An awesome article on healthcare

UPDATE: Krugman's on the bandwagon.

This post has so many quotable quotes that I can't help myself!

My health is not for sale. Nor is yours. Nor should anyone’s be. As long as insurers are slaves to the bottom line in this country, no reform is possible.

Health insurance cannot be a for-profit enterprise. Period. It must be a not-for-profit enterprise, and that means all facets: pharmacy, hospital, diagnostic, imaging, etc. As soon as profits are the primary motivator, patients become the problem. When patients become the problem, attention is only paid to ways to make them less of a problem, either by cutting back what is insured, how much is insured, or by raising their rates to unaffordable extremes. Right now, all three of these options are in play.

This is a crisis that won’t be eased by tweaking a badly-broken and dysfunctional system. The entire system that must be reshaped into a single payer system and coverage for all. It is a system that must put health at the front of all considerations rather than profits.

Congratulations, Randy

To one of the greatest pitcher to ever play the game, Congratulations! I will never forget '95. Thanks for the fond memories.

Why are we so involved with GM?

I don't know why. American auto companies should have filed for bankruptcy years ago, but the will to do so wasn't there. So now that we've paid over $60 billion for a company that is worth about $1 billion in stock, let's think about why we paid so much...I still can't think of why. Robert Reich has given this some thought. I recommend reading his ideas. Plus, he chose the same theme I did for his blog. Great minds think alike, right? :)

The Deficit

So some aren't too happy about the direction our deficit is going. I'm not happy either, but are things as dire as this?

"Voluntary" Health care reform

So a bunch of the companies that Obama gathered to pledge "voluntary" cost controls a few weeks ago have released their first draft of what their controls and proposals look like. It's so bad as to almost be a joke. There is so much low-hanging fruit here that the lowest peices are already rotting. Only an industry with this much bloat can describe some of these measures as effective. Maybe I'm being a little unfair, but come on.

Some highlights:

1. The Advanced Medical Technology Association accounts represents 90 percent of the medical equipment manufactuerers in the US, a virtual monopoly. They have promised in their second initiative to reduce medical errors and avoidable injuries. So they aren't doing that now? Sounds that that should be a best practice already, but when you represent 90% of the market, you can make your own rules, right?
2. AHIP is proposing to overhaul administrative processess and automate 5 key functions - claims, submissions, eligibility, claim status, payment, and remittance. Sounds great, and they say it will be like when the banks introduced ATMs. But they say the "are not recommending a voluntary effort, but rather that HHS require the adoption of the CAQH Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange (CORE)." Meaning that they need to have the Health and Human Services Secretary force them to adopt these rules through CORE. So you have to tell one political appointee make a group representing the healthcare industry force these standards. That still sounds straightforward, but by the time you get anything through a committee it is usually filled with bloat and waste.
3. The American Hospital Association has a lot of vague, progressive-sounding ideas that look good on paper, but they don't provide any concrete numbers to back up their ideas. Plus, they don't list any incentives for hospitals to implement their ideas. It's just a bunch of management speak.
4. The American Medical Association has pretty good ideas and lists out in fairly brief but precise detail what they want to do.
5. The PhRMA, who represents Big Pharma says that they are already in the fight to reducing costs, and studies are showing that costs are already starting to slow. They say that spending for drugs in 2007 was the lowest it was since 1961. Really? Could the Prescription Drug Benefit have anything to do with that? Remember, they claim that spending, not cost is the lowest it's been since 1961. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my shirt. They also claim that the market for drugs in the U.S. will decline by 2% in 2009. Maybe thats because of the recession more than anything else. As more and more seniors see their savings disappear, are they still taking all the drugs they've been given? I hope so. Of course I am in pure speculation mode, but how is that any different from what this report is doing?
6. The SEIU has some good ideas, but it's initiatives are very broad and wide, and seeing how they could implement any of these in the next two to five years seems unlikely

Most of the ideas presented in this paper sound like the initatives that were presented in my companies management meeting today. Very high-level, with very little detail. Maybe these reforms would work, but I don't think they are enough, and I certainly don't trust these companies to live up to whatever promises they gave while Obama had them in a half-nelson in front of reporters a few weeks ago. Even Senator Grassley of the Finance Committee is skeptical.

I’m skeptical that these proposals will add up to anywhere near $2 trillion. In the legislative process, proposals rise or fall based on what [the Congressional Budget Office] says about them, and the same will be true here.

So is there any hope at all, or is this another and potentially bigger FUBAR than the bank bailouts?

Lobbyists Everywhere!!

If you didn't believe me when I said a primary motivation for entertaining lobbyists of our elected officials is the perks after public service, lookey here: Senator Baucus' former chief of staff has been hired by GE to lobby on "Health care reform issues." And it's not just Democrats! A health policy advisor to Republican Chuck Grassley, who is also on the Finance Committee, has been hired by GE for health care lobbying as well.

Baucus keeps his word

When Senator Baucus (D-Montana) ejected advocates from his health care hearing recently, he did say that if the ejected people contacted his office, he would meet with them personally. Well, he is doing just that this week. This isn't a victory for Single-Payer by any means, but it is something.