If [Affordable Care Act] implementation goes as intended and widespread utilization and automation are achieved, providers could save about $11 billion per year. — Reducing Administrative Costs and Improving the Health Care System — New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) You really can’t dispute something as vague as that but it does raise a number of questions: What does it mean for thousands of pages of legislation affecting the entire healthcare industry as well as every man, woman and child in America to go “as intended”? It’s a circular argument. If it goes as intended, we save $11 billion. If we don’t save $11 billion, it didn’t go as intended. Is “widespread utilization and automation” part of going “as intended” or is that a separate thing? Assuming that implementation does go as intended and widespread utilization and automation are achieved, the best we can say is that providers “could” save… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Healthcare
The Lives of Julia and Paul
David Henderson says — accurately, I think — that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks can be paraphrased as “People who are dependent on government will vote for the candidate who credibly (to them, at least) promises to keep the programs that have created that dependence.” Do you think President Obama disagrees with that? He doesn’t. If you think he does, please see The Life of Julia on the president’s web site. It lays out a “typical” woman’s cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance and describes how Obama will keep those programs going while Mitt Romney won’t. The most insulting thing about it is that as you read about Obama funding this and Obama funding that, it sounds like he’s doing it all out of his own goddamn pocket. What a prince! There’s no acknowledgement that Obama is taking from some and giving to others, and that all of Julia’s “free” stuff… Read more →
Euphemisms from the DNC
Progressive = Liberal Investing = Spending Choice = Abortion Bodies = Abortion Healthcare = Abortion Who they love = Gay marriage Read more →
Here’s a Good Mandate
Remember, we’re supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who’s going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free. Here’s a good mandate: Let’s mandate that every time a government official says that the government is going to “help” some category of voter, he or she has to say who they are going to hurt in the same sentence. Because it has to be someone. — John Cochrane, “The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate” Read more →
Beware of Chest Physicians Bearing Gifts
I work for a healthcare organization. In the lunch room today was one of those cylinders full of caramel corn and cheese corn that turn up everywhere around the holidays. This one had a note attached: Compliments of your colleagues at the American College of Chest Physicians. Are caramel corn and cheese corn good for cardiac health? They’ve gotta be terrible, right? Beware of chest physicians bearing gifts! CARDIOLOGIST: Who referred you to our office? PATIENT: I saw your name on a container of cheese corn. CARDIOLOGIST: Ha ha, yeah, those things pay for themselves a million times over in stents and angioplasties. Read more →
First They Came . . .
I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. — Barack Obama, Sept. 12, 2008 There must be some mistake then because I just got an email from our accounting department stating that effective January 1, 2011, over-the-counter drugs will require a doctor’s prescription when an FSA claim for reimbursement is submitted. That doesn’t even make sense. Of course I don’t have a prescription for OTC drugs. Why would I pay a doctor to write me a prescription for something that I can just walk into Walgreen’s and buy it? Hi Doc, I’ve got a terrible cold so I just stopped by to drop a $30 co-pay and get a prescription for some Nyquil. And if I… Read more →
You Don’t Say
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he’s hemming and hawing on that. — Health care politics run into economic reality – msnbc.com Could not have seen that coming! Read more →
Unintended Consequences of Healthcare Reform
Many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government. That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama’s statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we’ll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America’s employers would remain the backbone of the nation’s health care system. Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences. — Fortune, May 5, 2010 We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. — Nancy Pelosi, March 9, 2010 Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on the Health Care Bill
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. — TJ My fellow Americans — This is a glorious day in our great nation! No, I’m not referring to that tragedy of a health care bill, which I’ll get to in a moment. I’m talking about Free Pastry Day at Starbucks! Who doesn’t enjoy a tasty scone with his morning coffee? Now, on a more somber note . . . Goodbye, representative democracy! Farewell, consent of the governed! President Obama today signed into law a far-reaching measure that will affect everyone living in these United States, now and in the future. It is opposed by most of the country and it is now law. I would never have believed that the government I helped to establish would one day engage in this kind… Read more →
The Eternal Footman Held My Coat and Snickered
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a longtime fixture on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending, died after complications from gallbladder surgery, according to his office. He was 77. The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was “routine minimally invasive surgery,” but doctors “hit his intestines,” a source close to the late congressman told CNN. — CNN.com OMG I HAD THAT SAME OPERATION I COULD HAVE DIED!!! On a lighter note, how ironic is it that the president loses a pro-ObamaCare vote due to medical error in a government-run hospital? Read more →
What If They Cost Money?
David Brooks declares “we spend too much on health care” (on NPR) then demands “innovation” and “new technologies.” What if they cost money? — @kausmickey (Mickey Kaus) Read more →
Twitter: 2009-12-18
RT @capricecrane: "Twitter" was the most used word of 2009. Numbers two and three were "I'm" and "broke." # RT @Aimee_B_Loved: Sometimes I drive between lanes and pretend my car is Pacman gobbling up the dashed lines. # RT @FakeAPStylebook: Use "can of whup-ass" only, as whup-ass is not sold in jars, squeeze tubes or resealable bags. # RT @RogervonOech: Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms as it was brought to you. [More at:] http://j.mp/cthirsh # RT @HarvardBiz: Government Health Care: Like the Postal Service? http://bit.ly/4IzozI # RT @capricecrane: I don't know how your car got dented. Maybe it's God saying you shouldn't have cut me off for that parking space. Or me. # RT @diablocody: Eating a gingerbread house for breakfast. A new low. # RT @capricecrane: According to Billboard: "Nickelback: 'Band of the decade.'" That's all. Enjoy the apocalypse. # RT @TheOnion: "Why do… Read more →
Evolution of a Mission Statement
From TheCoreProtocols Yahoo group: This one is pretty good: IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF THOSE WE SERVE. Compare that to the previous one: Our mission is to make a significant, positive impact on the healthcare system by changing behaviors and improving outcomes. And before that: APS is dedicated to providing user-friendly, accessible, comprehensive and innovative behavioral healthcare systems that promote teamwork, relationships, and provider partnerships; add value to our client’s services; and improve upon members’ quality of care and outcomes. APS believes that quality is achieved by providing access to the most appropriate care and in the least restrictive setting. And originally: The mission is to be a premier care management company that can flexibly, yet cost effectively, deliver the full continuum of care management services needed to improve total health outcomes; and, more specifically, to assure quality care is provided in the most appropriate and cost-effective setting based on individual… Read more →
We’re Going to Let You Die
I will actually give you a speech made up entirely–almost at the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. . . . “Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you, and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health-care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. [laughter] That’s true, and what I’m going to do is I am going to try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people. But that means you–particularly you young people, particularly you young, healthy people–you’re going to have to pay more. [applause] Thank you. “And by the way, we are going to have to–if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you… Read more →
Suck it Up, Liver Cancer Patients!
When the government runs healthcare . . . Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib — which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed. Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 [$60,000] a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options. The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was “simply too high” to justify the “benefit to patients.” — Mail Online Read more →
Is There a Healthcare Crisis?
In an interview with Popular Mechanics, Dean Kamen, one of the world’s most prolific inventors of healthcare technologies, challenges the notion that the U.S. has a healthcare crisis. Rather than slowing the pace of medical progress in order to cut healthcare costs, he argues, America should be encouraging more innovation in life-saving drugs and technologies . . . Read more →
Twitter: 2009-09-21
Why Health Care Will Never Be Equal – http://bit.ly/F1e8P # RT @Lileks: I'd paint that with a hammer! #failedcatchphrases # Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Obama’s Healthcare Speech
My fellow Americans — Perhaps it was unfair of me to be critical of President Obama’s healthcare speech without having heard it. There’s not much to do on a Saturday night when you’re dead, so I read the transcript: We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies . . . Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. And how much money are we talking about, sir? Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years. WTF?! I… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Healthcare Reform
My fellow Americans — Did you watch President Obama’s healthcare speech tonight? Neither did I. But I did learn from msnbc.com’s First Read that he hoped in his speech to explain to ordinary American voters — “call them Joe and Jane from Kansas City” — that his health-care reform will 1) cover nearly everyone and 2) cut costs in the long run. So let me get this straight — we’re going to spend money to save money! Does he think everyone in Kansas City is that stupid or just Joe and Jane? What — you don’t believe we can insure 50 million more people and cut costs at the same time? Well then, you’re an uninformed kook! You’re scared that those cost savings will come from drastically rationing access to care, particularly for people who are chronically ill and/or near the end of their lives? You’re un-American! Probably a Nazi!… Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-21
Want to buy a customized Michael Vick Eagles jersey for your dog? http://tinyurl.com/la3o36 # Obama: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Good mission statement for the death panels! # RT @diablocody: Obsolete memory: pushing card catalog drawers in and out at the library. Also, the tangy smell of the old cards. # Read more →