantage have to continue to pay the part B premium.”

Some, but not all, Medicare Advantage plans cover the Part B premium as part of their package, Lipschutz added.

The annual inpatient hospital deductible for Medicare Part A is also increasing to $1,408 a year, up $44. In 2019, the increase was $24.

These cost increases will wipe out much of the 1.6% cost-of-living (COLA) increase for Social Security benefits in 2020, CBS News reported. The COLA amounts to about $24 extra a month for the average retiree.

Medicare Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, nursing facility care and some home health care services. Part B covers doctor visits, outpatient hospital treatment, durable medical equipment, and certain home health care and medical services not covered by Part A.

Unless Congress acts, the prescription benefit in Medicare Part D also will start drawing a lot more money out of the pockets of seniors taking pricey drugs, the experts added.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a provision that limited how much a senior with Part D would pay out-of-pocket after reaching a “catastrophic coverage” threshold, Neuman and Lipschutz said.

Once they reach that threshold, seniors pay 5% of their prescription costs. Until then, they pay 25% of the costs for brand-name drugs and 37% of generic drug costs.

But that ACA provision expires this year. When that happens, the catastrophic coverage threshold will jump $1,250, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates. People will have to pay $6,350 out-of-pocket before reaching the threshold.

“There will be a jump up in the threshold, which means that people with high drug spending will have to pay more before they can get this extra help,” Neuman said.

Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have bills in the works that could address this Part D increase, but it’s hard to predict whether Congress will be able to cooperate on a solution, Neuman and Lipschutz said.

“No matter what your allegiances are, everyone agrees something should be done about the high cost of prescription drugs,” Lipschutz said.

It’s not all bad news, however.

Folks with Medicare Advantage are expected to pay lower premiums, even with the increase in Part B, according to the CMS.

On average, Medicare Advantage premiums are expected be at their lowest in the past 13 years, and 23% lower than in 2018, the CMS said.

Medicare Advantage enrollees also will have more plans to choose from. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the average beneficiary will have access to 28 plans, compared with a low of 18 in 2014.

Original Medicare is the traditional fee-for-service program offered by the federal government, while Medicare Advantage plans are an alternative provided through private insurance companies.

Medicare beneficiaries spent an estimated $5,460 out-of-pocket for health care in 2016, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. About 58% went to medical and long-term care services, with the remainder spent on premiums for Medicare and supplemental insurance.

So, the ultimate question is :

Equal health care for all: A philosopher’s answer to a political question

The University of Pennsylvania staff asked the question-Should access to health care, especially in life-threatening situations, depend on whether you can afford it? Absolutely not, says Robert C. Hughes, Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics, who compared health care systems in the U.K., Canada, and Australia. He writes about this question and other issues in a recent paper titled, “Egalitarian Provision of Necessary Medical Treatment.”

Hughes identifies two key features of an egalitarian health care system. First, he argues, it would protect people’s liberty to ensure that access to money does not decide if people get the health care they need. Second, it would promote stability and encourage people to be law abiding. “The central finding of [my research] is that it’s morally necessary to make sure that people’s finances don’t affect their ability to get truly medically necessary treatment,” he says.

Hughes favors universal health care coverage in the U.S. Further, in order to ensure that everybody has access to the medical care they need, he says one option is to eliminate private health insurance for coverage provided under “Medicare for All,” the solution that Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have proposed. Hughes explores what legislators, the pharmaceutical industry, and other health care providers could do to ensure a fair health care system where private parties don’t get to decide who is eligible for what treatments.

I mentioned my embarrassment and disappointment in our political system we all have to give thanks for all the good things in our lives. As Christmas approaches we all should reflect on the good in our lives and enjoy the Holiday including family and friends. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa! And I hope Santa leaves coal in all the stockings of our politicians who can’t even do the job that we the voters asked them to do when we voted them in. Oh, how you are making a mockery of the system in the games that you all are playing!

I have been avoiding the discussion regarding single payer system, what it is, how it would work and what are the consequences, etc.? More to come!

Again, Democrats Spar at Debate Over Health Care, How to Beat Trump and Could Medicare for All Really Go Horribly Wrong?

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deal549[5953] Was there anything different about last week’s Democratic debate? Bill Barrow, Will Weissert and Jill Colvin reported that the Democratic presidential candidates clashed in a debate over the future of health care in America, racial inequality and their ability to build a winning coalition to take on President Donald Trump next year.
The Wednesday night faceoff came after hours of testimony in the impeachment inquiry of Trump and at a critical juncture in the Democratic race to run against him in 2020. With less than three months before the first voting contests, big questions hang over the front-runners, time is running out for lower tier candidates to make their move and new Democrats are launching improbable last-minute bids for the nomination.
But amid the turbulence, the White House hopefuls often found themselves fighting on well-trodden terrain, particularly over whether the party should embrace a sweeping “Medicare for All” program or make more modest changes to the current health care system.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the field’s most progressive voices, staunchly defended Medicare for All, which would eliminate private insurance coverage in favor of a government-run system.
“The American people understand that the current health care system is not only cruel — it is dysfunctional,” Sanders said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden countered that many people are happy with private insurance through their jobs, while Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, complained about other candidates seeking to take “the divisive step” of ordering people onto universal health care, “whether they like it or not.”
Democrats successfully campaigned on health care last year, winning control of the House on a message that Republicans were slashing existing benefits. But moderates worry that Medicare for All is more complicated and may not pay the same political dividend. That’s especially true after Democrats won elections earlier this month in Kentucky and Virginia without embracing the program.
“We must get our fired-up Democratic base with us,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. “But let’s also get those independents and moderate Republicans who cannot stomach (Trump) anymore.”
The fifth Democratic debate unfolded in Atlanta, a city that played a central role in the civil rights movement, and the party’s diversity, including two African American candidates, was on display. But there was disagreement on how best to appeal to minority voters, who are vital to winning the Democratic nomination and will be crucial in the general election.
Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey said the party has sometimes come up short in its outreach to black Americans.
“For too long, I think, candidates have taken for granted constituencies that have been a backbone of the Democratic Party,” Harris said. “You show up in a black church and want to get the vote but just haven’t been there before.”
Booker declared, “Black voters are pissed off, and they’re worried.”
In the moderators’ chairs were four women, including Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s liberal darling, and Ashley Parker, a White House reporter for The Washington Post. It was only the third time a primary debate has been hosted by an all-female panel.
Buttigieg — who was a natural target given his recent rise in the polls to join Biden, Warren and Sanders among the crowded field’s front-runners — was asked early about how being mayor of a city of 100,000 residents qualified him for the White House.
“I know that from the perspective of Washington, what goes on in my city might look small,” Buttigieg said. “But frankly, where we live, the infighting on Capitol Hill is what looks small.”
Klobuchar argued that she has more experience enacting legislation and suggested that women in politics are held to a higher standard.
“Otherwise we could play a game called ‘Name your favorite woman president,’ which we can’t do because it has all been men,” she said.
Another memorable exchange occurred when Biden — who didn’t face any real attacks from his rivals — was asked about curbing violence against women and responded awkwardly.
“We have to just change the culture,” he said. “And keep punching at it. And punching at it. And punching at it.”
Harris scrapped with another low polling candidate: Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has criticized prominent Democrats, including 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.
“I think that it’s unfortunate that we have someone on the stage who is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama,” Harris said.
“I’m not going to put party interests first,” Gabbard responded.
But the discussion kept finding its way back to Medicare for All, which has dominated the primary — especially for Warren. She released plans to raise $20-plus trillion in new government revenue for universal health care. But she also said implementation of the program may take three years — drawing criticism both from moderates like Biden and Buttigieg, who think she’s trying to distance herself from an unpopular idea, and Sanders supporters, who see the Massachusetts senator’s commitment to Medicare for All wavering.
Sanders made a point of saying Wednesday that he’d send Medicare for All legislation to Congress during the first week of his administration.
Booker faced especially intense pressure Wednesday since he’s yet to meet the Democratic National Committee’s polling requirements for the December debate in California. He spent several minutes arguing with Warren about the need to more appropriately tax the wealthy, but also called for “building wealth” among people of color and other marginalized communities.
“We’ve got to start empowering people,” Booker said.
Businessman Andrew Yang was asked what he would say to Russian President Vladimir Putin if he got the chance — and joked about that leader’s cordial relationship with Trump.
“First of all, I’d say I’m sorry I beat your guy,” Yang said with a grin, drawing howls of laughter from the audience.
Is Warren retreating on Medicare-for-all?
Almost one week before the fifth Democratic presidential debate, Elizabeth Warren released the latest plan in her slew of policy proposals: An outline detailing how, if elected, she would gradually shift the U.S. toward a single-payer health care system.
“I have put out a plan to fully finance Medicare for All when it’s up and running without raising taxes on the middle class by one penny,” the Massachusetts senator wrote in a post introducing the plan. “But how do we get there? Every serious proposal for Medicare for All contemplates a significant transition period.”
It was a marked shift from her previous calls to quickly bring the country toward Medicare-for-all and, notably, included similar tenets laid out in the health care proposals of more moderate candidates, like former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
In the transition plan, Warren said she would take several steps in her first 100 days in office to expand insurance coverage, like pushing to pass a bill that would allow all Americans to either buy into a government-run program if they wanted, or keep their private insurance. It would extend free coverage to about half of the country, including children and poor families. She would also lower the eligibility age for Medicare to 50 and let young people buy into a “true Medicare-for-all” option.
“Combining the parts into a whole reveals a bit of a mess,” wrote David Dayen of The American Prospect, a progressive magazine. “After putting forward a comprehensive cost control and financing bill, Warren split that apart and asked people to accept two bruising fights to get to her purported end goal. It’s reasonable for people to see that as a bait and switch.”
Rivals portrayed the move as a retreat from one of her most high-profile positions on an issue that voters repeatedly rank as one of the most important. A campaign spokesperson for Biden called the senator’s health stance “problematic,” while Buttigieg’s spokeswoman Lis Smith criticized the latest measure as a “transparently political attempt to paper over a very serious policy problem.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has wholeheartedly pledged to fight for a single-payer health system, took a swipe at Warren when accepting an endorsement on Friday from the largest nurses’ union in the country.
“Some people say we should delay that fight for a few more years — I don’t think so,” he said, according to The Washington Post. “We are ready to take them on right now, and we’re going to take them on Day One.”
The similarities come as Warren, who experienced a somewhat momentous surge in the polls, has begun to falter. In early October, her national polling climbed to 28 percent, according to a Fox News poll, but since then, her numbers have steadily declined. In the latest Iowa poll, Buttigieg pulled ahead of Warren by a staggering nine percentage points, indicating the 37-year-old could be a serious contender.
The timing of the seeming loss of campaign momentum appears to be tied to the release of her sweeping Medicare-for-all proposal at the beginning of November. Warren said it could be paid for with a series of taxes, largely via new levies on Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy (and, she’s repeatedly stressed, none on the middle class).
According to a recent poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook Political Report, while universal coverage is popular with a majority of Democratic voters, almost two-thirds of voters in key swing states said a national health plan in which all Americans receive their health coverage through a single-payer system was not a good idea.
It also precludes the start of the next debate in Georgia, during which Warren will very likely face fierce criticism and scrutiny over her $20 trillion Medicare-for-all plan and remember the cost is really closer to$52-$72 trillion>
Still, Warren told reporters over the weekend that “my commitment to Medicare for All is all the way,” according to The Associated Press.
And Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the Washington Democrat who introduced the House version of the Medicare-for-all bill, called the plan a “smart approach to take on Big Pharma & private-for-profit insurance companies.”
Medicare for All’s thorniest issue is how much to pay doctors and hospitals. Any new system could become a convoluted mess if it goes wrong.
Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled her $20.5 trillion package to finance Medicare for All, a system that would provide comprehensive health insurance to every American and virtually erase private insurance.
If its details are made reality, it would be nothing short of a sweeping transformation of the way Americans receive and pay for their medical care.
The proposal attempts to address one of the thorniest problems that any candidate pushing for a single-payer system in the US faces: how much to pay doctors and hospitals.
Dismantling the current payment structure and replacing it with another would likely require some tough trade-offs, experts say, creating winners and losers when the dust settles.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently unveiled details of her Medicare for All health plan, a system that would provide comprehensive health coverage to every American and virtually erase private insurance.
If its details are made reality, it would be a sweeping transformation in the way Americans get and pay for their medical care. Its the only financing model for universal coverage that a Democratic presidential candidate has rolled out in the primary so far.
It attempts to address one of the thorniest problems any candidate pushing for a single-payer system in the US faces: how much to pay the country’s doctors and hospitals. Pay them too little, and you risk wreaking havoc on their bottom line — and possibly forcing a wave of hospital closures as some critics have warned. Pay them too much, and it becomes much more expensive to finance care for everybody.
“The challenge is that when you expand Medicare to new populations, they’re going to use more healthcare,” Katherine Baicker, a health policy expert who serves as the dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, told Business Insider. “But that means there is going to be a substantial increase in demand for healthcare at the same time that you’re potentially cutting payments to providers.”
Warren has proposed big cuts in payments to many hospitals and doctors in her $20.5 trillion package to bring universal healthcare to the United States. Single-payer advocates argue that eliminating private insurance would lower administrative burdens on doctors and hospitals, freeing them up to treat more insured patients.
Several outside analyses of Medicare for All proposals suggest it can lead to considerable savings through negotiation of lower prices and reduced administrative spending.
The cuts in Warren’s plan are steep, because private insurers currently pay around twice as much as Medicare does for hospital care, according to research from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Warren’s reform blueprint sets them in line with the Medicare program. Doctors would be paid at the Medicare level while hospitals would be reimbursed at 110% of Medicare’s rate.
‘A recipe for shortages’
As a result, those rates would lower doctor pay by around 6.5%, according to an estimate from economists who analyzed the Warren plan. For hospitals, who are used to bigger payments from private insurers, the payments under Warren’s plan would be roughly enough to cover the cost of care, the economists said.
Baicker says the healthcare system may not be prepared to meet the rapid rise in demand, especially if payments fall at the same time.
“You’re going to see people wanting more services at the same time you pay providers less, and that’s a recipe for shortages unless something else changes,” she said.
That echoes a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released in May. It found that setting payments in line with Medicare would “substantially” lower the average amount of money providers currently receive. “Such a reduction in provider payment rates would probably reduce the amount of care supplied and could also reduce the quality of care,” the CBO report said.
Business Insider reached out to the five largest hospital systems to ask the possible effects of lowering payment rates to Medicare levels and whether they would be prepared to weather the transition.
Only one responded: the 92-hospital Trinity Health System based in Michigan.
“Trinity Health supports policies that advance access to affordable health care coverage for all, payment models that improve health outcomes and accelerate transformation, and initiatives that enhance community health and well-being,” spokeswoman Eve Pidgeon told Business Insider.
Pidgeon said that Trinity Health welcomes the dialogue around “critical questions” of financing and access to coverage, and would “analyze Medicare for All proposals as more details emerge.”
The healthcare industry generally opposes Medicare for All
“Trinity Health has a rich tradition of honoring the voices of the communities we serve, and we will continue to dialogue around policy proposals designed to improve affordability, quality and access for all,” Pidgeon said.
The healthcare industry generally opposes Medicare for All, arguing that it would lead to hospital closures and hurt the overall quality of care for Americans.
The American Hospital Association is staunchly against it. In a statement to Business Insider, executive vice president Tom Nickels called it “a one-size -fits-all approach” that “could disrupt coverage for more than 180 million Americans who are already covered through employer plans.”
“The AHA believes there is a better alternative to help all Americans access health coverage – one built on improving our existing system rather than ripping it apart and starting from scratch,” Nickels said.
Meanwhile, the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest physician organization, came out against the single-payer system, though its membership nearly voted to overturn its opposition in June, Vox reported. The group since pulled out of an industry coalition fighting the proposal.
While many big hospitals could face payment cuts, others could benefit, particularly those that mainly serve people with low incomes or who don’t have insurance.
“If you’re a facility serving a lot of Medicaid and uninsured patients today, you might come out ahead here,” Matthew Fiedler, a health policy expert at the Brookings Institution, told Politico. “But the dominant hospitals in a lot of markets that are able to command extremely high private rates today will take a big hit. I don’t think we’d see hospitals closing, but the question is: What would they do to bring down spending?”
Chris Pope, a healthcare payment expert and senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said fewer dollars would ultimately mean a cutback in services hospitals would be able to offer. “The less you pay, the less you’re going to get in return.”
“What would likely happen is if you give a fixed lump sum of money, they would start dialing back on access to care,” Pope told Business Insider. “You’re just not going to be able to have a scan done when you need one done.”
The impact on hospitals and doctors
I have pointed these next few points before but thought that it would be worth mentioning again. The surging cost of hospital bills has fanned consumer outrage in recent years as people struggle to afford needed care and helped elevate support for some type of government insurance plan, whether its the more incremental route allowing people to simply buy into a public insurance option or Medicare for All.
In a preview of battles to come, Congress has struggled to pass legislation addressing exorbitant and confusing hospital bills, an issue with widespread public support and bipartisan interest that the White House backed as well, the Washington Post reported in September. Its movement grinded to a halt amid an onslaught of outside spending from doctor and insurer groups.
Dr. Stephen Klasko, chief executive of the Jefferson Health hospital system in Pennsylvania, said the political debate has oversimplified the difficult decisions that would need to be taken in moving to Medicare for All.
“They haven’t been willing to talk about what you would really have to do to bring a dollar and a quarter down to a dollar,” Klasko said, referring to candidates like Warren and Sanders who back universal health coverage.
The hospital executive said that while the nation’s healthcare system is “inefficient” and “fragmented,” slashing overhead wouldn’t necessarily improve the quality of care.
“This myth that there’s these trillions of dollars of administrative costs that are out there in the ether, that’s not true. Every dollar you take away is somebody’s dollar,” Klasko said.
He added that pricing reform on the scale that Warren proposes “is doable,” though there’s likely a caveat.
“It will change how consumers interact with the healthcare system and they won’t get everything they want,” he said.
I’m not sure that Medicare for All will be the Democratic party’s continual push as the debates continue and they realize that moderation to develop a health care system will be the only way to challenge a run against President Trump. I wonder when the rest of the Democratic potential candidates realize that besides the gaffs that former Vice President Biden makes, that improving the Affordable Care Act is the only strategy that may work.
Now I want to wish all a Happy Thanksgiving and hope that we all will appreciate all that we all have and as Mister Rogers said we all need to be Kind, and be Kind and also be Kind. Enjoy you Turkey Day!

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

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73495095_2337220289740950_8378943902677204992_n As a physician and an economist, I am amazed at the lack of knowledge of both medicine and finance by Ms. Warren and her Team as well as the rest of the Democrats running for President as they tout Medicare for All and give up on Affordable Health Care/ Obamacare. Sahil Kapur and Katia Dmitrieva pointed out that Elizabeth Warren is careful to cite economic experts to back up the costs of her multi-trillion-dollar policy plans. But even those experts disagree among themselves about how or whether those plans will work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He also believes that artificial intelligence will help the industry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Save public hospitals’, French health workers urge Macron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– New winter of discontent? –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warren health plan departs from US ‘social insurance’ idea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VA launches new health care options under MISSION Act

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

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

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

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

A Veteran needs a service not available at any VA medical facility.
A Veteran lives in a U.S. state or territory without a full-service VA medical facility. Specifically, this would apply to Veterans living in Alaska, Hawaii, New Hampshire and the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
A Veteran qualifies under the “grandfather” provisions related to distance eligibility under the Veterans Choice Program.
VA cannot furnish care within certain designated access standards. The specific access standards are described below:

Drive time to a specific VA medical facility
Thirty-minute average drive time for primary care, mental health, and noninstitutional extended care services.
Sixty-minute average drive time for specialty care.

Note: Drive times are calculated using geomapping software.

Appointment wait time at a specific VA medical facility
Twenty days from the date of the request for primary care, mental health care, and noninstitutional extended care services, unless the Veteran agrees to a later date in consultation with his or her VA health care provider.
Twenty-eight days for specialty care from the date of request, unless the Veteran agrees to a later date in consultation with his or her VA health care provider.

The Veteran and the referring clinician agree it is in the best medical interest of the Veteran to receive community care based on defined factors.
VA has determined that a VA medical service line is not providing care in a manner that complies with VA’s standards for quality based on specific conditions.

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

The VA MISSION Act:

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

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

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

Death toll from vaping-linked illness now at 19 in the US. Trump’s answer for Medicare and Bernie’s health issue!

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bernie465 Why aren’t more people interested in the severity of the vaping complications in our youth? We are now up to 19 deaths, and this is just the reported deaths. We haven’t figured the long-term severity of chronic vaping inhalation, a form of COPD-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease!

The death toll in the United States from illnesses linked to e-cigarette use has risen to at least 19, health authorities say, as more than 1,000 others have suffered lung injuries probably linked to vaping.

Officials have yet to identify the cause for the outbreak, which dates back to March and is pursuing multiple lines of investigation.

A report by clinicians in North Carolina last month pointed to the inhalation of fatty substances from aerosolized oils, but a new study by the Mayo Clinic published this week found patients’ lungs had been exposed to noxious fumes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that 18 deaths in 15 states had now been positively linked to vaping, from a total of 1,080 cases of people sickened —a jump of 275 since last week.

Connecticut officials also announced the first death in the state, bringing the total to at least 19.

The CDC attributed the sharp increase to a combination of new patients becoming ill in the past two weeks and recent reporting of previously identified patients.

“I think we really have the feeling right now that there may be a lot of different nasty things in e-cigarette or vaping products, and they may cause different harms in the lung,” Anne Schuchat, a senior official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a call with reporters.

Among a group of 578 patients interviewed on substances they had used, 78 percent reported using tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive substance of marijuana, with or without nicotine products.

Another 37 percent reported exclusive use of THC products, and 17 percent said they had only used nicotine-containing products.

About 70 percent of patients are male, and 80 percent are under 35 years old.

Skyrocketing use

E-cigarettes have been available in the US since 2006.

It is not clear whether the outbreak is only happening now—or if there were cases earlier that were wrongly diagnosed.

Initially conceived as a smoking cessation device, e-cigarette use has skyrocketed among teens, with preliminary official data for 2019 showing more than a quarter of high school students using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.

They were until recently perceived as a less harmful alternative to smoking because they do not contain the 7,000 chemicals in cigarettes, dozens of which are known to cause cancer.

Only one case of lung injury has been reported abroad, making the outbreak more mysterious still.

Canadian authorities said in September a youth had been hospitalized, but so far no other countries have reported anything similar.

Public and political opinion appears to be hardening, however, with the administration of US President Donald Trump announcing in September that it would ban in the coming month’s flavored e-cigarette products, which are particularly attractive to young people.

India has issued an outright ban on all e-cigarette products, as has the US state of Massachusetts.

E-cigarettes: five things to know about vaping linked deaths and illnesses in the U.S.

E-cigarettes have become hugely popular in the past decade but a rash of vaping-linked deaths and illnesses in the United States is feeding caution about a product, already banned in some places.

Here are five things to know about electronic cigarettes.

Around for two decades

Early designs for an electronic cigarette were drawn up in the United States in the 1960s but Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik is acknowledged as the inventor of a viable commercial version in the early 2000s.

Hon, who was trying to quit his own pack-a-day habit, took out patents between 2003 and 2005. But his devices would soon be overtaken as the international market exploded.

How do they work?

A battery powers a coil that heats a liquid containing various amounts of nicotine as well as propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which mimic tobacco smoke when heated.

This “e-juice” can also contain flavorings and other substances, such as THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

E-cigarettes are mostly draw-activated, with the puffing releasing vapor.

They do not produce tar or carbon monoxide—two of tobacco’s most noxious elements and associated with cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Harmful to health?

E-cigarettes were initially touted as less damaging than tobacco, which causes around eight million deaths a year.

In 2015 public health authorities in England said best estimates showed they were 95 percent less harmful than tobacco.

“Even if it is difficult to quantify precisely the long-term toxicity of electronic cigarettes, there is evidence that it is significantly lower than traditional cigarettes,” the French Academy of Medicine said the same year.

However, concern has been growing.

On October 3, 2019, US health authorities reported 18 vaping-related deaths and more than 1,000 cases of damage since March, the cause of which had not been identified.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on September 2019 that many of the cases involved the use of black-market marijuana products.

In July 2019 the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that electronic smoking devices were “undoubtedly harmful and should, therefore, be subject to regulation”.

Another worry is that the vaping flavors are particularly attractive to teenagers and an enticement to pick up the habit.

Exponential growth

The number of vapers worldwide has leaped from seven million in 2011 to 41 million in 2018, according to leading market researcher Euromonitor International.

By comparison, there were 1.1 billion tobacco smokers on the planet in 2016, according to the latest WHO figures on its website.

The largest markets for e-cigarettes are the United States followed by Britain, France, Germany, and China.

The increase in vaping has been particularly dramatic among teenagers.

Moving towards regulation

In September 2019 India became the latest country to ban the import, sale, production, and advertising of e-cigarettes, citing in particular concerns about its youth.

The devices are already banned in several places, such as Brazil, Singapore, Thailand and the US state of Massachusetts, but elsewhere legislations are inconsistent.

In June 2019 San Francisco became the first major US city to effectively ban the sale and manufacture of electronic cigarettes.

In September New York followed Michigan in banning flavored e-cigarettes.

Trump woos seniors with an order to boost Medicare health program

Reporter Jeff Mason pointed out that U.S. President Donald Trump sought to woo seniors on Thursday with an executive order aimed at strengthening the Medicare health program by reducing regulations, curbing fraud, and providing faster access to new medical devices and therapies.

The order, which Trump discussed during a visit to a retirement community in Florida known as The Villages, is the Republican president’s answer to some Democrats who are pushing for a broad and expensive expansion of Medicare to cover all Americans.

Trump referred to such proposals as socialist and pledged to prevent them from coming to fruition, a political promise with an eye toward his 2020 re-election campaign in which healthcare is likely to be a major issue.

“They want to raid Medicare to fund a thing called socialism,” Trump told an enthusiastic crowd in Florida, a political swing state that is critical to his goal of keeping the White House.

The executive order follows measures his administration rolled out in recent months designed to curtail drug prices and correct other perceived problems with the U.S. healthcare system. Policy experts say the efforts are unlikely to slow the tide of rising drug prices in a meaningful way.

Trump suggested that drug companies were backing impeachment efforts in Washington, which he considers a “hoax,” as a way to sabotage his efforts to make prescriptions affordable.

“We’re lowering the cost of prescription drugs, taking on the pharmaceutical companies. And you think that’s easy? It’s not easy… I wouldn’t be surprised if the hoax didn’t come from some of the people that we’re taking on,” he said.

Medicare covers Americans who are 65 and older and includes traditional fee-for-service coverage in which the government pays healthcare providers directly and Medicare Advantage plans, in which private insurers manage patient benefits on its behalf.

Seniors are a key political constituency in America because of a high percentage of the vote.

The order pushes for Medicare to use more medical telehealth services, which is care delivered by phone or digital means, leading to cost reductions by reducing expensive emergency room visits, an administration official told Reuters ahead of the announcement.

The order directs the government to work to allow private insurers that operate Medicare Advantage plans to use new plan pricing methods, such as allowing beneficiaries to share in the savings when they choose lower-cost health services.

It also aims to bring payments for the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program in line with payments for Medicare Advantage.

Trump’s plans contrast with the Medicare for All program promoted by Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist who is running to become the Democratic Party’s nominee against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Sanders’ proposal, backed by left-leaning Democrats but opposed by moderates such as former Vice President Joe Biden, would create a single-payer system, effectively eliminating private insurance by providing government coverage to everyone, using the Medicare model.

“Medicare for All is Medicare for none,” said Seema Verma, the administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on a conference call with reporters, calling the proposal a “pipe dream” that would lead to higher taxes.

Sanders has argued that Americans would pay less for healthcare under his plan.

The White House is eager to show Trump making progress on healthcare, an issue Democrats successfully used to garner support and take control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump campaigned in 2016 on a promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, his predecessor President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law also known as “Obamacare.” So far he has not repealed or replaced it.

In July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it would propose a rule for imports of cheaper drugs from Canada into the United States. A formal rule has not yet been unveiled.

The administration also issued an executive order in June demanding hospitals and insurers make prices they charge patients more transparent. Another in July encouraged novel treatments for kidney disease.

Trump considered other proposals that did not reach fruition.

A federal judge in July shot down an executive order that would have forced drugmakers to display list prices in advertisements, and Trump scrapped another planned order that would have banned some rebate payments drugmakers make to payers.

The administration is mulling a plan to tie some Medicare reimbursement rates for drugs to the price paid for those drugs by foreign governments, Reuters reported.

Targeting ‘Medicare For All’ Proposals, Trump Lays Out His Vision For Medicare

Faced with the pressure from the Democrats and their proposal for health care, Medicare for All President Trump gave a speech and signed an executive order on health care Thursday, casting the “Medicare for All” proposals from his Democratic rivals as harmful to seniors.

His speech, which had been billed as a policy discussion, had the tone of a campaign rally. Trump spoke from The Villages, a huge retirement community in Florida outside Orlando, a deep-red part of a key swing state.

His speech was marked by cheers, standing ovations and intermittent chants of “four more years” by an audience of mostly seniors.

Trump spoke extensively about his administration’s health care achievements and goals, as well as the health policy proposals of Democratic presidential candidates, which he characterized as socialism.

The executive order he signed had previously been titled “Protecting Medicare From Socialist Destruction” on the White House schedule but has since been renamed “Protecting and Improving Medicare for Our Nation’s Seniors.”

“In my campaign for president, I made you a sacred pledge that I would strengthen, protect and defend Medicare for all of our senior citizens,” Trump told the audience. “Today I’ll sign a very historic executive order that does exactly what — we are making your Medicare even better, and … it will never be taken away from you. We’re not letting anyone get close.”

The order is intended, in part, to shore up Medicare Advantage, an alternative to traditional Medicare that’s administered by private insurers. That program has been growing in popularity, and this year, premiums are down and plan choices are up.

The executive order directs the Department of Health and Human Services to develop proposals to improve several aspects of Medicare, including expanding plan options for seniors, encouraging innovative plan designs and payment models and improving the enrollment process to make it easier for seniors to choose plans.

The order includes a grab bag of proposals, including removing regulations “that create inefficiencies or otherwise undermine patient outcomes”; combating waste, fraud, and abuse in the program; and streamlining access to “innovative products” such as new treatments and medical devices.

The president outlined very little specific policy in his speech in Florida. Instead, he attacked Democratic rivals and portrayed their proposals as threatening to seniors.

“Leading Democrats have pledged to give free health care to illegal immigrants,” Trump said, referring to a moment from the first Democratic presidential debate in which all the candidates onstage raised their hands in support of health care for undocumented migrants. “I will never allow these politicians to steal your health care and give it away to illegal aliens.”

Health care is a major issue for voters and is one that has dominated the presidential campaign on the Democratic side. In the most recent debate, candidates spent the first-hour hashing out and defending various health care proposals and visions. The major divide is between a Medicare for All system — supported by only two candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren — and a public option supported by the rest of the field.

Trump brushed those distinctions aside. “Every major Democrat in Washington has backed a massive government health care takeover that would totally obliterate Medicare,” he said. “These Democratic policy proposals … may go by different names, whether it’s single-payer or the so-called public option, but they’re all based on the totally same terrible idea: They want to raid Medicare to fund a thing called socialism.”

Toward the end of the speech, he highlighted efforts that his administration has made to lower drug prices and then suggested that drugmakers were helping with the impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives. “They’re very powerful,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if … it was from some of these industries, like pharmaceuticals, that we take on.”

Drawing battle lines through Medicare may be a savvy campaign move on Trump’s part.

Medicare is extremely popular. People who have it like it, and people who don’t have it think it’s a good thing too. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than 8 in 10 Democrats, independents and Republicans think of Medicare favorably.

Trump came into office promising to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something better. Those efforts failed, and the administration has struggled to get substantive policy changes on health care.

On Thursday, administration officials emphasized a number of its recent health care policy moves.

“[Trump’s] vision for a healthier America is much wider than a narrow focus on the Affordable Care Act,” said Joe Grogan, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, at a press briefing earlier.

The secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar, said at that briefing that this was “the most comprehensive vision for health care that I can recall any president putting forth.”

He highlighted a range of actions that the administration has taken, from a push on price transparency in health care to a plan to end the HIV epidemic, to more generic-drug approvals. Azar described these things as part of a framework to make health care more affordable, deliver better value and tackle “impassable health challenges.”

Without a big health care reform bill, the administration is positioning itself as a protector of what exists now — particularly Medicare.

“Today’s executive order particularly reflects the importance the president places on protecting what worked in our system and fixing what’s broken,” Azar said. “Sixty million Americans are on traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage. They like what they have, so the president is going to protect it.”

Sanders presidential campaign pivots health scare to Medicare for All message

And now Bernie Sander’s health becomes an issue! Simon Lewis reported that Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential election campaign on Wednesday sought to use news the candidate had a heart procedure to highlight the benefits of his trademark Medicare for All healthcare plan.

Sanders’ campaign canceled campaign events and pulled TV ads after the 78-year-old U.S. senator had two stents inserted into an artery after he experienced discomfort during a campaign visit to Nevada on Tuesday.

The candidate would rest for a few days after the relatively common procedure, his campaign for the November 2020 presidential election said.

Sanders’ speechwriter, David Sirota, said in a daily newsletter that the unexpected medical procedure was “a perfect example of why the United States needs to join the rest of the world and pass Bernie’s Medicare for All legislation.”

Sirota cited a 2018 paper by researchers at the London School of Economics that found cardiac implant devices cost up to six times more in the United States than in some European countries with government-run healthcare systems.

Sanders advocates an approach that would extend the existing Medicare program for Americans aged over 65 to all Americans and largely eliminate the private insurance industry.

Sirota argued the gulf in price was in part due to the U.S. healthcare system’s “complex web of payers – rather than a single-payer Medicare for All system that can negotiate better prices.”

As many as 1 million Americans a year get stents, a procedure that involves inserting a balloon-tipped catheter to open the blockage and deploy tiny wire-mesh tubes to prop open the artery.

“I’m feeling good. I’m fortunate to have good health care and great doctors and nurses helping me to recover,” Sanders tweeted on Wednesday afternoon, his first public statement since the procedure.

“None of us know when a medical emergency might affect us. And no one should fear going bankrupt if it occurs. Medicare for All!”

News of Sanders’ health scare sparked mean-spirited jokes pointing out the U.S. senator was treated by the healthcare system he wants to overhaul.

“Any bets on whether he’ll be going to Cuba for their great communist medical care? Get well soon Bern. #SocialismSucks!” tweeted Ben Bergquam, a right-wing California radio host.

Sanders’ supporters also took to social media to post #GetWellBernie messages.

The senator from Vermont’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, retweeted one message from a supporter that read, “take my heart, Bernie!!”

Another issue, which his campaign manager refuses to point out is did Bernie used his Medicare insurance to cover his diagnostic studies, his stenting procedure or his post-op care? As they are touting Medicare for All after Bernie had a quick diagnosis and stenting of his coronary artery disease we should all remember that Bernie, as well as all of the candidates for the presidency, don’t have Medicare for their health care insurance. No, they all have Congressional Blue Cross and Blue Care. So, don’t fall for their politicization of healthcare. Again, I point out, how can you promote Medicare for all when you all have no idea of the impact on patients of being insured under Medicare and the multiple restrictions and the true expense of Medicare insurance!

The 3 Reasons the U.S. Health-Care System Is the Worst, the AMA and more on Medicare for All and an angry teenager scolding the United Nations!

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healthcare158[788] The head of the Commonwealth Fund, which compares the health systems of developed nations, pinpoints why America’s is so expensive and inefficient.

Olga Khazan reviewed the three reasons that the U.S. Health Care system is the worst. A woman has her blood pressure taken at the Care Harbor four-day free clinic, which offers free medical, dental, and vision care to around 4,000 uninsured people in Los Angeles.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, which regularly ranks the health systems of a handful of developed countries, the best countries for health care are the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Australia.

The lowest performer? The United States, even though it spends the most. “And this is consistent across 20 years,” said the Commonwealth Fund’s president, David Blumenthal, on Friday at the Spotlight Health Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.

Blumenthal laid out three reasons why the United States lags behind its peers so consistently. It all comes down to:

A lack of insurance coverage. A common talking point on the right is that health care and health insurance are not equivalent—that getting more people insured will not necessarily improve health outcomes. But according to Blumenthal: “The literature on insurance demonstrates that having insurance lowers mortality. It is equivalent to a public-health intervention.” More than 27 million people in the United States were uninsured in 2016—nearly a tenth of the population—often because they can’t afford coverage, live in a state that didn’t expand Medicaid or are undocumented. Those aren’t problems that people in places like the United Kingdom have to worry about.
Administrative inefficiency.“We waste a lot of money on administration,” Blumenthal said. According to the Commonwealth Fund’s most recent report, in the United States, “doctors and patients [report] wasting time on billing and insurance claims. Other countries that rely on private health insurers, like the Netherlands, minimize some of these problems by standardizing basic benefit packages, which can both reduce the administrative burden for providers and ensure that patients face predictable copayments.” In other words, while insurance coverage, in general, is great, it’s not ideal that different insurance plans cover different treatments and procedures, forcing doctors to spend precious hours coordinating with insurance companies to provide care.
Underperforming primary care.“We have a very disorganized, fragmented, inefficient and under-resourced primary care system,” Blumenthal added. As I wrote at the time, in 2014 the Commonwealth Fund found that “many primary-care physicians struggle to receive relevant clinical information from specialists and hospitals, complicating efforts to provide seamless, coordinated care.” On top of a lack of investment in primary care, “we don’t invest in social services, which are important determinants of health” Blumenthal said. Things like home visiting, better housing, and subsidized healthy food could extend the work of doctors and do a lot to improve chronic disease outcomes.

Together, these reasons help explain why U.S. life expectancy has, for the first time since the 1960s, recently gone down for two years in a row.

Two Experts Debunk Four Big Health Care Fallacies

Yuval Rosenbery of The Fiscal Times reported that in a The New York Times op-ed, Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert, and a former adviser in the Obama administration, and Victor Fuchs, a Stanford health economist, look to clarify what they call “four fundamental health care fallacies”:

Employers pay for workers’ health insurance.“Since 1999, health insurance premiums have increased 147 percent and employer profits have increased 148 percent,” they write. “But at that time, average wages have hardly moved, increasing just 7 percent. Clearly, workers’ wages, not corporate profits, have been paying for higher health insurance premiums.”
Medicare for All is unaffordable. As I have mentioned in previous posts Medicare for All is too expensive. “True, Medicare for All would increase federal health care spending. But that is not the same as increasing total health care spending, which was over $3.5 trillion last year,” Emanuel and Fuchs said. “We have our doubts about Medicare for All. But unaffordability is nota reason to oppose it. … When you hear a health care price tag in the trillions, know that the existing system has already brought us there.”
3. Insurance company profits drive health care costs.“The fact is, we could eliminate those profits and it would hardly matter to the cost of health care. You would not notice it in your premiums. … True, $22.1 billion is a lot of money — but it is 0.6 percent of health spending. And last year alone health care costs increased over $130 billion — six times insurance company profits. Health care spending would not be significantly cheaper if all insurance companies’ profits were zero.”

4. Price transparency can bring down health care costs.“Over 80 percent of the cost of medical care is paid by private and public insurance. Patients have little incentive to seek out the cheapest provider. When pricing websites exist, few patients use them. … Furthermore, price considerations are useful for choosing only about 40 percent of procedures — routine services like colonoscopies, M.R.I. scans and laboratory tests. Most of the expensive services — think heart catheterizations, cancer chemotherapy, and organ transplants — are not the kind of thing you decide based on price.”

AMA President: It’s Still ‘No’ to Single Payer

Shannon Firth, Washington correspondent of the MedPage, noted that Dr. Barbara McAneny still doesn’t believe in the Single Payer system for health care but she and the AMA applauds a ban on pharmacy gag clause and APMs.A single-payer healthcare system in the U.S. would break her practice, said the president of the American Medical Association (AMA), who argued that Medicare and other government programs as currently structured simply don’t pay enough.

“We need a payment system that the country can afford,” said Barbara McAneny, MD, AMA president, and a practicing oncologist/hematologist in New Mexico.

McAneny pointed out that in the portion of her practice that serves the Navajo Nation, 70% of payments are from governmental payers, and “I have struggled for the last 10 years to keep that practice breaking even.”

Medicare payments are designed to cover about 80% of the cost of doing business, McAneny said. If all her commercial patients were to pay Medicare rates, there would be no other place from which to shift costs, she explained. “My doors would be closed. I would no longer be able to make payroll.”

Moving to a single-payer healthcare system won’t fix what’s broken, she said during a meeting with reporters Tuesday to discuss a variety of issues, including drug pricing, value-based payments, and turf battles.

While she said she strongly supported Medicaid expansion in New Mexico, McAneny expressed skepticism about the possibility of a Medicaid “buy-in,” which would allow people to purchase Medicaid-based public insurance plans.

She pointed out that only about a quarter of the population in New Mexico has commercial insurance, and “Medicaid and Medicare do not cover the expenses of providing care.” With fewer patients to cost-shift from, independent practices and small rural practices “would not be able to keep the lights on.”

AMA policy supports patients buying “individually selected health insurance,” subsidized with advanced or refundable tax credits that correspond inversely to income, McAneny said.

McAneny also discussed the Trump administration’s recent efforts to curb drug prices and the challenge of transitioning from fee-for-service to value-based care.

She called the latest bill banning pharmacy gag clauses”really important. When patients discover that they can pay less than the co-pay to buy the drug, they need to know that because patients are going broke out there, trying to buy their drugs.”

Gag clauses prevent pharmacists from telling customers whether paying for their prescription might be cheaper if they paid the cash price instead of using their insurance.

Earlier this week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that drug makers would need to include the list price of any drug paid for by Medicare or Medicaid in their TV advertisements. In an AMA press release, McAneny stated that the HHS move seemed like “a step in the right direction,” although the AMA is opposed to direct-to-consumer advertising in general.

McAneny said greater transparency was a “first step” toward addressing such high drug costs.

“There’s so much the public doesn’t understand about the market, including the true costs of research and development and the role of middlemen, like pharmacy benefit managers and insurance mark-ups, she said.

“Before we suggest any sort of treatment, we think it’ s a good idea to make the diagnosis, and that means really understanding that entire process, which means they’re going to have to pull back the curtain and let us, the healthcare community, really take a look at that and figure out what adds value and what doesn’t,” she said.

McAneny was less supportive of changing the way Part B drugs are bought and paid for. In May, HHS Secretary Alex Azar suggested moving some Part B drugs administered in a physician’s office into the Part D program, in an attempt to negotiate more competitive prices.

“People cannot afford a 20% co-insurance on a drug that costs $5,000 a month,” she said.

In terms of value-based payment, McAneny said she’s excited about the work the physician-focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC) is doing. Doctors are well-positioned to help design alternative payment models, she noted.

“We see all the time places where healthcare dollars get wasted, and patients don’t get what they want,” she said, so allowing doctors to come up with new methods of care delivery, which incorporate things they’ve always wanted to do for their patients, has “tremendous potential.”

McAneny said she hopes Azar will test as many pilots projects as possible, and see what works, but not penalize groups who fail. “If you’re trying something innovative … sometimes you’re going to be wrong, and those people shouldn’t have to lose their practices… they should be allowed to fail quickly, and move on to something else,” she stated.

McAneny said she will present an alternative model to the PTAC in December.

Her proposed model integrates clinical data from a group of oncology practices with claims data “to set accurate and realistic targets that reflect what oncologists can actually control, rather than the total cost of care,” McAneny told MedPage Today in an email.

“We will measure quality by compliance with physician derived pathways that reflect the best care in the medical literature… [and] improve patient satisfaction by getting patients the care they need, when they need it, at a practice site that knows them and understands what they are going through.”

The model saves money by reducing hospitalizations and “aggressively managing or preventing” adverse effects.

Another challenge in healthcare is the scope of practice, with some physicians expressing concern that nurse practitioners and physicians assistants (PAs) are encroaching on their territory.

McAneny acknowledged that concern, noting that primary care physicians must be “incredible diagnosticians,” she said. “They need to know when a sore throat is a sore throat and when it’s really cancer.”

“In my own practice, where we have everyone working to the top of their license, I value my nurse practitioners and I value my PAs immensely, but I don’t expect them to be oncologists, and I don’t really expect them to be primary care doctors,” she added.

“Everybody has a place in healthcare,” McAneny stressed, “but I do not feel that a nurse practitioner who has gone to nursing school and done one extra year… and has not practiced in that post-doc process, has the same level of expertise to be that diagnostician.”

A new report from the AMA’s Council on Medical Service, “Covering the Uninsured Under the AMA Proposal for Reform,” also reaffirms that stance, calling for improvements in the Affordable Care Act — increasing subsidies, and expanding eligibility and the size of cost-sharing reductions — rather than “threatening the stability of coverage for those individuals who are generally satisfied with their coverage.”

There will be resolutions calling on the AMA to support federal laws that would not eliminate the private health insurance market and to collect data comparing Medicare reimbursement to the cost of delivering services.

ACTION ALERT: The A.M.A. must support Medicare for All!

But we find out that the President of the AMA may not reflect the total view of the national organization of physicians. On June 8, 2019, at 1:30 PM CST, students, physicians, nurses, allied health care workers, and activists from around the country will unite in Chicago to protest the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (A.M.A.).

Representatives of a rapidly growing coalition of Medicare for All supporters, including National Nurses United, Students for a National Health Program, Physicians for a National Health Program, People’s Action, Public Citizen, The Center for Popular Democracy, The Jane Addams Senior Caucus, various labor unions, teachers, activists, and more, will be taking a stand AGAINST corporate greed, misleading advertising, and the profit motive in health care.

And for a system that guarantees quality health care and choice of provider for all Americans, regardless of income.

The action recalls similar campaigns waged throughout the 1960s in which members of the African-American-led National Medical Association, the Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Poor People’s Campaign picketed the A.M.A.’s annual meetings because of its refusal to take a stand against segregated medical services and for allowing local medical societies to discriminate against physicians and patients of color.

When we join together, we can send a powerful message to the A.M.A. and corporate medicine that we won’t stop until every American is guaranteed quality medical care without going into debt or bankruptcy.

Everybody in, nobody out!

Also, I need to comment on that sixteen-year-old who was invited to a United Nation session where she berated the countries all about not taking up the environmental banner and cleaning up the world. She is a spoiled “child” who knows nothing about economics as well as politics and what it would take to move ahead with cleaning up the environment. Where are all the countries to get the trillions of dollars or Euros, etc. to make the changes that she demands?

Greta Thunberg excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating.

If world leaders choose to fail us, my generation will never forgive them

In a stinging speech on Monday, the teenage Swedish climate activist told governments that “you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.”

But Thunberg predicted the summit would not deliver any new plans in line with the radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are needed to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” a visibly emotional Thunberg said.

“The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.”

Suggestion for Miss Thunberg, get an education! Go to the university and get the real facts. Get an education so you can understand the system and the only ways that we can truly deal with our environmental issues! Instead, you sail around the world! Must be nice instead of working or going to school!

And back to health care next week.

Musings of a Doc with an MBA

Business strategy and healthcare

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The 3 Reasons the U.S. Health-Care System Is the Worst, the AMA and more on Medicare for All and an angry teenager scolding the United Nations!