March 5th, 2010 by DrRich in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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DrRich is pleased to note that events have so quickly confirmed the explanation he gave, in his last post, regarding what the health insurance companies are up to by choosing to massively increase insurance premiums at this critical juncture. The insurance companies, to repeat, are willfully embracing their assigned role as “villain,” in order to get apparently stalled healthcare reforms back on track.
A mere few hours after DrRich had posted, Kathleen Sibelius issued a press release angrily documenting several additional requests for large rate increases by health insurance companies all across the land, and pointedly reminding us regular folks that healthcare reform would prevent these greedy companies from committing such abusive and harmful acts. And thus has the administration now officially established runaway health insurance premiums as the crisis of the moment. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
March 3rd, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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Barely a week after Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said he wants state controls on the price of health insurance, President Obama apparently wants to do the same at the federal level. Both men must believe it’s good politics, because there are about 4,000 years of evidence that it’s not good policy.
But the trouble for reformers has never really been about policy. It’s been about a fundamental misunderstanding of how people view health care and the very bad things that happen when you give people the impression you’re going to mess with what they have.
In this sense, the reform bills are like perpetual anxiety machines. Contraptions that continually produce more public anxiety than they consume.
But why is this?
Well one of the surest ways to create anxiety in someone is to make them feel uncertain about something important to them. It’s one reason why companies suffer from problems with morale in tough economic times. If a company doesn’t level with its employees about what’s happening, smart employees start to assume it must be because the news is bad. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the management come out and explain that everything is ok? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
February 26th, 2010 by Debra Gordon in Better Health Network, Opinion
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$2600.
$544.
Look carefully at those two numbers. The first is the sum of three bills I received for my husband’s day-after-Christmas visit to the emergency room for unusual dizziness. A CT and EKG ruled out a stroke or heart attack. Diagnosis? Vertigo.
(Note: both figures will likely be much higher once all the bills come in, but I needed a blog post so I’m going with what I’ve got now).
Now look at the second figure. That’s what I have to pay after the discounts my insurance company has negotiated with the hospital and radiologists. Note: there are no payments from the insurance company in there because we had not yet met our deductible. These are just the discounts. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at A Medical Writer's Musings on Medicine and Health Care*
February 24th, 2010 by DaveMunger in Better Health Network, Expert Interviews, True Stories
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“I like your watch,” pharmacist Jin Jun tells me as I’m sitting down to interview him.
I have a plastic runner’s watch, nothing special, but I see Jun is wearing something similar. “Do you run?” I ask him.
Jun is a tall, personable man who runs marathons, it turns out, and he enthusiastically invites me to run in a 5K race this weekend. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it but I ask him for the details anyway.
Jun is equally passionate about his job, which one day a week involves helping the patients at the Carolinas Medical Center Infectious Disease Clinic with HIV drug adherence. I ask him how he handles cases like LaShana Walker’s, where some days she just doesn’t feel like taking her medications because they make her so nauseous. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Daily Monthly*
February 22nd, 2010 by Stanley Feld, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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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.
Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*
