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Are Health Insurers Killing The Goose That Laid Its Golden Egg?

Ann Braly, WellPoint’s CEO, launched a new offensive to protect the vested interests of the healthcare insurance industry now that Obamacare seems to be dead.

The healthcare insurance offensive began with her op-ed article in the Wall Street journal on February 7, 2010. Readers will have a deeper understanding of the offensive if they follow the underlined historical links in this article.

It will destroy President Obama’s credibility, the practice of medicine, patient access to care and increase the number of uninsured. It will bankrupt the country if her offensive is successful.

The healthcare insurance industry is killing the goose that laid its golden egg.
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*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*

The Business Of Medicine: Critical To Medical Education?

Most medical schools do a reasonably good job clinically preparing medical students to be future physicians.

But they can do better, especially in our fragmented health system where millions of Americans have to contend with costs as much as they have to with their medical conditions.

In her recent New York Times column, Pauline Chen cites a study showing that students exposed to more non-clinical topics, like medical economics, health policy, and the “business” of medicine, were more satisfied with their education. Read more »

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

All Healthcare Is Local: Why Employers Self-Insure

“I’m from Massachusetts,” I told the audience.  “So depending on how you feel about reform, I will say either ’sorry,’ or ‘you’re welcome.”

The audience, made up of large employers and benefits professionals seemed to like this.  But it was clear that they were pleased that the health care reform legislation is Congress is pretty well dead now.

Now, if it’s true that health care costs are rising (they are) and this heavily impacts employers (it does) why would the death of a bill meant to address this problem make those people happy?

I’ve written before that part of the problem with the reform bills in Congress is the huge divide between what benefits professionals know about the real world of health care and the things that get “policy wonks” excited.   And so a big reason why these bills never really had widespread support among professional benefits people was because they never made a whole lot of sense to them. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Is Healthcare The Engine Of The US Economy?

Commenting on the President’s budget, an editorial in the Times on Feb 2nd juxtaposed three of our nation’s dilemmas: the deficit, jobs and health care.

“President Obama got his priorities mostly right. The deficit, compared with what it could have been, is $120B. That’s a lot of money. But it’s not too much at a time of economic weakness, when deficit spending is needed to put Americans back to work.”

“Medicare and Medicaid will cost $788B; that should be another reminder of why the country needs health care reform.” Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at PHYSICIANS and HEALTH CARE REFORM Commentaries and Controversies*

The Government’s Rising Stake In Healthcare Costs

The federal government may be stalled on health care reform legislation, but the executive branch has been expanding its stake in paying for care.

Yesterday, QD reported that federal and state governments will pay for more than half of the health care purchased in the U.S. by 2012, and likely even sooner. Today, Medicare’s actuaries announced that growth in national health expenditures (NHE) outpaced growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) last year. The recession, H1N1 programs and federal subsidies for COBRA benefits all contributed to the largest one-year increase in history, from 16.2% of GDP in 2008 to 17.3% of GDP last year.

In 2010, NHE growth will decelerate to 3.9% while GDP is anticipated to rebound to 4% growth. But, and this is a big caveat, much of the projected slowdown in NHE growth is attributed to the 21.3% slashing of Medicare physician payment rates called for under current law’s Sustainable Growth Rate provisions. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

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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