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| Features and Opinion Learn what experts think about the current trends in the health care industry and the steps already being taken towards health care reform. Interested in contributing to this page? Please contact us at editor@reformplans.com.
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Elizabeth Edwards on John McCain’s Health Policy -- CJR |
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Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Journalism Review, April 1 2008
Elizabeth Edwards told some 500 health journalists the other day that John McCain’s health care plan was like “painting lipstick on a pig,” an expression from her neck of the woods that in this case means lofty-sounding words that pretty up some ideas that could hurt ordinary people who don’t understand what’s going on; that is, unless journalists tell them. The language of his plan sounds good, she argued, making it “hard to understand what’s wrong with it. “Someone has to translate for the public.” Edwards challenged reporters to do just that.
Translating for the public is good advice for journalists about the health platforms of all three major candidates, and Edwards, of course, is a partisan. But she’s worth hearing out.
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What Walgreens Surely Sees -- HCPMR |
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Brian Klepper, Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review, March 28 2008
Though it probably went mostly unnoticed in the cacophony of health care stories, last week's news that Walgreens had bought the two largest and most well-established worksite clinic firms, iTrax and Whole Health Management, was a harbinger of very big changes in health care. Walgreens, the ubiquitous drugstore company that, with Wal-Mart and CVS, has already leveraged its pharmacy platform to establish a strong footprint in retail clinics, undoubtedly startled many health care observers with its announcement. After all, isn't the company doctor a relic?
Actually, no. The worksite clinic - and by way of disclosure for the better part of the last year I have worked closely with a small, very innovative, Orlando-based startup worksite clinic firm, WeCare TLC - has been reinvented and refitted with 21st century tools, and offers the promise of nothing less than a paradigm shift toward dramatically better care at significantly lower cost. Understanding how these structures work and how they differ from both old-fashioned medical practices and retail clinics provides clues into what Walgreens likely sees and why that matters to American health care.
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Consumerism in Health Survey: Recap and Analysis -- NCPA |
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National Center for Policy Analysis, March 26 2008
The Commonwealth Fund teamed up with the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) to publish the results of an annual, Internet-based survey on the experiences of enrollees in health plans with different levels of cost-sharing.
The past three surveys all claimed enrollees are not as satisfied with consumer-driven health care (CDHC) plans as those in comprehensive plans. However, satisfaction has improved somewhat in the most recent survey:
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In Penn. Small Business Hopes for Right Reforms -- ReformPlans.com |
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Malorye Allison, March 27 2008
As the health care reform debate rages in the Pennsylvania legislature, small business is focused on two key issues, according to Eileen Anderson, government relations manager of SMC Business Councils, a leading small business association in the state.
Those issues are cost containment and small group health insurance reform.
“The costs will eat us alive,” Anderson says. She and others are concerned that many lawmakers are not recognizing that problem. Last week, the Pennsylvania House approved SB 1137 – called ABC, or the “Access to Basic Care Bill,” which aims to extend more-affordable health coverage to almost 300,000 additional Pennsylvanians.
The bill expands the state’s adultBasic programs to residents earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level. ABC also provides for grants to low-wage small businesses that already offer health insurance to help them cope with the cost.
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Health Care Reform Needed to Help Small Businesses -- The Oakland Press |
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Charlie Owens, (NFIB Michigan), March 25 2008
What does it say about us as a nation when so many
honest, hard-working families live in fear that they are one illness
away from financial ruin?
What does it say when small-business owners are forced to choose
between hiring a new employee or facing yet another double-digit
premium increase for health insurance?
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Spending on Health Could Heal Hurt Economy -- Yale Daily News |
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Robert Nelb, March 25 2008
It’s about the economy, stupid.
No matter how much pundits pontificate about issues like health care and energy, race and religion, this year’s presidential election and the policies of the new administration will most likely be determined by the economy.
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How do The Candidates' Plans Affect Ordinary Folks? -- Columbia Journalism Review |
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Trudy Lieberman, March 25 2008
Not long ago I met Charles, a fifty-four-year-old man living in a poor
Cleveland neighborhood. He had run out of his blood pressure pills and
he had no money to buy more. His arm was tingling and his vision
blurry. He was dizzy, he said. Charles had come to a makeshift clinic
set up in an old Catholic school, run by a woman who partners with
student nurses to offer preventive care to people who receive almost
none. The nurses said his blood pressure had hit the danger zone and
they called EMS. Charles refused to go to the hospital. He kept asking
me: “Who’s going to pay for it? Who’s going to pay?” Rose Marie
Egensperger who runs the clinic on a shoestring, explained: “Folks have
lived with symptoms so long their health isn’t their first thought. For
90 percent of the people the major concerns are money and how am I
going to get home.” This time Charles lucked out—he got new pills from
another clinic he had been to before. Who knows what will happen when
he runs out again?
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Good for iPods, But Bad for Patients -- The Boston Globe |
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John M. Maraganore, March 22 2008
Maraganore, who is CEO of biotech Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, says pending legislative moves spurred by the information technology industry could fundamentally change the ground rules for patent protection. These changes are at odds with what the life sciences needs to thrive, and could decimate the industry.
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The Myth of 'Best In The World' -- Newsweek |
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Sharon Begley, March 22 2008
Begley argues that even those who support the general idea of universal insurance balk at its implementation because of fears it will affect the quality and availability of their own health care. “This is where you start getting the requisite genuflection to the United States' having "the best health care in the world,”” she writes, going on to cite instances – such as diabetes care and cancer survival -- where US healthcare is behind other developed countries.
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Fixing The Health Care Payment System: The Flow of Dollars -- |
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The McKinsey Quarterly Newsletter, March, 2008
A McKinsey team found huge possibilities for fixing the country’s medical-payment system, which consumes 15 percent or more of each dollar spent on health care—compared with about 2 percent in retailing.
Our exhibit shows the flow of dollars among the major players. Waste clusters in the $250 billion that consumers pay to medical providers—doctors and hospitals—and in the $1.3 trillion that insurance companies send to them decade. (Click "Read More" to register for the free text)
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Protecting Patents, Saving Lives -- The American |
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Roger Bate and Karen Porter, The American, March 2008
Permitting slightly higher drug prices today will guarantee incentives for innovation and development tomorrow.
Nearly two billion people across the world lack access to essential medicines, and improving access could save millions of lives each year. Yet while everyone agrees that drug access is a problem, there is no consensus on how to improve the situation.
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Featured Podcast
Current State and Prospects for Consumer Directed Health Care Kim D. Slocum, President of KDS Consulting speaks with Malorye Allison, editor-in-chief of ReformPlans.com.
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