Toxic Healthcare Costs

[WhiskeyGirl]

Paying for healthcare has become toxic. 

The auto bailout lists the cost associated with the auto industry paying for current and retire auto workers as huge. 

No one wants to pay for the old, sick, and other high price people - they become toxic to any plan, including corporate insurance, and government plans.

Baucus's 89-page report said the mandate to obtain health coverage would also prevent people from waiting until they get sick to buy insurance.

Wow, what an idea.  Wait until you are sick to buy insurance.  If you can't afford your medical care, who can?  Private companies?  The government?  The end result is that someone has to dig deep.  Why didn't you think about paying for a healthcare program before you got sick?

But paying for expanding health coverage will be expensive, and many independent analysts question whether Congress can make it happen under current economic conditions. Baucus did not offer a way to pay for his proposal...

Where is the money going to come from?

Baucus would also increase the number of people eligible for Medicaid, the federal-state partnership that provides health care to the poor. ... In each instance, about two dozen states would have to increase current eligibility levels.

Baucus said states would be given additional financial help to cover the higher caseloads, but he didn't provide specifics. Many states are struggling to pay for those they already cover under Medicaid and the children's health insurance program, much less adding millions to the rolls.

Who is going to pay for all this care?  Is there any effort to control healthcare inflation?  Bonus and compensation plans for healthcare providers?  Hospital systems?  Equipment suppliers?  Common sense?

Several interest groups applauded Baucus's efforts, but one conservative think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, deemed his plan unrealistic.

"The bottom line is that the Baucus plan will exacerbate current problems of skyrocketing costs and limited access while creating a huge burden for individual taxpayers and businesses," said Devon Herrick, an economist at the center.  "There is no such thing as free health care."[/b]

Someone has to pay for it.  From my reading, Social Security is in trouble, Medicare/Medicaid is in trouble deep, and prescription drugs are on course to bankrupt what is left of an already bankrupt nation. 

Where is the plan for reforming healthcare inflation? 

I believe the country could provide good basic care for everyone.  It needs to address runaway healthcare inflation and provider profit too.  I'm not seeing any financial conservatism with money that only exists in the twinkling of an eye and the imagination. 

http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.asp?n=1&neID=20081112140.6.24_ae3200172bd96f8f

just my humble opinions

[WhiskeyGirl]

Toxic healthcare costs?  Where is there anything that suggest controlling runaway healtcare inflation?  What happens when the $25 billion for healthcare is gone?  How much for the next installement?

Automakers and Democratic congressional leaders have discussed a two-stage process in which government would provide $25 billion in direct loans to meet urgent needs. A second $25 billion would come later and could be applied to a United Auto Workers (UAW) retiree health care trust, freeing up more cash for operations.

He urged the Bush administration to accelerate disbursement of $25 billion in advanced technology loans approved by Congress in September.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE4A66VT20081113

What are the urgent needs?  Compensation?  Bonus?

What's wrong with all the high MPG technology that currently exists?  Been used for years?

[WhiskeyGirl]

The System Implodes: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

by Robert Weissman

Roche: Saving Lives is Not Our Business

Monopoly control over life-saving medicines gives enormous power to drug companies. And, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous power corrupts enormously.

The Swiss company Roche makes a range of HIV-related drugs. One of them is enfuvirtid, sold under the brand-name Fuzeon. Fuzeon is the first of a new class of AIDS drugs, working through a novel mechanism. It is primarily used as a “salvage” therapy — a treatment for people for whom other therapies no longer work. Fuzeon brought in $266 million to Roche in 2007, though sales are declining.

Roche charges $25,000 a year for Fuzeon. It does not offer a discount price for developing countries.

Korea maintains a form of price controls...listed Fuzeon at $18,000 a year.

The head of Roche Korea was reportedly less diplomatic. According to Korean activists, he told them, “We are not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not our business.”

Roche charges $10,000 for a four-month course of valganciclovir. In December 2006, it negotiated with Médicins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and agreed on a price of $1,899. According to MSF, this still-price-gouging price is only available for poor and very high incidence countries, however, and only for nonprofit organizations — not national treatment programs.

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2008/112008/weissman.html

I wonder how many would have survived Polio with this kind of for profit/discount market?  Were those drugs developed to fuel profits or save people?

[LouiseVargas]

You are absolutely correct, WhiskeyGirl. In earlier days, drugs were developed to save people. No one would have survived Polio without Salk and Sabin. In elementary school we lined up for a dose of the vaccine via sugar cube. It was free.

Someway, somehow times changed from only wanting to give / to making drugs for profit. As I see it, this is when insurance companies became immoral.   

I have no clue why drug companies charge so much for AIDs meds that most patients who need it, cannot afford it. And Magic Johnson (may he live long) lives and prospers due to two things: being able to afford AIDs meds and maintaining a rigorously healthy lifestyle, which is expensive too. 

[WhiskeyGirl]

Are vision and dental benefits important to all Americans?  Maybe the nation should scrap vision and dental benefits for all Americans to save some money?

Private Medicare adds costs for no gain, studies find
By New York Times
In print: Monday, November 24, 2008

Enrollment in private Medicare plans has nearly doubled in five years, to 10.1-million.

In a separate article, two analysts from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, Carlos Zarabozo and Scott Harrison, said that growth in private plans had driven up costs because the government pays them 13 percent more on average than what it would spend for the same beneficiaries in traditional Medicare.

What are taxpayers really paying for?  What is the benefit to Medicare recipients?

The private plans, which frequently offer additional benefits like vision and dental care, have proved popular.

It seems like taking care of their vision and dentition may be important to Medicare recipients.  If they take these benefits away from old people, will they also end dental and vision care for other entitlement programs?  The poor, the low income, and Medicaid recipients?  Everyone get the same opportunities for health?

"Medicare Advantage plans are offering an average of over $1,100 in additional annual value to enrollees in terms of cost savings and added benefits," said Kerry Weems, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In a campaign statement, Obama declared, "We need to eliminate the excessive subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans and pay them the same amount it would cost to treat the same patients under regular Medicare."

Why not give all Americans an equal chance to keep their vision and teeth in good shape? 

Why not give all Americans the plan available to presidents, members of Congress and their families? 

Or, is "separate but like" the new rally cry in America?  Was "separate but equal" a good idea?  

http://www.tampabay.com/news/article914879.ece

Do these dental benefits include dentures?  Do they include glasses?  Do any of these people know how hard it is to eat when one does not have dentures?  Dentures that fit?  Teeth in good repair?

Maybe these old people can go to the thrift store for dental care of glasses?  Walxxx health clinic?

Anyone idea how hard it is to read when you don't have a good pair of glasses?

Maybe there are tools to stimulate pain and dysfunction from bad teeth and loss of vision...walk one day in the life of someone with poor teeth or vision...

just my humble opinions

[LouiseVargas]

WhiskeyGirl,

You have hit upon an important topic. I pay (from my own money) $854 per month for Anthem Blue Cross health insurance. It does not cover dental benefits, nor cheap reading glasses from the drug store. I was lucky to get this coverage but I don't like it that this is all that is available to me. 

[WhiskeyGirl]

Tom Daschle: new HHS Secretary wants big government health care

Throughout his presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to “free the executive branch from special interest influence” and pledged that none of his appointees would be “permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.” ...

But at least one nominee has managed to evade the president-elect’s promised scrutiny of lobbyists: Tom Daschle, Obama’s current health care policy adviser and his nominee as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

A former Democratic Senator from South Dakota, Daschle was one of Obama’s first high-profile supporters, having joined his campaign back in February 2007 (bringing along his carefully cultivated mailing list of 85,000 donors)...

Perhaps more troubling than Daschle’s lobbying résumé is what he will do in his new HHS role. To judge from his new healthcare policy manifesto, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, Daschle’s proposals...his proposal to create a “super board” of “experts” to oversee decisions about medical care for average Americans.

...“In choosing what it will cover and how much it will pay, [this ‘super board’] could steer providers to the services that are the most clinically valuable and cost effective, and dissuade them from wasting time and money on those that are neither.”

Who would decide what is most clinically valuable?  Drug companies?  What is there to ensure transparency?  Ethics?  Who will control the moral hazzards?  Will there be public hearing about treatment plans?

“Daschle envisions using public money to demand that doctors, clinics, and hospitals comply with the best practices set out by the all-powerful super board,” says Gratzer. “If his idea is implemented and it works, the very practice of American medicine would change. The doctor-patient relationship would become the doctor-patient-super board relationship.”

Gratzer warns against the dangers inherent in such a bloated bureaucratic system. “How would a government panel figure out the best treatment for, say, depression? How can payment consider ‘best practices’ without massively increasing paperwork for everyone involved? The U.S. federal government is already involved in a massive pricing experiment of health-care services -- Medicare pays for 9,000-plus services, pricing them down to the penny. No one is satisfied with that system. Now the federal government would have to judge not only price but quality?”

I think patient privacy will go out the door with the new medical records plan.  Would patients become part of government sponsored and promoted medical experimentation?  Would researchers offer people different treatment options based on some grand experiment?  Different options for men then for women?  Different options for people of various ethnic or racial backgrounds?   

In a nation of mutts, as a patient, would you rather participate in your healthcare decisions?  Would you like to know you have the same medical opportunities as everyone else?  Or, should the "Super Board" have  the final decision?

What about those patients that don't fit neatly into any preformed conclusion?  Those that don't respond well?  Who will have a concern for them in this mass market approach to health care? 

Where is the support for healthcare providers that take care of the sickest?  The toughest cases?  Some people are just more expensive to treat.  What about those people and their doctors?  What providers will be able economically to treat these people?

...“Washington's role would be significantly increased: literally determining what is good care and funding services accordingly...

Barack Obama won the presidency on a platform of “change.” As part of that platform, he promised to take on lobbyists and special interests, while introducing new ideas for reform. In turning to Tom Daschle, however, the president-elect has made the kind of selection that he once might have dismissed as “politics as usual.”

Medicare already has lots of data on Americans.  Electronic billing for services has been around for generations.   How much more would an electronic database save?  It seems like the big brother would stick his nose in everything and offer few if any safeguards to Americans. 

What would a government Super Board get from electronic data statistics anyway?  Isn't that like trying to micromanage from thousands of miles away?  Isn't that the thing insurance companies do today?  Is there something that competent doctors and other healthcare professionals on the front line of patient care might miss that the Super Board find find?

Is the Super Board and data base the bigger badder version of the "insurance company" scapegoated during the Obama campaign?  Throw in some medical experimentation too. 

Are you substituting the "Super Board" for the many options that Americans have today?  (insurance companies, carriers, Medicare, Medicaid)

Is less competition ever a good thing?  Are bigger banks better?  Bigger car companies?  Bigger government?

How would anyone know the Super Board decisions are working?  How would any American know they were part of a Super Board experiment?  Who is going to pay for Super Board mistakes?

http://www.examiner.com/x-722-Conservative-Politics-Examiner~y2008m12d10-Tom-Daschle-new-HHS-Secretary-wants-big-government-health-care

[LouiseVargas]

I got an amazing letter yesterday from Cedars Sinai Medical Center where I go to see my shrink every month. All of a sudden, I started receiving bills for hundreds of dollars in facility charges (what are they? no one could explain.) dating back to 2004. I filled out an application for Charity Care and I was approved. I now owe Cedars $.00 for past bills and the same amount for future bills. This is an  agreement between me and Cedars, NOT Blue Cross. Sometimes, one has to go straight to the source.

[WhiskeyGirl]

I got an amazing letter yesterday from Cedars Sinai Medical Center where I go to see my shrink every month. All of a sudden, I started receiving bills for hundreds of dollars in facility charges (what are they? no one could explain.) dating back to 2004. I filled out an application for Charity Care and I was approved. I now owe Cedars $.00 for past bills and the same amount for future bills. This is an  agreement between me and Cedars, NOT Blue Cross. Sometimes, one has to go straight to the source.

That is very generous.