Funding health care reform
Remaking America’s health care system and covering the uninsured will require a substantial financial investment. Any solution must not only be viable today, but sustainable for years to come. Where will we find the dollars? Can health care savings pay some of the cost? Should we continue the unlimited tax-exempt status for health insurance premiums on employer plans?
Determining our personal responsibility
In the simplest terms, health insurance works because the healthy help offset the cost of caring for the sick. How can we encourage more healthy individuals to purchase health insurance? Should every American be required to purchase coverage?
Removing barriers to coverage
Those who need it most – people with pre-existing conditions – are often unable to obtain health insurance. They’re either not eligible, or coverage is unaffordable. Should we require health insurers to accept anyone, regardless of their health? Should your health determine how much you pay for health insurance?
Deciding the role of government
Some believe government should run health insurance. Others believe a competitive, private-market system provides greater value. Some propose creating a government health plan to compete with private health insurers. Opponents see that as a step toward government-run health care.
Promoting the most effective medical treatments
Who decides which medical treatments, tests, and technologies are effective and should be covered? Should cost matter, or should we only ask how well the treatment works?
Encouraging wellness
A tide of chronic, preventable disease – representing 70 percent of health care costs – threatens to overwhelm our health care system. Smoking, lack of activity, and increased weight lead the list of controllable factors contributing to the problem. How can we help people live healthier lives?
Harnessing health information technology
Connecting the health care system with electronic medical records and other technologies could help reduce paperwork and unnecessary cost. Such connections could help prevent medical errors and bring the latest treatment information to the exam room. Technology can also be used to provide information on the prices and performance of health care providers, which could help patients make better-educated decisions.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
SICKO healthcare - OBAMA style - medical billing news!
By media & government suppressing truths and marginalizing dissent against business as usual, Medicare-for-All advocates are shut out and ridiculed for suggesting what other western nations know works best, costs less, and delivers the highest quality health care to everyone.On February 26, The New York Times headlined: "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care....a (down payment $634 billion "reserve fund" for the next decade) toward his goal of covering the uninsured, and he would pay for it in part by cutting federal payments to hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies." More on that below.
Details so far are sketchy, but here's what The Times and others reported:
$634 billion as a "down payment....additional funding will be needed;"
increased prescription drug premiums for higher income Medicare recipients;
$6 billion for cancer research to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), up from last year's $5.6 billion;
faster FDA generic biotech drug approvals;
increased access to family planning services for low-income women on Medicaid;
no information on how the uninsured will be covered with details to be worked out later with Congress; one idea is make it mandatory, but tell that to people who can't afford it or enough of it;
drug makers to be required to give Medicaid at least a 22.1% discount, up from the current 15.1%;
payment cuts to insurers, hospitals, drug makers, home health agencies, and perhaps doctors;
"rebalancing the tax code so that the wealthiest pay more," but not enough;
the goal is reduce costs and achieve "universal coverage;" saying it is one thing, achieving it another;
eliminating subsidies paid to insurers selling Medicare Advantage plans and opening the process to competitive bidding; and
in introducing Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as HHS secretary and Nancy-Ann DeParle as White House Health Reform director, Obama proposed "affordable health care for every American" while acknowledging no "silver bullet" exists to provide it, but he'll be "flexible" to achieve it, or at least say he is while intending to do nothing to offend a powerful industry.
Details so far are sketchy, but here's what The Times and others reported:
$634 billion as a "down payment....additional funding will be needed;"
increased prescription drug premiums for higher income Medicare recipients;
$6 billion for cancer research to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), up from last year's $5.6 billion;
faster FDA generic biotech drug approvals;
increased access to family planning services for low-income women on Medicaid;
no information on how the uninsured will be covered with details to be worked out later with Congress; one idea is make it mandatory, but tell that to people who can't afford it or enough of it;
drug makers to be required to give Medicaid at least a 22.1% discount, up from the current 15.1%;
payment cuts to insurers, hospitals, drug makers, home health agencies, and perhaps doctors;
"rebalancing the tax code so that the wealthiest pay more," but not enough;
the goal is reduce costs and achieve "universal coverage;" saying it is one thing, achieving it another;
eliminating subsidies paid to insurers selling Medicare Advantage plans and opening the process to competitive bidding; and
in introducing Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as HHS secretary and Nancy-Ann DeParle as White House Health Reform director, Obama proposed "affordable health care for every American" while acknowledging no "silver bullet" exists to provide it, but he'll be "flexible" to achieve it, or at least say he is while intending to do nothing to offend a powerful industry.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
The Clinton Promise concerning health care reform - medical billing news!
Thirteen years ago Bill Clinton became president partly because he promised to do something about rising health care costs. Although Clinton's chances of reforming the US health care system looked quite good at first, the effort soon ran aground. Since then a combination of factors—the unwillingness of other politicians to confront the insurance and other lobbies that so successfully frustrated the Clinton effort, a temporary remission in the growth of health care spending as HMOs briefly managed to limit cost increases, and the general distraction of a nation focused first on the gloriousness of getting rich, then on terrorism—have kept health care off the top of the agenda.
But medical costs are once again rising rapidly, forcing health care back into political prominence. Indeed, the problem of medical costs is so pervasive that it underlies three quite different policy crises. First is the increasingly rapid unraveling of employer- based health insurance. Second is the plight of Medicaid, an increasingly crucial program that is under both fiscal and political attack. Third is the long-term problem of the federal government's solvency, which is, as we'll explain, largely a problem of health care costs.
But medical costs are once again rising rapidly, forcing health care back into political prominence. Indeed, the problem of medical costs is so pervasive that it underlies three quite different policy crises. First is the increasingly rapid unraveling of employer- based health insurance. Second is the plight of Medicaid, an increasingly crucial program that is under both fiscal and political attack. Third is the long-term problem of the federal government's solvency, which is, as we'll explain, largely a problem of health care costs.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Breakdown -- America's Health Insurance Crisis - medical billing news!
This article speaks about a Peter Jennings documentary...
Peter Jennings' last documentary, "Peter Jennings Reporting: Breakdown -- America's Health Insurance Crisis," premieres tonight on ABC. Throughout his storied career at ABC, Jennings reported over 60 documentaries on subjects ranging from the India-Pakistan conflict to the obesity epidemic -- all stories he believed were deserving of a full hour of prime-time investigation.
In this last documentary, filmed in the months before he was diagnosed with lung cancer, Peter Jennings reports on this country's broken health insurance system, which is threatening American families -- and American businesses.
Jennings reports that the growing number of uninsured affects the health care all Americans receive. He begins by reporting from emergency rooms in Houston, Texas, a city where almost one-third of the population lacks insurance. As more and more of these uninsured turn to emergency rooms for medical care, emergency care for the insured and uninsured alike suffers.
Jennings reports that one of the factors leading to the increasing number of uninsured is the difficulty involved in buying insurance. Even people who can afford the ever-increasing prices can't always get it. In most states, health insurance companies can turn down applicants who suffer from even the most common medical problems, like allergies and acne.
In the past, employer-based health insurance was a reliable place to turn for coverage, but today even that is in jeopardy. Jennings reveals how escalating health insurance costs are putting nearly all American businesses at risk. From small family-owned car repair shops to the once-mighty General Motors, the uniquely American system of employer-based health insurance is becoming unaffordable for small businesses, and unsustainable for large corporations operating in a global economy.
Peter Jennings' last documentary, "Peter Jennings Reporting: Breakdown -- America's Health Insurance Crisis," premieres tonight on ABC. Throughout his storied career at ABC, Jennings reported over 60 documentaries on subjects ranging from the India-Pakistan conflict to the obesity epidemic -- all stories he believed were deserving of a full hour of prime-time investigation.
In this last documentary, filmed in the months before he was diagnosed with lung cancer, Peter Jennings reports on this country's broken health insurance system, which is threatening American families -- and American businesses.
Jennings reports that the growing number of uninsured affects the health care all Americans receive. He begins by reporting from emergency rooms in Houston, Texas, a city where almost one-third of the population lacks insurance. As more and more of these uninsured turn to emergency rooms for medical care, emergency care for the insured and uninsured alike suffers.
Jennings reports that one of the factors leading to the increasing number of uninsured is the difficulty involved in buying insurance. Even people who can afford the ever-increasing prices can't always get it. In most states, health insurance companies can turn down applicants who suffer from even the most common medical problems, like allergies and acne.
In the past, employer-based health insurance was a reliable place to turn for coverage, but today even that is in jeopardy. Jennings reveals how escalating health insurance costs are putting nearly all American businesses at risk. From small family-owned car repair shops to the once-mighty General Motors, the uniquely American system of employer-based health insurance is becoming unaffordable for small businesses, and unsustainable for large corporations operating in a global economy.
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