Category Archives: Senator Bernie Sanders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden has room on health care, though limited by Congress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not in the real world, Republicans say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It may not look that way.

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

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

There is promise—but there are also questions.

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

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

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

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

What it means so far

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

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

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

What else to know

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

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

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

[r1]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden Says We Should Restore the ACA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Add a Public Option, but Not Medicare for All

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

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

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

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

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

Lower the Medicare Age

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

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

Provide Relief in the Covid-19 Pandemic

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

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

Prescription Drug Reform

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop Surprise Billing

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

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

Closely Monitor Healthcare Mergers

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

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

Overhaul Long-term Care

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

Restore Funding for Planned Parenthood

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

Boost Community Health Centers

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

Support Mental Health Parity

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

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

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

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

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

Reimbursements for Doctors Could Fall- No, Will Fall!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact of COVID-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many Physicians Want Major Reform

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Biden-Sanders Task Force

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the Nation Ready for Another Health Reform Battle?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ACA Has Survived-But at What Cost?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden Could Choose Issues Other Than Expanding Access

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even Without Reform, Expect Lower Reimbursements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can You Afford To Get Coronavirus? How to Prepare for the Virus andHow The U.S. Healthcare System Is Failing Us

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This is a lengthy post but with all the fear regarding COVID-19 I thought that it would be worth the time. I became more aware as we traveled to the West Coast for a half marathon at Napa Valley. There were many people on our planes wearing masks and my wife was so worried about our planned trip to Europe in April. The cruise companies now our offering to either give one hundred percent refund or hold the paid fees for 2 years to allow rescheduling of the cruises. Can you imagine what the Corona Virus scare is doing to economies around the world>

Sarah Midkiff reported that as the deadly coronavirus outbreak approaches pandemic status, the U.S. government remains in the midst of approving legislation for a $7.5 billion emergency spending bill. Meanwhile, coronavirus continues its spread in the U.S. — with 100 confirmed cases and six deaths across 15 states — so the need for these funds is more imperative than ever. The emergency bill will allocate money to the Department of Health and Human Services for vaccine development, protective and medical equipment, and aid for state and local governments affected by an outbreak, according to the Washington Post.

But, what legislators have yet to mention is whether subsidizing treatment or funding low-cost and free clinics will be part of the plan. The bill may address availability of vaccine development, but it does not directly address affordability of testing or treatment, which is of the utmost importance during a pandemic.

A report published by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) on Thursday stated that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently the only facility equipped to test for COVID-19. The CDC is not billing for testing, but the test itself isn’t the only line item on a possible medical bill. There is the cost of the doctor’s visit; other tests they might run in conjunction with COVID-19, such as standard flu tests; treatment and medication, as well as getting the vaccine when it becomes available. And, medical bills can grow astronomically high if someone requires in-patient care, like an overnight stay in the hospital.

Stories have already begun to emerge of Americans seeking testing only to find that their insurance was insufficient to the tune of thousands of dollars in medical bills. One such example is a man in Florida who faces a $3,270 medical bill after he went through his insurance when he was concerned he might have been exposed to coronavirus. He was confirmed negative for COVID-19 after testing positive for the flu via a standard flu test rather than the more expensive CT scan which has been proven to be the most consistent test in diagnosing coronavirus.

Others have undergone government-mandated treatment and found that, despite the procedure being required, they were the ones left to foot bills that totaled thousands of dollars. Experiences like this make it easy to see why a 2018 national poll conducted by West Institute and NORC at the University of Chicago found that 44% of Americans declined to see a doctor due to cost.

Notably, the U.S. is alone among other developed countries as the only one that doesn’t offer federally mandated paid sick leave. This makes it particularly difficult to follow the CDC’s current advice that people experiencing even mild respiratory symptoms should stay home, other than when getting medical care. Between a lack of mandated paid sick leave and approximately 27 million Americans currently without health insurance, the coronavirus outbreak is at risk of exhausting our already failing public health system.

Even among people with health insurance, 29% are underinsured, according to results from a 2018 Commonwealth’s Fund survey, meaning that even though they technically have an insurance plan, the copays and deductibles make seeking care unaffordable in relation to their income. Cases of the virus could go undetected and untreated simply because Americans cannot afford to be saddled with medical debt or go without pay to take sick leave (or both), thus encouraging a rapid spread of the virus as people attempt to “power through” in spite of symptoms.

And then there are the approximately 11 million undocumented U.S. residents: Many of these people are un- or under-insured, and also have to grapple with the justified fear of coming into contact with federal authorities, therefore preventing them from seeking medical care.

If further evidence is needed that our health care system has been crippled by privatization, government officials are not debating whether or not pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to profit from a vaccine, but are just figuring out by how much. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Service secretary, Alex Azar, would not commit to price controls on a coronavirus vaccine. “We need the private sector to invest… price controls won’t get us there,” said Azar.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded directly to Azar’s comments. “This would be a vaccine that is developed with taxpayer dollars…We think that should be available to everyone—not dependent on ‘Big Pharma,’” she said in a press release on February 27. She described the vaccine as needing to be “affordable,” but what does that even mean? What is affordable to some is not affordable to all.

Still, a vaccine – affordable or not – is a ways off. In a coronavirus task force briefing with Donald Trump on Monday, experts estimated that it would take a year to a year-and-a-half before a vaccine would be effective and safe for the public, reports CNN. Until then, the economic inequality that runs rampant in America is bound to be reflected in who can afford to survive this epidemic, and who can’t.

US may pay for uninsured coronavirus patients

Washington (AFP) – The US may invoke an emergency law to pay for uninsured patients who get infected with the new coronavirus, a senior health official said Tuesday.

Public health experts have warned that the country’s 27.5 million people who lack health coverage may be reluctant to seek treatment, placing themselves at greater risk and fueling the spread of the disease.

Robert Kadlec, a senior official with the Health and Human Services department told the Senate on Tuesday that talks were underway to declare a disaster under the Stafford Act, which would allow the patients’ costs to be met by the federal government.

Under this law, their health care providers would be reimbursed at 110 percent of the rate for Medicaid, a government insurance program for people with low income, he added.

“We’re in conversations, initial conversations with CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) to understand if that could be utilized in that way and be really impactful,” Kadlec told a Senate committee.

President Donald Trump also touched on the issue as he headed to a briefing on the coronavirus outbreak at the National Institutes of Health in Washington on Tuesday.

“We’re looking at that whole situation. There are many people without insurance,” Trump told reporters.

The number of Americans without health insurance began falling from a high of 46.5 million in 2010 following the passage of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).

It climbed again to 27.5 million in 2018, or 8.5 percent of the population, from 25.6 million the year before.

The reasons include policies by Trump’s administration that made it harder to enroll in Medicaid — such as adding requirements to work — or to sign up for insurance under the marketplaces created by Obamacare.

The Republican-held Congress also repealed a penalty on people who lack insurance, which may have led people to voluntarily drop out.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said patients who are advised by their health care providers to stay at home should do so for at least two weeks, but a work culture that emphasizes powering through while sick could compound the problem further.

The US is alone among advanced countries in not offering any federally mandated paid sick leave. While some states have passed their own laws, 25 percent of American workers lacking any whatsoever, according to official data.

Maia Majumder, an epidemiologist at Harvard, told AFP she was particularly concerned by low-wage workers in the service and hospitality sector, who cannot afford to take time off but could act as vectors to transmit the spread of the disease.

The latest coronavirus death rate is 3.4% — higher than earlier figures. Older patients face the highest risk.

The global death rate for the novel coronavirus based on the latest figures is 3.4% — higher than earlier figures of about 2%.

In contrast, the seasonal flu kills 0.1% of those infected.
A patient’s risk of death from COVID-19 varies depending on age and preexisting health conditions.
Though the latest numbers mark an increase in mortality, experts have predicted that the fatality rate of COVID-19 could decrease as the number of confirmed cases rises.

The latest global death rate for the novel coronavirus is 3.4% — higher than earlier figures of about 2%.

The coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, has killed more than 3,100 people and infected nearly 93,000 as of Tuesday. The virus causes a disease known as COVID-19.

Speaking at a media briefing, the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that the death rate was far higher than that of the seasonal flu, which kills about 0.1% of those infected.

The death rate is likely to change further as more cases are confirmed, though experts predict that the percentage of deaths will decrease in the longer term since milder cases of COVID-19 are probably going undiagnosed.

“There’s another whole cohort that is either asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic,” Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a briefing last month. “We’re going to see a diminution in the overall death rate.”

‘It is a unique virus with unique characteristics’

Tedros noted differences between the novel coronavirus and other infectious diseases like MERS, SARS, and influenza. He said the data suggested that COVID-19 did not transmit as efficiently as the flu, which can be transmitted widely by people who are infected but not yet showing symptoms.

He added, however, that COVID-19 caused a “more severe disease” than the seasonal flu and explained that while people around the world may have built up an immunity to the flu over time, the newness of the COVID-19 meant no one yet had immunity and more people were susceptible to infection.

“It is a unique virus with unique characteristics,” he said.

Tedros said last week that the mortality rate of the disease could differ too based on the place where a patient receives a diagnosis and is treated. He added that people with mild cases of the disease recovered in about two weeks but severe cases may take three to six weeks to recover.

Older patients face the highest risk

A patient’s risk of dying from COVID-19 varies based on several factors, including where they are treated, their age, and any preexisting health conditions.

COVID-19 cases have been reported in at least 76 countries, with a vast majority in China.

A study conducted last month from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the virus most seriously affected older people with preexisting health problems. The data suggests a person’s chances of dying from the disease increase with age.

Notably, the research showed that patients ages 10 to 19 had the same chance of dying from COVID-19 as patients in their 20s and 30s, but the disease appeared to be much more fatal in people ages 50 and over.

About 80% of COVID-19 cases are mild, the research showed, and experts think many mild cases haven’t been reported because some people aren’t going to the doctor or hospitals for treatment.

CDC reports 108 cases of coronavirus, including presumed infections; 4 more deaths

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday confirmed 17 new cases of the coronavirus and four more deaths due to the outbreak, bringing the total number of U.S. cases to 108, including among repatriated citizens.

Coronavirus is making some Republicans reconsider the merits of free health care

Tim O’Donnell reported that the Coronavirus has a lot of people re-thinking things. That apparently includes Republicans and government-funded health care.

With the possibility of an outbreak of the respiratory virus in the United States looming, the government is still trying to piece together its response. And it sounds like free testing could be on the table. Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), at least, thinks it’s really the only option. Yoho is normally known for opposing the Affordable Care Act, and certainly doesn’t seem likely to advocate for Medicare-for-All anytime soon. But he’s willing to blur the lines when an unforeseen circumstance like coronavirus comes to town and is even ok if you want call it “socialized medicine.”

Truly stunning to hear some Republicans advocate for free Coronavirus testing and treatment for the uninsured.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), one of the most anti-ACA members:

“You can look at it as socialized medicine, but in the face of an outbreak, a pandemic, what’s your options?”

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is contemplating funding doctors and hospitals so they can care for people who don’t have insurance should they become infected with the virus, a person familiar with the conversation told The Wall Street Journal. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Finally Make Telemedicine Mainstream in the U.S.

Time’s reporter, Jamie Ducharme noted that for years, telemedicine has been pitched as a way to democratize medicine by driving down costs, increasing access to care and making appointments more efficient. It sounds great—until you look at the data, and find that only about 10% of Americans have actually used telemedicine to make a virtual visit, according to one 2019 survey.

An outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 could change that. If extreme measures like mass quarantines come to pass, telehealth could finally have its bittersweet moment in the spotlight, potentially generating momentum that proponents hope will continue once life returns to normal.

“Something like having to stay home could springboard telehealth tremendously, because when we get over this—and we will—people will have had that experience, and they’ll be saying, ‘Well, why can’t I do other aspects of my health care that way?’” says Dr. Joe Kvedar, president-elect of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA).

As of March 3, more than 92,000 people worldwide have been sickened by the virus that causes COVID-19, including more than 100 in the U.S. As both numbers trend upward, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that increased person-to-person spread in U.S. communities is likely, and that containment measures may become increasingly disruptive to daily life. If the situation reaches the point where public health officials are encouraging or requiring people to stay home, the health care system may have to offer many medical appointments via telehealth services, the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier said during a Feb. 26 press briefing.

Kvedar says telehealth tools offered by health plans, private companies and pharmacies are ready and waiting for that possibility. There are some limitations to telehealth’s utility for COVID-19 testing—you can’t take a chest x-ray or collect a sample for lab testing remotely, after all—but Kvedar says it could be used for initial symptom assessment and questioning, as well as non-virus-related appointments that couldn’t happen in person due to precautions. If a patient turned up at an emergency room with possible COVID-19 symptoms, doctors could also do initial intake via virtual platforms, while keeping the patient in isolation to minimize spread within the vulnerable health care environment, he says.

Telehealth giants like Amwell and Teladoc are now advertising their availability for coronavirus-related appointments, and Teladoc’s stock prices spiked in late February. XRHealth, a company that makes health-focused virtual reality applications, is this week providing Israel’s Sheba Medical Center with VR headsets that will both allow doctors to monitor COVID-19 patients remotely, and enable quarantined patients to “travel” beyond their rooms using VR, says XRHealth CEO Eran Orr. The company will next week begin working with hospitals to deploy the technology in the U.S., Orr says.

All of these solutions seem logical. But in practice, there’s a “thicket of state laws and regulations that make telemedicine very complex…to implement broadly,” says Dr. Michael Barnett, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Insurers—especially Medicare—don’t always cover telehealth visits, and, since medical licenses are state-specific, there could be legal issues if a doctor is located in a different state than the patient they’re treating, Barnett says. Drug prescription and privacy laws can also complicate regulation, according to the American Hospital Association.

These regulatory issues, as well as a lack of patient awareness, have kept telehealth from being as widely adopted as it could be, Barnett says. COVID-19 could be “a good use case” for telemedicine, he says, but it will partially depend on lawmakers’ willingness to relax, or at least streamline, regulation.

The wheels are already in motion. On Feb. 28, telehealth groups including the ATA, the Personal Connected Health Alliance and the eHealth Initiative sent a letter to Congressional leaders, urging them to expand access to telehealth and to grant the Department of Health and Human Services the power to let Medicare cover telemedicine appointments during emergency situations. On March 3, Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego announced he was introducing a bill that would allow Medicaid to cover all COVID-19-related charges, including virtual appointments.

That’s a good step, but Julia Adler-Milstein, director of the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research, says there are still logistical challenges.

She says larger health systems that have invested heavily in telehealth, like Kaiser Permanente, have seen benefits from it, but providers with a less built-out infrastructure will have to grapple in real-time with questions like, “How do we know which patients are well-suited to telehealth?” and “How do we get their information into the doctor’s hands?” These issues are especially salient for patients with complex medical histories, who may have choose between seeing their regular doctor in person, potentially risking infection, or seeing a doctor virtually who does not have access to their medical records, she says.

Kvedar acknowledges that widespread adoption of telehealth during the COVID-19 outbreak may require some goodwill on the part of companies and doctors. Companies like CVS and Walgreens could waive fees for the use of their telemedicine services during the crisis, Kvedar suggests, or doctors could offer to see patients virtually for free for a few hours a week. “People pull together for all sorts of things,” he says.

Barnett is less optimistic that providers can seamlessly overcome regulations, but says patients and doctors will find a way through the outbreak with or without telemedicine, even if it means conducting many appointments over the old-fashioned telephone. “We have more pressing needs in this epidemic,” he says, “than telehealth availability.”

15 Italian tourists test positive for Covid-19, India springs into battle mode

Niharika Sharma reported that fifteen Italian tourists in India have been reportedly tested positive for the dreaded coronavirus, perhaps finally bringing home the full scale of the seriousness of the global health crisis to the country.

This is besides the six others who have been diagnosed with Covid-19 across the country, prompting India to take massive preventive measures.

The Italian tourists have been quarantined at a camp of the paramilitary, Indo-Tibetan Police Force, media reports said.

Fear and anxiety gripped India’s national capital region (NCR) after a 45-year-old man was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus infection in the city yesterday (March 3). This prompted authorities to step up the vigil.

Over 40 people in Delhi NCR, who came in contact with the patient, are under surveillance. Another 13 people have been screened in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra where he visited his family.

The man who self-reported at Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital had organised his son’s birthday party at Hyatt Regency on Feb. 28. The five-star hotel has asked staffers, who were on duty that day, to stay at home. “The hotel has also started to conduct daily temperature checks for all colleagues and contractors when they enter and exit the building,” the hotel said in a statement yesterday (March 3).

The school in Noida where the infected man’s son attended classes has been shut for the rest of the week, and five students are being screened.

Besides the Delhi man, an Italian tourist, and a person in Hyderabad, who travelled from Dubai to Bengaluru on Feb. 20 on an IndiGo flight, have also tested positive for the virus. ”We’re following all prescribed Airport Health Organisation guidelines,” IndiGo said in a statement yesterday. The airline has asked its four cabin crew who were on the aircraft to stay at home.

On guard

Authorities appear to be working overtime to track the footprints of all the patients and screen everyone who came in contact with them. “Our officers even visit the homes individually, taking necessary precautions, to check listed people for symptoms,” an official of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) under the health ministry told Hindustan Times on condition of anonymity. “For asymptomatic people, home quarantine for a stipulated period of time is good enough, but those who develop symptoms are moved to a hospital as per protocol.”

But the process could be tedious as the 69-year-old Italian tourist, who was tested positive in Jaipur on March 3,had travelled to six districts in India before arriving at Rajasthan. He and his wife, who has also tested positive, were part of a 21-member group, which landed in Delhi on Feb. 21. The rest of the group is in Agra, according to a Hindustan Times report.

The health ministry has now issued a travel advisory, suspending all regular visas/e-visas granted on or before March 3 to nationals of Italy, Iran, South Korea, and Japan, who have not yet entered India. The advisory also suspends visa on arrival issued until March 3 to Japanese and South Korean nationals who have not yet entered India.

The government has also made it mandatory for passengers entering India from other countries affected by coronavirus to fill forms with personal details and travel history to the health and immigration officials at 21 airports across the country and 12 major and 65 minor seaports.

Aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation has also asked carriers to ensure that adequate protective gears like surgical masks and gloves are available in flight for passengers.

In Delhi, the Kejriwal government has reserved 230 beds in isolation wards at 25 hospitals and also sent advisories to schools mentioning precautions to tackle the situation.

On March 3, the information ministry asked all private radio and TV channels to give “adequate publicity” to the travel advisory issued by the health ministry in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

The health ministry has also launched a series of TV commercials as part of its awareness program against the outbreak.

Here’s what you must keep in mind:

In addition, the Narendra Modi government has asked the army, the navy and the air force to prepared quarantine facilities for over 2,500 in coming days, as per the sources quoted by various media reports.

Preventive measures

Several events, where foreign delegates were expected to participate, have been cancelled or postponed.

The Indian Navy called off a multilateral naval exercise that was scheduled from March 18 in Visakhapatnam due to coronavirus. Around 30 countries were expected to take part in the event.

On March 3, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi said it is cancelling all upcoming on-ground launch events in India to reduce exposure risk in the wake of Covid-19.

Italy could have more than 100,000 coronavirus cases, expert warns

Reporter Will Taylor of the Yahoo News noted that Italy could have more than 100,000 cases of coronavirus, an expert has revealed.

Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London’s faculty of medicine, said he estimates there are “at least” 50,000 to 100,000 cases of the virus in the country, which is one of the worst affected by the virus.

Italy has 2,500 confirmed cases and has suffered 79 deaths.

Prof Ferguson told the BBC’s Today programme that he expects to see measures to tackle the virus rolled out in a matter of days.

“[Italy has] I think it’s over 50 deaths now,” he said, “so those people were probably infected three weeks ago, and for every person who dies we think there might be 100, maybe even 200 people infected.

“The lethality of this virus is not completely determined but it’s in that order… so the epidemic is probably doubling every week or so in Italy, so when you put those numbers together, we’d estimate somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 cases at the moment in Italy.

“At least, it could even be higher, cases may still be being missed even in severe cases.”

He said the UK is “several weeks” behind Italy and is in an earlier stage of an epidemic.

Authorities will be looking to slow the spread of the virus to try to relieve pressure on health systems and the UK government yesterday announced measures to tackle the virus.

Prof Ferguson said screening air passengers is imperfect and pointed out that Spanish flu spread around the world in the days before commercial air travel.

His figures mean the total number of Italy’s cases could outstrip the total number confirmed worldwide. Just over 93,000 have been reported globally as of Wednesday morning.

After mainland China – where the virus originated – South Korea is the next worst hit with 5,328 confirmed cases and 28 deaths.

Iran reports 77 deaths from its 2,300 officially reported cases.

A Coronavirus Guide for Older Adults (And Their Family Advocates)

Jeffrey Kluger noted that it’s hard enough getting old, what with all of the creeping ailments—diabetes, COPD, dementia, heart disease—that come along with age. Now add a novel coronavirus to the mix. There are more than 91,000 COVID-19 cases and 3,100 deaths as of writing, but the virus doesn’t hit all demographics equally hard—and seniors are the most vulnerable.

A late February study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that children 10 and under accounted for just 1% of all COVID-19 cases, for example, while adults in the 30-79 age groups represented a whopping 87%. The World Health Organization (WHO) found something similar in China, with 78% of patients falling between the ages of 30 and 69.

The older you get, the likelier you are not only to contract a SARS-CoV-2 infection (the virus that causes COVID-19), but to suffer a severe or fatal case. One study out of China found that the average age of COVID-19 patients who developed acute respiratory distress syndrome—a severe shortness of breath often caused by fluid in the lungs and requiring a ventilator—is 61. As early as January, Chinese health authorities were already reporting that the median age range for people who died of the disease was 75.

“Older people are more likely to be infected, especially older people with underlying lung disease,” says Dr. Teena Chopra, medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at Wayne State University. “For this population, mortality rates for COVID-19 are about 15%.”

In this sense, COVID-19 behaves a lot like seasonal flu. From 70% to 85% of all flu deaths and 50% to 70% of flu-related hospitalizations occur among people in the 65-plus age group, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The 2002-2003 SARS outbreak similarly proved lethal for more than 50% of people over 60 who contracted the disease..

None of this is a surprise of course. With their higher risk of underlying health conditions, older people are already under physical stress, and their immune systems, even if not significantly compromised, simply do not have the same “ability to fight viruses and bacteria,” says Dr. Steven Gambert, professor of medicine and director of geriatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

What’s more, seniors’ risk of exposure to any pathogen is often higher than that of other adults. There are 48 million seniors overall in the U.S., and while only about 3% of them reside in assisted living facilities, that still factors out to more than 1.4 million already at-risk people living in communal environments in which disease can spread quickly.

“People living in long care facilities have common meetings, they share common rooms,” says Chopra. Common meetings and common rooms can too often mean common pathogens.

In the event of coronavirus infection in a residential facility, Gambert says, those living there should avoid communal rooms and even meals, and, if possible, eat in their own rooms.

Even older people living at home face communal risks, since many of them regularly visit community senior centers, which are great places for socialization and provide a means to stay active and engaged, but can serve as pathogenic petri dishes. Gambert recommends being proactive in these situations, asking the staff of the senior center if they have had any cases of coronavirus, and if so, avoid those facilities.

The health system itself may be playing a significant role in putting seniors at risk. People with multiple medical conditions typically visit multiple specialists, and every such visit means entering a health care environment that can be teeming with viruses and bacteria. For now, Chopra advises older patients to postpone doctor visits that aren’t absolutely essential, like “their annual eye visit. Dental cleaning can be avoided too.” Telemedicine—conducting doctor visits that don’t require hands-on treatment online—can be helpful too, as can e-prescribing, with drugs being delivered straight to patients, sparing them exposure to pharmacies.

Staying current on vaccines—especially flu and pneumonia—can also be critical. Patients—or their family advocates—should ask doctors if they are up to date on their vaccines, or if they need a booster, especially since vaccine formulations change and improve over time. “If you haven’t had a pneumonia vaccine now is the time to get one,” says Gambert. “Even if you have had one in the past, ask your primary care provider if you need a newer one.”

Finally, it’s important to remember that the way COVID-19 presents itself in a younger person is not always the way it presents itself in someone who’s older. “Old people may not get a fever so just checking their temperature may not reveal the infection,” says Gambert.

Instead, he says, families and seniors should be alert for “atypical presentation” of COVID-19. A fall or forgetfulness, for example, might be a sign of infection, even if other, more common symptoms aren’t in evidence. “Any reason you don’t feel the same as you usually do should not be dismissed,” Gambert says.

The coronavirus epidemic is not going away any time soon. That means continued vigilance for our own health and special vigilance for that of seniors. The people who looked after us when we were younger need the favor returned now that they are older.

AOC says that ensuring access to free coronavirus testing and treatment is ‘absolutely’ an ‘argument for Medicare for All’

According to Joseph Zeballos-Roig AOC told the Huffington Post that the government is taking steps to guarantee free coronavirus testing and medical treatment.

“What this crisis has taught us is that, our health care system and our public health are only as strong as the sickest person in this country,” she told the outlet.

Concerns are increasing that the expensive nature of American healthcare could discourage people from seeking medical treatment if they are infected with the coronavirus.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview published Tuesday that ensuring free coronavirus testing and medical treatment is “absolutely” an “argument for Medicare for All.”

The New York congresswoman told the Huffington Post that if the government took steps to guarantee public access to testing and treatments by paying for it, “then what makes coronavirus different from so many other diseases, particularly ones that are transmissible?”

“What this crisis has taught us is that, our health care system and our public health are only as strong as the sickest person in this country,” she told the outlet.

Medicare for All is the signature plan of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a leading Democratic presidential candidate that Ocasio-Cortez has thrown her support behind. It would provide comprehensive health coverage and do away with deductibles, premiums, and other out-of-pocket spending. Private insurance would be eliminated as well.

As of Wednesday, the coronavirus has infected more than 94,000 people in at least 80 countries beyond China, its point of origin. The death toll from the respiratory disease it causes, COVID-19, has killed more than 3,200 people, mostly in China. There are at least 128 confirmed cases in the US.

Over the last week, concerns have mounted that the skyrocketing costs of healthcare could form a barrier discouraging people from getting tested and receiving treatment for the virus.

Business Insider recently analyzed the medical bill of a Miami resident who tested negative for the coronavirus but still racked up a $1,400 in costs, though he was insured. The majority of it came from an emergency room visit.

The Trump administration announced on Monday it was reviewing what products and services it would cover for coronavirus under Medicare and Medicaid, the two biggest federal health insurance programs.

Vice President Mike Pence said a day later the programs would insure diagnostic testing, making it free for patients. But it was not immediately clear what additional medical care would be paid for by the government.

“People who are subject to cost sharing — they are less likely to use medical care, even if they need it,” John Cogan, a health-law expert at the University of Connecticut, previously told Business Insider.

The White House is also reportedly considering reimbursing hospitals and doctors for treating uninsured coronavirus patients. In 2018, 27.5 million Americans had no health insurance, an increase from 25.2 million the year before.

The Most Common Coronavirus Symptoms to Look Out for, According to Experts Coronavirus symptoms are similar to those associated with the flu.

Unless you get a lab test, you can’t really distinguish between coronavirus COVID-19 and a typical cold or the flu. Dr. Wesley Long, Houston Methodist Director of Diagnostic Microbiology The severity of coronavirus

symptoms varies from person to person, Dr. Long notes. In more serious cases, the infection may lead to pneumonia, severe acute

respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, and even death, says Dr. Neal Shipley. Those most at risk of severe illness from coronavirus include the very young, the very old, and people with generally weakened or impaired immune systems. It’s difficult to pinpoint how long it takes

for coronavirus symptoms to appear. “The generally accepted window from exposure to onset of symptoms is 2-14 days,” says Dr. Long. To be clear, there’s still a lot that experts don’t know about COVID-19. And, you can only contract it if you’ve come into contact with someone who already has it.

So, rather than cause continual promotion of more fear we should all be prepared using good hand washing, cleaning surfaces with appropriate products, if you are sick seek assistance with your medical physician or nurse practitioner offices regarding the need to be tested, etc. The question looms out there, not if you will become sick with this virus, but when and how you care for yourself!

Stay well!!

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

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

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

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

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

Rolling back the ACA and the safety net

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

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

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

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

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

Health is more than just medical care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A blueprint for the future?

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

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

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

Democrats Get Personal on Healthcare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bloomberg To Grieving Family: Elderly Cancer Patients Are Too Expensive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Coronavirus Outbreak
What you should know

Where the virus has spread
Coronavirus 101
Coronavirus FAQs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why the gridlock?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obamacare, Medicare and more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our health data is vulnerable

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

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

Universal care is basic right

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘More illness, more sickness’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Public Medicare plan is withering’

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

ions of beneficiaries face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AbbVie didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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

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

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

Teva didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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

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

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

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

Democrats ask U.S. Supreme Court to save Obamacare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Delaney: On health care, bold vision with pragmatism is what America needs

Pulitzer prize winning editor, Art Cullen noted that in living rooms and coffee shops across all of Iowa’s 99 counties, I am forever reminded that health care is the paramount issue facing Americans. Our current system is deeply broken, and our country needs a bold vision and a pragmatic approach for improving health care. In many ways, a candidate’s approach to health care defines their governing and leadership style. It answers important questions about their values, vision, pragmatism and management style.

The Democratic Party should have as its true north universal access — where every American has health care coverage as a right of citizenship. We should support plans that encourage innovation — curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s — and that create a framework for getting costs under control. My Better Care Plan uniquely achieves all of these goals.

Universal access needs to be realistic

Currently, only three candidates have detailed plans for universal access — Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and I. Universal access is the right answer, both morally and economically. The plans advocated by Warren and Sanders, however, call for an extreme “single-payer” system, where the government is the only provider of coverage.

Aside from the extraordinary practical, fiscal and political issues associated with eliminating and replacing over 180 million private insurance plans, a single-payer system will massively underfund the health care system. Today, government reimbursement is dramatically less than reimbursements paid by insurance companies. Making the government the only payer in health care would underfund hospitals, particularly in rural America, resulting in hospital closures, practitioners closing up shop, and a reduction of investment in innovation.

On the other hand, most other candidates are advocating for a “public option” as our way forward. This is a modest proposal, insufficient for the challenges of our broken health care system. A public option is simply another insurer that is government-run. It will have co-payments, deductibles, and premiums. And it relies on people choosing to sign up. While it would provide more options than are currently available in the marketplace, undoubtedly helping many, it would not address the tragedy of the uninsured in our country.

Under BetterCare we achieve the ambition of universal coverage without the negatives of a single-payer system.

Under BetterCare, Medicare is left alone, because it works, and every American from birth to 65 (seniors are on Medicare) is auto-enrolled in a free federal health care plan that covers basic health care needs. This ensures every American has health care coverage. But unlike the single-payer Medicare for All, Americans could still choose private insurance. They could “opt out” of the BetterCare plan and buy private insurance or receive insurance from their employer. If they “opt out” they would receive a health care tax credit to offset the cost of health care they purchase or that their employer provides.

Alternatively, they could use the BetterCare plan and enhance it with supplemental plans, similar to how Medicare beneficiaries acquire supplemental plans. BetterCare is like Medicare. It provides guaranteed coverage but allows our seniors to have supplemental plans or “opt out” and accept a Medicare Advantage Plan.

BetterCare is similar to the plans of most developed nations that have universal coverage. As Art Cullen wrote, it provides “universal coverage while not eliminating private insurance.” By providing universal access, choice, protecting provider reimbursements, and encouraging innovation, BetterCare is bold, ambitious, practical and a political winner. Importantly, it can be fully paid for by applying the Obamacare subsidies and current federal and state Medicaid payments and by eliminating the corporate deductibility of health care.

It is bold, yet practical, and reflective of my approach to governing. As a former entrepreneur, CEO of two public companies and member of Congress, I bring a unique approach and real leadership experience, which is why I respectfully ask for your support.

Use Simple Economics to Contain Health Care Costs

Gary Shilling wrote for Bloomberg and makes so much sense when he looked at health care costs in terms of simple economics. (Bloomberg Opinion) — Spending on U.S. health care is out of control, expanding steadily from 5% of GDP in 1960 to 18% in 2018. There are, however, ways to curb the explosion in costs from both the demand and the supply side.

Health care costs per capita in the U.S. are almost double those of other developed countries, but life expectancy is lower than many, even South Korea, according to the CIA and Eurostat. Without restraint, costs will accelerate as more and more postwar babies age. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Medicare spending alone will leap from 3% of GDP to 8% by 2090.

Medical costs are understandably high since the system is designed to be the most expensive possible for four distinct reasons. First, with the constantly improving but increasingly expensive modern technology, the best is none too good when your life or mine is at stake. Also, few patients have the knowledge to decide whether a recommended procedure will be medically much-less cost-effective. The medical delivery system encourages a gulf between the providers who supposedly know what’s needed and their patients who don’t.

Second, patients are quite insensitive to costs since their employers or governments pay most health care bills. And those who are privately insured want to get their money’s worth from their premiums, especially since Obamacare does not allow insurers to set premiums on a health risk basis.

Third, the pay-for-service system encourages medical providers to over-service. After my dermatologist burned off the pre-cancerous growths on my face, he wanted me back in two weeks to be sure, but also to bill another office visit.

Finally, domestic training programs and facilities for medical personnel are inadequate. As a result, many MD residents and nurses come from abroad, while medical schools of dubious quality in the Caribbean train U.S.-born physicians.

To control costs on the demand side, use the appeal of money. The importance of their health to most Americans means they will spend proportionally more on medical services than other goods and services, but they’ll think twice if it’s money they otherwise can keep. Increasing deductibles and co-payments are moving in that direction. In 1999, employees on average paid $1,500, or 22%, of $6,700 in family health coverage premiums, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The total rose to $26,600 in 2019, but employees’ share has climbed to $6,000, or 29%.

Medical savings accounts also make patients more aware of costs. Companies give employees a set amount of money and they can keep what they don’t spend on health care.

Accountable Care Organizations, now authorized by Medicare, attack the fee-for-service problem. The medical providers who participate are encouraged to be efficient since they can retain part of any savings due to cost controls as long as they provide excellent care.

To increase the supply of medical personnel, American medical and nursing schools can be expanded with government help. Also, shortening the whole training process would save time and get huge student debts under control. Does a physician need a four-year bachelor’s degree before beginning medical school?

Cartels among hospital medical specialties can be attacked. Now, physicians in, say, the general surgery department limit competition by controlling who has the privileges to use their institution’s facilities.

In another development, the entrepreneurial model of a small group of MDs operating a practice is fading in the face of high costs of medical record-keeping and other regulatory requirements. Over half of physicians now work for hospitals, either on their main campuses or in satellite facilities. This may shift the emphasis of many from money to medicine.

Limiting malpractice insurance premiums, a major outlay for medical providers, can also cut medical costs. Texas placed a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages, i.e., pain and suffering, in 2003. Texas Department of Insurance data reveals that medical malpractice claims, including lawsuits, fell by two-thirds between 2003 and 2011, and the average payout declined 22% to $199,000.

Also, average malpractice insurance premiums plunged 46%, according to the Texas Alliance for Patient Access, a coalition of health care providers and physician liability insurers. And physicians were then attracted to Texas. The Texas Medical Association reports that in the decade since malpractice awards were capped, 3,135 physicians came to the Lone Star State annually, 770 more than the average in the prior nine years.

At present, Americans basically pay the development costs of new drugs while other countries with centralized pharmaceutical-buying skip the expenses of R&D, field trials, etc., and only pay the much-lower marginal cost of production. Allowing Medicare to join Medicaid to negotiate drug prices could reduce costs if foreigners can be convinced to share development costs. Otherwise, new drug development would be curtailed. The Trump administration’s new rules that force health insurers and hospitals to publish their negotiated prices may force costs to the lowest level.

One approach that doesn’t work in easing the burden on consumers of medical costs is increasing overall government subsidies. They tend to be offset by higher costs, much as higher college tuition and fees often dissipate more scholarship aid. Ever notice that the most modern, prosperous institutions in town tend to be hospitals, hugely subsidized by governments?

Health care is critical, but that doesn’t mean its costs aren’t subjected to supply and demand. Then how do we assess the value as well as the costs and cost limitations? Are drug companies as well as insurance companies making way too much in profits by taking advantage of we the honest patients??

There many parts of the eventual answer to our need for a health care program which can service all at reasonable costs and each “part” needs thorough investigation and real solutions and that just addressing only one or two of these “parts” will never be sustainable!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affordable Care Act funding in question after health insurance taxes repealed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were more questions that had people Googling in 2019.

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

How to lower blood pressure
What is keto?
How to get rid of hiccups
How long does the flu last?
What causes hiccups?
What causes kidney stones?
What is HPV?
How to lower cholesterol
How many calories should I eat a day?
How long does alcohol stay in your system?

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

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

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

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!

A British doctor was treated in an American emergency room and said it revealed how broken US healthcare really is, The Republicans on Healthcare and Obamacare Again!!

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“You should never, ever have to say, ‘I can’t afford this medical treatment I need,'” he said. Really??
He experienced American healthcare firsthand when he went to the emergency room in the US with a bloody finger.
Adam Kay says he never paid a single medical bill in his life — until, while vacationing in the US, he got a piece of glass lodged in his finger.

His finger sprang open, spurting bright red blood in every direction.

“It was really embarrassing. It was like a little fire hose,” the former obstetrician told Insider. “It looked like there’d been some sort of massacre, and the blood was coming, and I couldn’t stop it bleeding.”

That was the day that Kay got a glimpse of just how different the US healthcare system is from the system in his home in the UK, where medical care is taxpayer-funded.

Kay swiftly headed off to the nearest emergency room, travel-insurance card in hand, for care.

“They took my card details and my insurance details,” he recalled. “That was the most important thing. And that was quite weird, because that just doesn’t happen back home.”

Kay, a former National Health Service worker who chronicled his time as a doctor in a bestselling book, “This Is Going to Hurt,” said he took great pride in being a doctor in the NHS — what he called the “closest thing” Brits have to “a national religion.”

One of the biggest differences between the UK and US health systems, he’s noticed, is the pay-as-you-go, employer-bankrolled nature of many American health plans. He said the for-profit US health system undermined the idea that healthcare is a basic human right.

“The NHS was founded on the principle that it’s free at the point of delivery and you’re treated according to clinical need, not ability to pay — whether you live in Windsor Castle or on a bench outside Windsor Station,” Kay wrote in his book. “Other systems around the world might be more efficient, but I’d drag myself out of a coma to argue that none of them is fairer.”

Kay acknowledged that it’s not a perfect system. In recent years, it’s been tough for the NHS to find enough doctors and nurses to go around. With Brexit on the horizon, many doctors are worried that the shortages will only get worse.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Conservative Party, famous for slashing the NHS’s budget in recent years, won an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats in the country’s general election on Thursday. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Conservative leader, has promised to reverse course and make the national healthcare system the first priority. Even so, he’s proposing to spend less than his left-wing rivals.

Despite issues of cash and people power, the NHS still tends to outperform private care systems in the US. For example, the NHS said that in November, more than 80% of patients who were rushed to the ER were admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours. In California, the average ER patient can expect to wait more than 5 1/2 before admission. Life expectancy is also shorter in the US by more than two years.

“I feel like America’s been gaslit about what the NHS is,” Kay said. “I speak to hugely intelligent people over here who’ve just been slightly brainwashed into the idea that healthcare is rationed.”

Instead, he said, it’s the US system that has “got this wrong.”

“You’ve got yourself worked up into this lunatic situation where everything’s itemized and everything’s become hyperinflated, because it’s become a marketplace,” Kay said. “I don’t think that should ever play a part in medicine. They’re two separate things. Do what’s best, clinically.”

That was not how Kay’s trip to the ER went.

Money should not dictate best practices in medicine, Kay said- hmmm, and that’s why the most complex, complicated cases in other countries come to the U.S. for treatment!!

After the bleeding stopped, Kay was shocked when his doctor said he’d have to decide what to do based on how much he wanted to spend.

“They said, ‘Normally, because it was a glass injury, we would want to X-ray it, just to make sure that nothing’s got into the joint, but that will be an extra $1,500.’ I’m suddenly thinking, do I really [want this X-ray]? I imagine I’ll get this back from my travel insurance, but if I don’t, that’s a lot of money on my holiday … And then I suddenly thought, no! If I was the doctor back home, I wouldn’t suggest it as an option. I would say, ‘This is best practice.'”

The cost of US healthcare has consistently been at the top of the list of issues Americans are most worried about. Healthcare bills are the most common reason Americans file for bankruptcy protection. In the UK, while people are still concerned about the direction of their national healthcare system, they’re more likely to say their top life worry is a looming Brexit deal, or crime, or maybe the environment.

“You should never have to sell your house ’cause you got ill,” Kay said. “You should never, ever have to say, ‘I can’t afford this medical treatment I need.’ I’ve just grown up in an environment where it’s effectively a human right. You get the healthcare you need.”

Interesting, then who pays the bill and if the government is paying all the bills and if there is no fear of bills and who will pay them the patient can ask for anything to treat them without care as to expense and can go from doc to doc without care as to cost. Not a happy scenario.

A growing number of Republicans say they’re satisfied with US healthcare costs — even as insurance prices have surged 20% in the past year

Joseph Zeballos-Roig noted that a growing number Republicans are satisfied with the cost of healthcare in the United States, according to a new Gallup poll released Wednesday.

The increase comes as another major index from the Labor Department showed average insurance prices spiking 20% over the last year.

The poll noted overall satisfaction with US healthcare costs is the highest since 2009 as just over one in four Americans are content with the healthcare pricing environment — though much of that boost was driven by the uptick in Republican approval.

It suggests that heightened partisanship is swaying Republicans on healthcare just as it has been on the economy, another issue where they are much likelier than Democrats to view the situation more favorably, An growing number of Republicans are satisfied with the cost of healthcare in the United States, according to a new Gallup poll released Wednesday. The increase comes as another major index from the Labor Department showed average insurance prices spiking 20% over the last year.

The Labor Department’s consumer price index, which tracks the average change over time in prices paid for goods and services, said the cost of overall medical care rose 5.1% since Nov. 2018. That measure also incorporates doctors’ visits and hospital services.

The cost of health insurance had the biggest jump over the past year at 20.2%, representing one part of the broader healthcare industry. Other elements such as the price of doctors’ visits and hospital services saw more modest increases at 1.4% and 3.3%, respectively.

By comparison, only 9% of Democrats were satisfied with healthcare costs in the US, according to the Gallup poll.

Still, another recently-released Gallup poll showed both Democrats and Republicans broadly satisfied with what they pay for their own healthcare, though there was a notable dip in Democratic satisfaction and an increase among Republicans.

The cost of healthcare, though, continues to rise in the United States.

That’s led to Democratic primary candidates to propose a variety of methods to reform American healthcare. They range from incrementally shoring up the Affordable Care Act and introducing an optional government insurance plan to enrolling every American into a government-run insurance system.

Trump has repeatedly promised to introduce another plan to replace Obamacare, but he hasn’t done so yet.

House Republicans rolled out their own alternative in October, but it looks a lot like the unpopular “skinny repeal” version that was narrowly defeated by a single Senate vote in 2017. That one has almost no chance of becoming law before the 2020 election as it would have to pass the Democratic-led lower chamber.

Striking down Obamacare would open a path to better, more affordable health care

Realize that I really believe that Obamacare was and still is a well thought out health care system, but my concern is the lack of long term financing of the program, especially in comparison to the new program touted by the Democratic liberals running for president. Now, Thomas Price and Alfredo Ortiz and Opinion contributor noted that The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas is expected to rule soon on the constitutionality of Obamacare. While its decision will have significant implications for American health care policy, it won’t affect people’s health coverage for at least a couple of years as the appeals process plays out. In the meantime, a ruling striking down Obamacare would give the country the opportunity and the impetus to unite behind a health care reform plan that actually lowers costs, increases choices and improves the doctor-patient relationship.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare was constitutional under the government’s power to tax. However, President Donald Trump’s tax cuts eliminated the tax, more commonly known as the penalty, for not purchasing health insurance. In February 2018, 20 states led by Texas filed suit against the federal government, arguing that Obamacare was no longer constitutional because the tax upon which the law had been based no longer existed. Without this tax, the plaintiffs argued, the law’s individual mandate is nothing more than the unlawful federal compulsion to purchase health insurance.

Last December, a federal judge in Texas agreed with this reasoning and declared Obamacare unconstitutional. But he also issued a stay on his judgment, allowing the law — the Affordable Care Act — to remain while the case is being appealed in order to save Americans potentially needless uncertainty. The case, Texas vs. Azar, was then appealed to the 5th Circuit.

Disgraceful fearmongering

Politicians and commentators claim that this case threatens to eliminate health care coverage for Americans covered by Obamacare. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading the appeal, called the lower court ruling “an assault on 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions, on the 20 million Americans who rely on the ACA for health care.” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries claims that the Trump Justice Department is trying to “destroy health care for tens of millions of Americans.”

Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the health care industry-funded Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, warns that if Obamacare is deemed unconstitutional, “the chaos that would ensue is almost impossible to wrap your brain around. The marketplaces would just simply disappear and millions of people would become uninsured overnight, probably leaving hospitals and doctors with millions and millions of dollars in unpaid medical bills. Medicaid expansion would disappear overnight.”

This is fearmongering of disgraceful proportions. In reality, Democrats would appeal a plaintiff’s victory to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the trial court stay would remain in effect. The earliest the high court would be able to hear the case would be next fall at the start of its next session, barring an expedited Supreme Court timeline. Based on the usual timeline between hearings and rulings, this means the soonest it would issue a final decision would be the spring of 2021. Obamacare health coverage already purchased and planned upon for 2021 would likely continue.

Listen to your doctor: Medicare for All government chokehold would be even worse than private insurance

In the meantime, policymakers and reformers can develop a health care alternative that fixes the many flaws in Obamacare while keeping its protections for those with preexisting conditions. Obamacare has done nothing to control spiraling medical costs and diminishing health care choices for many ordinary Americans. Despite their different reform visions, Republicans and many Democrats are united in their agreement that the country must move on from Obamacare.

‘Medicare for All’ would be worse

Yet the solution proposed by these Democrats — “Medicare for All” — would exacerbate our current cost and choice problems even further. The Mercatus Center of George Mason University estimates that Medicare for All would cost $32 trillion over 10 years. That means one year would amount to more than two-thirds of the entire 2020 federal budget.

The only way government-run health care could attempt to control costs is by rationing care — meaning fewer options, longer wait times and less innovation.

‘Medicare for All’ is unpopular: Democrats could lose to Trump if they abandon Obamacare and private health insurance

A better alternative is the Job Creators Network Foundation’s “Healthcare for You” framework, which prioritizes reform from the bottom up rather than the top down. In practice, this means deregulating insurance markets and allowing state officials to set insurance parameters while maintaining protections for those with preexisting conditions. Instead of the one-size-fits-all health care plans that proliferate today, this reform would unleash a flood of new insurance options — from Cadillac to catastrophic — that patients could tailor to their unique needs.

By also prioritizing direct medical care, transparent prices and expanded tax-free health management accounts (also called health savings accounts), a true health care market would emerge, allowing patients to shop for coverage while prices fell.

A Texas vs. Azar ruling that deems Obamacare unconstitutional will help spur such long-overdue patient-centric health care reforms. It will not immediately remove lifelines for patients, as critics claim.

Sunday Deadline Looms For Affordable Care Act Open Enrollment

Brakkton Booker alerted us all that for millions of Americans, time is running out to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplace healthcare.gov.

For those who will not receive health coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2020 through an employer or other programs like Medicaid, Medicare or the Children’s Health Insurance Program — commonly referred to as CHIP — the deadline to purchase health insurance is Sunday, Dec. 15.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar tweeted a reminder: “If you decide that purchasing coverage through healthcare.gov is the right decision for you, make sure you select coverage by this Sunday.”

December 15 is the deadline to shop for 2020 plans.

Costs are down and choices are up for 2020 plans. If you decide that purchasing coverage through

is the right decision for you, make sure you select coverage by this Sunday.

Sign-ups for 2020 coverage in the first six weeks of open enrollment for the ACA, also referred to as Obamacare, are down slightly, trailing last year’s totals by 6%. However, this decline is happening at a slower rate when compared to 2019 coverage sign-ups in the first six weeks. That decline dipped 12%, according to Modern Healthcare.

The publication also notes that the latest numbers “don’t include the millions of people who will be automatically enrolled in coverage at the conclusion of open enrollment.”

NPR’s Health Policy reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin told NPR’s Up First podcast on Saturday that enrollment has been down every year since 2016.

“Last year more than 11 million people enrolled and we’re on track to be slightly behind that this year,” Simmons-Duffin said.

Many experts blame the drop in sign-ups on the Trump administration making sharp reductions in outreach efforts to connect would-be insurance purchasers to available plans.

“One of the actions that President Trump’s administration took to change the [Affordable Care Act] law is to radically cut back the funding to do outreach and to do advertising to let people know that this exists,” Simmons-Duffin said.

Kaiser Health News points out there is typically “a flurry in the last few days before the Dec. 15 deadline” when last-minute participants decide to sign-up.

Some states have seen double-digit declines. In Arizona, for example, enrollments are down 17% from this time a year ago, according to the Arizona Republic. The paper cites “apprehension among some Latino families over enrolling in anything government-related” as one possible cause for the drop off.

Meanwhile, Delaware Public Media reports a 1.7% decline from last year. It adds: “Lagging enrollment comes despite premiums in Delaware dropping for the first time since the ACA became law seven years ago.”

Health officials in California announced Thursday more than 130,000 people signed up for new coverage plans this year — an increase of 16% compared to the open enrollment period last year.

For those who miss the open enrollment sign-up period, not all is lost. The health care law does allow, in specific cases, a special enrollment period where people can sign-up after the open enrollment period ends.

The government lists circumstances including losing health insurance, getting married, moving, having a baby or adopting a child as “life events” that would make applicants eligible.

And the confusion continues with no real solution in the horizon! Let’s get to the discussion that I had promised, what a single-payer system is really all about!

Musings of a Doc with an MBA

Business strategy and healthcare

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