Posts Tagged ‘medical care’

A Plea to Gov. Brown

January 13th, 2011

Below is a letter OneCare supporter, Coline George, addressed to Gov. Jerry Brown. The letter has been edited here for clarity and to protect the identities of those involved.

Dear Gov. Brown,

I believed you to be a good governor before, and I pray for the sake of California that you will give this state what it needs now. I worked for your election because I believe in you. You can heal California’s woes.

California’s greatest expense is medical care for it citizens, government employees and elected officials. I would like to give you a couple of examples:

I paid thousands of dollars in 2010 for my medical insurance. I had one doctor’s visit and  lab. The lab was $525.00, which was negotiated down to $72.62 by my insurance company. My insurance company paid $0.00. I paid $72.62.  The doctor bill was $120.00, adjusted to $35.00, also paid by me. Based on this one visit, I got screwed — my doctor and the lab were screwed, and the insurance company made out like the bandit it is. I believe there is more fraud than honest dealings in medicine at every level.

A friend of mine (one of the United States’ longest living heart transplant survivors) had to go to the hospital for a check up. Rather than my friend’s health, the doctor was more interested in changing his medication to one that cost five times as much as the medication he was already taking. The pharmacist said it was better if he didn’t change meds; we knew that the cyclosporine he was on worked very well. My friend told the doctor that his employers were strained by his medical costs already, and he wanted to keep his job. The doctor was not touched by their hardship or my friend’s. We both believe there are kickbacks even to nurse practitioners. To put the medical care in the hands of counties is to add at least two more levels to the fraud and abuse.

California OneCare could end most of the abuses, and it would cost the state less money than it is paying out now. It could also afford to give honest doctors the money they deserve.

I wrote a letter to the doctor. Afterwards, my friend visited the clinic, only to have an adverse reaction because he was not given the appropriate saline to wash the dye out of his system. He wanted to live. He was afraid to go back. I made him drink water all night long; he was doing well the next day. My friend is in a university study because he has lived much longer with the original transplant than expected.

This is just one incident out of millions that happen daily in California.
Sincerely,
Coline George

PS: You have the ability to accomplish what our president could not. Please sign California OneCare.

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Don McCanne, MD: Victor Fuchs explains resistance to national health insurance

December 14th, 2010

Government Payment for Health Care — Causes and Consequences

By Victor R. Fuchs, Ph.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine
December 1, 2010

The most obvious, easily quantifiable difference between the United States and countries that have national health insurance is that those countries spend much less on health care, whether measured per capita or as a share of the gross domestic product. Not only is the United States the highest spender, but the gap between it and the other countries is unnaturally large.

The difficult question is why the special interests have more influence over health policy in the United States than they do elsewhere. The answer probably lies in part in the structure of the U.S. political system, including the role of primary elections, long and expensive election campaigns, the separation of powers, the numerous congressional committees and subcommittees with overlapping authority, and the need for supermajorities in the Senate in order to pass meaningful legislation. But the quirks of the political system can’t be the whole answer. If the U.S. public wanted a different outcome, over time they could move policy in that direction.

A second large difference between health care in the United States and in countries with national health insurance is the more important role of redistribution in the latter countries. Such redistribution is evident in the greater equality of access to care and in the sharing of costs through taxes on income or payroll, value-added tax or sales tax, or other forms of taxation that are either proportional or progressive with respect to income. Of course, all insurance is redistributive after the fact. The large amount of care utilized by a small proportion of policy holders is paid from the premiums of others who use little care. The important distinction is that under a national health insurance system, the redistribution occurs before the event, since it is clear that some individuals will pay much less tax than the value of their insurance and some will pay much more.

Since redistribution plays a greater role in the health care systems of other countries than it does in the United States, there is an implication that a more egalitarian ethos holds sway in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. From de Tocqueville to the present, many observers have commented on the stronger role of individualism in the United States than elsewhere, but there is no consensus regarding its explanation. Possible contributors to the phenomenon include the heterogeneity of the population, the revolutionary origins of the country with its dedication to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and the absence of many centuries of a common language, history, and culture. In speculating about the possible rise of despotism in a democracy, de Tocqueville painted a grim picture of individualism taken to the extreme. He wrote, “Each . . . living apart, was a stranger to all the rest — his children and private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone.”

The lower spending and the greater redistribution in countries that have national health insurance are not independent phenomena. If spending in these countries were at U.S. levels, the taxation required to accomplish their redistribution goals would probably wreck the economy. Given the social or political desire to redistribute health care resources, constraints on spending become a necessity. These constraints take various forms, such as controls over the number and specialty mix of physicians, limits on facilities and acquisition of expensive technologies, hard bargaining over prices charged by drug companies and other suppliers, and restraints on physicians’ fees and incomes, among others.

Because the governments in these countries pay for most medical care — usually 70 to 90% of total expenditures — they are in a good position to apply these cost-restraining measures. They have what economists call “monopsony power.” The U.S. government, although it pays for almost 50% of health care, makes very little use of its power to restrain costs. Thus, in one sense, Americans wind up in the worst of all worlds, with government bearing a big part of the burden of paying for health care, with the concomitant large burden of taxes, but exercising very little control over the cost of care. As an indication of how absurd the situation is in the United States, government currently spends more per capita for health care than eight European countries spend from all sources on health care.

http://healthpolicyandreform.nejm.org/?p=13263

And…

What’s Ahead for Health Insurance in the United States?

By Victor R. Fuchs, Ph.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine
June 6, 2002

The announcement that most of the nation’s biggest insurers — Aetna, CIGNA, Humana, the United Health Group, and Wellpoint Health Network — will be introducing a new kind of health plan during the next year or two signals the beginning of a new era in health insurance in the United States. These plans feature a complicated menu of premiums, copayments, and deductibles. One of their major effects will be to shift the burden of health care costs from employees who use little care to those who use more. Thus, the new plans will be another nail in the coffin of health insurance as a form of social insurance.

The Reemergence of Social Insurance

The case for the fairness of the social-insurance model will be strengthened as people realize that most health problems have, at least in part, a genetic basis. The case for the model’s efficiency will benefit from recognition that employment-based insurance has high administrative costs but provides no advantages to society as a whole. The desire to exert more direct control over increasing expenditures will provide an additional reason to introduce some form of national health insurance.

The timing of such a change, however, will depend largely on factors external to health care. Major changes in health policy are political acts undertaken for political purposes. The political nature of such changes was apparent when Bismarck introduced national health insurance to the new German state in the 19th century. It was apparent when England adopted national health insurance after World War II; and it will be apparent in the United States as well. National health insurance will probably come to the United States after a major change in the political climate — the kind of change that often accompanies a war, a depression, or large-scale civil unrest. Until then, the chief effect of the new plans will be to make young and healthy workers better off at the expense of their older, sicker colleagues.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200206063462314

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

In his 2002 NEJM article, Victor Fuchs explained the inevitability of national health insurance in the United States, but cautioned that will likely only come to our nation “after a major change in the political climate – the kind of change that often accompanies a war, a depression, or large-scale civil unrest.” In his current NEJM article, he provides plausible reasons as to why there has been such resistance to the inevitability of national health insurance – intense enough perhaps to require political upheaval, if we expect action. We have been trying war and deep recession. Does that mean our only hope left is “large-scale civil unrest”?

Re-posted with permission from pnhp.org.

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Don McCanne, MD: International comparisons: It’s the insurance, stupid!

November 29th, 2010

Consumers and Insurance: Experiences In Eleven Countries

By Chris Fleming
Health Affairs Blog
November 18, 2010

As the United States begins implementing health reform, how does the U.S. experience compare with that of other high-income countries? To answer that question, The Commonwealth Fund conducted its thirteenth annual health policy survey, this year focusing on access, cost, and care experiences. The survey findings were published today in a Health Affairs Web First article by Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen and coauthors.

Overall, the survey identified significant differences between countries and found that US adults — even when insured — were the most likely to incur high medical expenses, spend more time on paperwork, and have more claims denied.

The countries surveyed were Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Key findings include the following:

*  Twenty percent of US adults surveyed said they had had serious problems paying medical bills in the previous year. Responses to the same question from the other ten countries were in the single digits. US respondents were also significantly more likely than adults in other countries to have gone without care because of cost.

*  Thirty-five percent of US adults had out-of-pocket medical spending of $1,000 during the previous year, a far higher percentage than in any other country.

*  A lower proportion of adults in the United States (70 percent) than in all other countries except Sweden (67 percent) and Norway (70 percent) were confident that they would receive the most effective treatment when needed.

*  When asked about access to prompt medical care, 57 percent of US adults said they had seen a doctor or nurse the same or next day the last time they were sick and needed care. Switzerland had the most rapid access (93 percent). Adults in three other countries (Canada, Norway, and Sweden) reported longer waits than US adults.

*  Nearly one third of US adults (31 percent) reported either denial of payments by insurers or time-consuming interactions with insurers, a higher rate than in all other countries. Twenty-five percent of US respondents reported that their insurance company denied payment or did not pay as much as expected; 17 percent said they spent a lot of time on paperwork or disputes for medical bills or insurance — the highest rates in the survey.

*  The United States had the widest and most pervasive differences in access and affordability by income of the eleven countries. The United Kingdom had the least.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2010/11/18/consumers-and-insurance-experiences-in-eleven-countries/

And…

How Health Insurance Design Affects Access To Care And Costs, By Income, In Eleven Countries

By Cathy Schoen, Robin Osborn, David Squires, Michelle M. Doty, Roz Pierson and Sandra Applebaum
Health Affairs
November 18, 2010

US Insurance Reforms: Challenges Ahead
Concerns expressed by US respondents were concentrated in the working-age population that is the target of insurance reforms. In this age group, wide disparities by income for those insured throughout the year underscore the importance of the Affordable Care Act’s emphasis on benefits with income-related provisions. The law will expand eligibility for Medicaid to those earning 133 percent of the federal poverty level. It will also provide subsidies for premiums for people up to 400 percent of poverty and for cost sharing for people up to 250 percent of poverty.

However, by international standards, the United States will remain an outlier for cost sharing. The annual limits for the least expensive benefit option will range from $2,000 per person ($4,000 per family) for those with incomes just above 133 percent of poverty, to $6,000 per person above subsidy thresholds. Families can opt for lower cost exposure, but only if they can pay higher premiums.

As US reforms unfold, it will be important to monitor access and affordability. The Affordable Care Act will provide billions of dollars in subsidies for premiums and cost sharing to address affordability for individuals and families with low or modest incomes. Even so, it is still possible that some of the insured will remain at substantial financial risk for care they cannot afford when sick and bills they cannot pay.

Even after the enactment of health reform, the United States will also remain unique among countries in that it covers low-income people in a separate program. This poses the dual challenge of promoting equity across programs and ensuring continuity of insurance. In the other ten countries in our survey, providers were typically paid the same amount regardless of patients’ incomes, which is not currently the case in the United States. Nor is it likely to be the case after full implementation of health reform. Avoiding coverage gaps as patients’ circumstances change will require creative efforts to enable single portals of entry for people to enroll in publicly sponsored and private insurance, and smooth transitions as families gain or lose eligibility for insurance. To the extent that provider networks also differ for those low-income insurance programs, continuity of care as well as insurance will remain at risk after reforms take effect.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.2010.0862v1

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

Compared to other high-income nations, the health care financing system in the United States does not perform well. We pay more; we have greater problems paying medical bills; we have excessive out-of-pocket spending; we have greater hassles with insurers; and we have the greatest disparities in access and affordability based on income levels.

We clearly needed reform, but will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) correct these deficiencies? It looks grim. The law has perpetuated the flawed system that we already have, one based on the U.S. version of dysfunctional private insurance plans plus a welfare program – Medicaid.

PPACA does include some important insurance regulations such as guaranteed issue and removal of annual and life-time spending caps, but it doesn’t do much to end the administrative hassles that are designed to protect the insurers from loss (i.e., protect them from having to pay medical bills). In fact, by making plans with low actuarial values the new standard, patients will face even greater out-of-pocket expenses and administrative hassles when they access health care. The government subsidies are not adequate to reduce the problems that patients already have with paying their medical bills.

Although other countries have special provisions for low-income individuals, Medicaid is unique in that beneficiaries are enrolled in an entirely different program that generally pays much lower rates than do private insurers. Thus the Medicaid networks of willing providers can be quite different from the networks for the private insurers, which in themselves also can vary greatly from plan to plan. Care can be very disruptive as individuals move in and out of the Medicaid program because of fluctuations in their eligibility, or move between various private plans based on such factors as employment, place of residence, or premium affordability. Such disruptions can aggravate the access problems noted in this study.

Another important observation in this study is the protection that is afforded by Medicare. Quoting from Schoen et al, “US adults under age sixty-five were significantly more likely to report insurance paperwork, disputes, or insurance surprises than were those sixty-five and older and covered by Medicare (35 percent compared to 16 percent). The high rates of insurance concerns among younger adults may stem from unstable coverage as well as complex benefit designs.”

What we needed was a program that includes everyone, funds care equitably, eliminates financial barriers to care, provides automatic life-long enrollment, provides choice of any health care professionals and facilities, and has public funding that would ensure adequate capacity in the system. A single payer, improved Medicare for all would have those goals.

Instead, we’ll be pouring even more money into the system we have, and still compare unfavorably to these other high-income nations, that is unless we are willing to do something about it. We need to tell our policy makers, “It’s the insurance, stupid!”

Re-posted with permission from pnhp.org

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