HHS: $3,700 out-of-pocket for employer coverage
Filed under: Government, Hot Health Headline, Studies
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the results of a study which found that, on average, Americans pay more than $3,700 per year for employer health coverage.
Photo by kfisto via Flickr
Sebelius set her agency’s reform-supporting agenda straight from the start, titling the report: “Hidden Costs of Health Care: Why Americans are Paying More but Getting Less.”
A few highlights:
- Out-of-pocket expenses for employer-based coverage rose 30 percent from 2001 to 2006.
- At $12,680 a year, premiums for such coverage have doubled from 2000 to 2008.
- “In 2004, only one in five people with health insurance through an employer had a co-payment of more than $25, but by 2008 the number jumped to one in three.”
Drug company-sponsored training draws fire
Gary Schwitzer, a professor in the University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, calls our attention to journalism organizations that accept support from pharmaceutical companies.
Schwitzer reports that, in the latest incident, the National Press Foundation has accepted funding from Pfizer to fund 15 four-day fellowships for
journalists to learn about cancer. Schwitzer read about the fellowships in an e-newsletter he received from the Society of Professional Journalists, something that also gives him pause.
Bob Meyers, president of the National Press Foundation, has responded to Schwitzer’s comments on Jim Romenesko’s blog.
For the record, the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism seek to minimize the possibility and appearance of inappropriate influence from outside parties. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and medical device makers are examples of organizations with with AHCJ will not partner. Read AHCJ’s complete fundraising policies.
WHO: Half of road deaths are non-motorists
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Public health, Studies
Almost half of the folks killed in traffic accidents annually are cyclists, pedestrians or motorcyclists, according to the World Health Organization’s first status report on global road safety.
Photo by kbrookes via Flickr
The report also includes breakdowns of laws and statistics by country, including information on drinking and driving laws, helmet requirements and child-safety regulations.
Individual country profiles begin on page 60 of the PDF and are alphabetical. Stats for the United States are on page 228 and stats for the United Kingdom are on page 226.
According to the U.S. profile, 51 percent of deaths are drivers of “4-wheelers.” Pedestrians make up 11 percent of fatalities and cyclists make up 2 percent. And 32 percent of road traffic deaths involve alcohol.
Iowa air pollution unmonitored, may be dangerous
The Des Moines Register’s Perry Beeman and Chase Davis investigated air pollution in Iowa, particularly that made up of enough fine particles to come close to violating federal limits.
Beeman and Davis look at the major polluters, new federal pollution limits that are causing a push for increased testing and the possible health consequences of the state’s polluted air (related Q&A). The Register’s package also includes an impressive interactive map showing major polluters.
The perils of access: ABC defends coverage
Filed under: Health care reform, Health journalism
Richard Huff of the New York Daily News reports that Republican Party officials (and Matt Drudge) have likened ABC’s planned health care reform coverage, set in the White House and featuring interviews with the President and First Lady and a presidential town hall meeting, to an “infomercial” on behalf of President Obama’s policies.
The Republicans’ objections point to an familiar dilemma: Is there a point at which taking advantage of the administration’s willingness to create media opportunities and provide public access a display of favoritism? Where is the line between government transparency and political gamesmanship? For their part, ABC representatives say the network, not the administration, will choose questions and topics and promises that a full range of views will be represented.
“In the end, no one watching, listening to, or reading ABC News will lack for an understanding of all sides of these important questions,” ABC News Senior Vice President Kerry Smith said in a letter to the RNC.
The audience and questions for the prime-time special will be selected by ABC and only ABC, according to a spokesman, and the goal is to have a balanced broadcast with various views.
The GOP moved to buy ads on ABC to respond to the special, but ABC refused the ads, saying it has a policy against accepting “advocacy advertising.”
The special from the White House is set to air at 10 p.m. ET on Wednesday, with additional coverage appearing on “Good Morning America,” “World News,” “Nightline,” and ABCNews.com’s “Top Line.”
An ounce of prevention will cost you
Prevention is no panacea. If the country expects to keep people well by catching and treating disease early, better health won’t come cheap.
Stanford med school prof Abraham Verghese explains in a critique of Obama’s health plan in The Wall Street Journal. The gist: health reform won’t pay for itself.
Photo by digicla via Flickr
“Counting on the ’savings’ that will come as a result of investing in preventive care and investing in the electronic medical record among other things,” he writes, is “a dangerous and probably an incorrect projection.”
Sure, losing weight and exercising more don’t cost much. But Verghese says screening, testing and treating patients early is expensive. “Prevention is a good thing to do,” he says, “but why equate it with saving money when it won’t?”
The bottom line, Verghese writes, is that fundamental reform and an expansion of coverage can’t happen without cutting costs. That means drug prices, doctors’ fees and hospital charges are all in line to get whacked.
Related
In the Columbia Journalism Review, Trudy Lieberman, president of AHCJ’s board of directors, interviewed Rutgers researcher Louise Russell about the potential for preventive care to curb health care costs. Russell (bio page) said that, in many cases, preventive care may actually add to overall health care costs because, for such care to be effective, it needs to be employed on a large scale.
Russell says studies that claim savings based on prevention are not only calculating medical expense, but also figuring in potential future earnings of those whose lives are saved by prevention. She also encourages a stronger focus on more cost-effective preventive measures, like flu shots, over more expensive options like annual pap smears.
In the final third of the interview, Russell specifically addresses reporting on preventive care and provides guidance and recommendations.
Wrestling with the FDA recall e-mail avalanche
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health
NPR’s April Fulton recently blogged about a phenomenon familiar to anyone with a subscription to the FDA’s recall e-mail list, or their RSS feed, or their Twitter account: a late rush of random recall messages that would require a prohibitive amount of time to sort and research. 
For example, in a two-minute span on June 15, @FDArecalls on Twitter buzzed with messages about multivitamin labels, fish, organic chocolate peanuts, white peppers and soy sprouts. Fulton also notes that many of the notices come out late in the day.
She proposes some sort of flagging or rating system to make it easier to figure out which stories are big deals and which aren’t. She may be on to something. The FDA could make these releases more accessible and useful for journalists and consumers. At the very least, it should be possible to explain the location and magnitude of the public health danger in a way that could be understood at a glance.
What other tips or tricks help you figure out which recalls are relevant to your readers? Do you have suggestions as to how the FDA could makes its releases more accessible or useful? Let us know.
Schneider moves coverage to ColdTruth.com
Former Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigative reporter Andrew Schneider has moved from andrewschneiderinvestigates.com to the easier-to-type www.coldtruth.com . Schneider appears to have moved his archives from his old site and continues to have links to his old P-I blog.
The award-winning reporter is still up to his old tricks, using his new site to make sure folks don’t lose sight of ongoing health stories such as asbestos contamination in Libby, Mont., diacetyl dangers, food additives and nanotechnology. Washington State University professor and veteran journalist Benjamin Shors also will contribute to the site.
We last wrote about Schneider when he was covering the W.R. Grace trial in Missoula, Mont., as the Seattle P-I was about to convert to an online-only operation. Ten years ago, Schneider and David McCumber exposed that W.R. Grace was polluting Libby, Mont., and hiding the risks that its vermiculite mine posed to the town.
Schneider’s move comes just as the Environmental Protection Agency has declared a public health emergency in Libby as a result of asbestos contamination. According to an HHS press release, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will support a grant to assist affected residents who need medical care. Read Schneider’s take on the situation and the latest news from the Grace trial.
Consumer group challenges selenium claim
It’s put up or shut up time for Bayer Healthcare. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is threatening to sue the maker of One-A-Day multivitamins if the company doesn’t cease claiming that selenium, a mineral in the pills, may cut men’s risk of prostate cancer.
Researchers halted a federally funded study of selenium’s ability to protect against prostate cancer last year when the mineral showed no effect and some men taking it developed diabetes.
Yet Bayer claims in ads, including this Web site for its Men’s Health Formula multivitamin, that “emerging research suggests Selenium may reduce the risk of prostate cancer.” Indeed, CPSI also asked the Federal Trade Commission to require Bayer to run corrective ads, given the impression made by at least 11 television ads and nine radio ads touting prostate protection.
A Bayer spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the company stands “behind all claims made in support of our products.”
GAO review finds fault in FDA’s device oversight
The Government Accountability Office looked into how the FDA oversees medical devices and found that it does not review all class III devices (those with greatest risk, such as pacemakers) through its most stringent process.
It also found problems with the FDA’s postmarket surveillance of medical devices, reporting that the agency says it cannot review all of the reports it receives. The FDA also has not conducted all of the required inspections of manufacturing plants in the United States and overseas.
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Awards for Excellence in Health Care JournalismDeadline: Feb. 3
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
- Focus on freelancing: Tips for buying liability insurance
- Why do some patients get stuck in hospitals for weeks, months?
- Investigate health professionals and the boards that regulate them
- Presidents of AHCJ, SPJ call for more openness from Obama administration
