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Medicaid: Will The Cost Of Expanding Eligibility Be Overwhelming?

Medicaid has been front and center this week as President Obama addressed the National Governors Association, and several governors testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Obama told the governors that he supports the Wyden-Brown bill, which would accelerate the availability of waivers under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), so that states would not have to first create health insurance exchanges under the law, and then have the right to dismantle them and replace them with other mechanisms to achieve coverage goals of the law without additional cost to the federales. (See Wyden-Brown fact sheet.) The sponsors’ home states, Oregon and Massachusetts would otherwise have to dismantle parts of their own health reform efforts in order to align with the federal mandates. (Wyden has been a longer-term proponent of experimentation and innovation in health reform.) 

The mini-med waivers granted to states (in addition to those granted to corporations and unions) are just one example of interim steps needed to harmonize federal and state health reform. When in 2014 mini-med plans will no longer be permitted at all under the federal health reform law, there will either need to be a significant dislocation of the underinsured “Young Invincibles” in Massachusetts and underinsured employees in capped health plans elsewhere in the country, or a change in the law.

Similar difficulties await state Medicaid programs, which will be faced with expanded eligibility, and other state agencies, which will need to set up exchanges per the ACA. The cost associated with eligibility expansion will be overwhelming — or maybe it won’t. There are, of course, expert opinions across the board on the financial impact of health reform on state budgets. As the saying goes, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” Some reports inflate state expenses by not accounting for the fact that the federal share of Medicaid expansion covers 92 percent of the total. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*

When Headlines Bash Doctors

While I know it grabs the eye, it really didn’t matter what the article was about. The headline says it all: Doctors are the problem, not the system, right?

-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

The First Emergency Physician Elected To Congress

I was unaware that Dr. Joe Heck of Nevada is the first emergency physician to be elected to Congress. Good for him! From the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP):

In one of the closest congressional races of 2010, Republican challenger and ACEP member Dr. Joe Heck upset Rep. Dina Titus in Nevada’s third Congressional District.  Dr. Heck is the first ACEP member and emergency physician to be elected to Congress.

I suppose that leaves me to be the first for the Senate…

*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*

Why Negative Medical Studies Are Good

This is a guest column by Ivan Oransky, M.D., who is executive editor of Reuters Health and blogs at Embargo Watch and Retraction Watch.

One of the things that makes evaluating medical evidence difficult is knowing whether what’s being published actually reflects reality. Are the studies we read a good representation of scientific truth, or are they full of cherry-picked data that help sell drugs or skew policy decisions?

That question may sound like that of a paranoiac, but rest assured, it’s not. Researchers have worried about a “positive publication bias” for decades. The idea is that studies showing an effect of a particular drug or procedure are more likely to be published. In 2008, for example, a group of researchers published a New England Journal of Medicine study showing that nearly all — or 94 percent — of published studies of antidepressants used by the FDA to make approval decisions had positive results. But the researchers found that when the FDA included unpublished studies, only about half — or 51 percent — were positive.

A PLoS Medicine study published that same year found similar results for studies long after drugs were approved: Less than half — 43 percent — of studies used by the FDA to approve 90 drugs were published within five years of approval. It was those with positive results that were more likely in journals.

All of that can leave the impression that something may work better than it really does. And there is at least one powerful incentive for journals to publish positive studies: Drug and device makers are much more likely to buy reprints of such reports. Such reprints are highly lucrative for journals. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*

Integrating Major Health Systems Could Make Things Worse

Health reformers propose the proliferation of integrated health systems, like the Mayo Clinic or Kaiser Permanente, which, according to the Dartmouth Atlas, lead to better patient care and improved cost control.

To that end, accountable care organizations (ACOs) have been a major part of health reform, changing the way healthcare is delivered. Never mind that patients may not be receptive to the new model, but the creation of these large, integrated physician-hospital entities that progressive policy experts espouse comes with repercussions. Monopoly power.

To prepare for the new model of healthcare delivery, physician practices have been consolidating. In many cases, they’re being bought by hospitals. Last year, I wrote how this is leading to the death of the private practice physician.

But with consolidation comes a tilt in market power. Health insurers, desperate to control costs, are finding it more difficult to negotiate with hospital-physician practices that dominate a market. And patients are going to side with the hospital — insurers that leave out popular doctors and medical facilities face a backlash from patients. Witness the power that Partners Healthcare has in the Boston market that’s mostly driven by patient demand for big-reputation, high-cost Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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