Baucus plan takes on ’secret pricing’
Filed under: Health care reform, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
The Associated Press’ Carla K. Johnson reports that a provision of Sen. Max Baucus’ health reform plan has brought attention to the “secret pricing” model that dominates in the health care system. According to Johnson, the Baucus bill would not only require hospitals to list standard charges for each procedure up front, it would also “require health plans to report how much of each dollar paid in premiums goes to items other than medical care.”
Maine and New Hampshire already provide online cost-comparison tools, and Johnson quotes a scientist at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as saying such information “ought to be available on a more widespread basis.”
Related
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Islanders, sick from fallout, are political hot potato
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
Writing for the Associated Press, Mark Niesse digs into a dispute between the state of Hawaii, the federal government and chronically ill immigrants from three Pacific nations over who should foot the bill for their health care. At issue is a 1986 treaty that guarantees migration rights and assistance to folks from Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau and to help compensate for Cold War-era nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Under the treaty, many ill islanders have relocated to Hawaii, which offers better health care and quality of life than they could find in their homelands. They come from populations with “high rates of leukemia and thyroid, lung, stomach, skin and brain cancers,” at least some of which is linked to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing.
Nobody is yet sure where the debate will lead, but Niesse maps out where the battle lines are drawn:
The state of Hawaii sought to save $15 million by cutting health services to more than 7,000 migrants, who are treated as legal residents lacking citizenship. Their ambiguous status, as well as their cost to taxpayers, led to the state’s proposed health reductions.
Both the Hawaii government and the migrants argue that the U.S. government should take responsibility for their health treatments.
But federal Medicaid funding to the migrant islanders was slashed when welfare reform passed in 1996, resulting in Hawaii picking up the tab. U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat representing Hawaii, said he is trying to reinstate Medicaid benefits for compact migrants as part of the pending health care legislation.
Polls, studies used to compare U.S., Canada care
Filed under: Health care reform, Health data, Hot Health Headline
The Associated Press’ Charmaine Noronha takes another look at the Canadian health care system, focusing on the debate over its effectiveness and on Canadians’ relative satisfaction with their care. Noronha relied on a number of polls and studies to help inform the discussion, including per-capita cost numbers.
Canada’s system provides its citizens with coverage at a much lower per capita cost than the U.S. largely because its single-payer system, in which the government picks up the tab, greatly reduces administrative costs.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, per-capita spending for health care in the U.S. was $6,714 in 2006; in Canada, $3,678. The U.S. spent 16 percent of its GDP on health care that year; Canada spent 10 percent.
Available data on children falls short
David Crary of the Associated Press writes about weak, outdated and insufficient data in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual Kids Count report, an effort to monitor child health and well-being across the nation. A special report about the “data deficit” accompanied the regular release of Kids Count this year.
In particular, the foundation says the government should rewrite the equation that sets the federal poverty line and make sure the 2010 Census does a better job counting children and minorities. “The Casey report also calls for expanded federal data collection on young children, teen dropouts and teen births. It said budget woes have led the National Center for Health Statistics to reduce the sample sizes for some of its national surveys on children’s well-being.”
Mass., Tenn. provide test cases for federal reform
Filed under: Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson takes a look at health care reform in Massachusetts and Tennessee and how the coverage plans in those states can inform Congress’ approach to a nationwide expansion of health coverage.
In Massachusetts, Johnson reports, folks adopted a coverage first, cost second approach, with the assumption that once universal coverage was in place, it would be easier to use that leverage to pare down costs.
The Tennessee method, on the other hand, was to provide a limited, cautious program at first with the understanding that it would be gradually expanded if possible.
Diabetics risking health to save money
Associated Press Business Writer Linda Johnson discovered that diabetics, and others in need of medical attention, were putting their health at risk by cutting back on insulin, medicine and monitoring as they felt the economic pinch of the global recession.
Sales of top-selling drugs and other products used to treat and monitor the disease have dropped since the economic crisis accelerated last fall, the AP analysis found. There are even signs that some patients are choosing less-expensive insulin injections over pricier pills to save money.
People with other health problems also are cutting back on care amid the recession, but diabetics who don’t closely monitor and control the chronic disease risk particularly dire complications: amputations, vision loss, stroke — even death.
Johnson found that a broad spectrum of patients were attempting to cut corners and save money. She cited a variety of anecdotal examples and wider economic metrics, all of which support her main point: Diabetics are spending less, and it’s a threat to their health.
Dr. Steven Edelman, a University of California, San Diego endocrinologist who runs a free clinic staffed by medical students, has seen a 30 percent surge the past six months in patients seeking free diabetes medicines and supplies, which the clinic has to ration. Many had been solidly middle class, but the recession took their jobs, insurance and even some homes.
N.J. law would publicize detailed hospital error info
In an Associated Press story, Eli Segall looked at proposed legislation in New Jersey that would require hospitals to publish error information and would prevent hospitals from billing patients or insurers for procedures during which mistakes were made.
While current New Jersey law calls for the publication of statewide statistics for preventable mistakes, the proposed legislation would take it a step farther and require data to be shared for individual hospitals. Reports for 2005 and 2006 have been published under the current law; 826 mistakes - 40 percent of which were patient falls - were reported statewide.
According to one of Segall’s sources, patients were only billed for mistaken procedures in isolated cases under existing laws and that in many cases hospitals don’t bill anybody when egregious mistakes have been made and insurers may refuse payment when mistakes have been made.
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