Quote of the Day

Today's message is not meant to be an "I told you so," even if I did tell you. The point of the message is that health policy science has advanced to a level that the consequences of policies in various reform proposals are fully predictable. "Well, let's try this and see how it goes" is no longer acceptable, especially for our entire $2.5 trillion health care industry.

This is an important study. It demonstrates, once again, that requiring already insured patients to pay more out of pocket if they access care can have a detrimental impact on both their health and on total health care spending. This is the opposite of what we should be striving for as we attempt to reform health care. Yet Congress and the administration are including this ill-considered policy of cost sharing in the unfounded belief that it would be a harmless method of slowing health care spending.

The President enters the Republicans' den, and politics broke out. At least that's the impression you might have from the media coverage of the President's appearance at the GOP House Issues Conference. But this was not simply an exchange of partisan political rhetoric; it was a plea by President Obama to set aside rhetorical grandstanding and to join together in a fair, credible, and objective discussion of the impact of the actual policies under consideration.

Healthways SilverSneakers is a membership fitness program for seniors provided as a free benefit by many Medicare Advantage programs throughout the nation. It is not a benefit that is allowed in the traditional Medicare program.

The leadership of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) do agree on one crucial point: the current health care reform proposal does very little to control the intolerable escalation of health care costs. Both agree that Congress must provide the remedies to control spending and improve health care value.

It looks like there are four choices: 1) walk away and accept the status quo, 2) use alternative political maneuvers to move the bill through Congress, 3) attempt to salvage at least a portion of the less controversial components of the current proposal, or 4) start over. Let's look at these.

Remember the managed care revolution in the latter part of the last century? Remember how angry everyone became over the interventions designed to control spending by preventing patents from having timely access to care?

This week medical students and other health professional students and colleagues marched on Sacramento in support of Sen. Mark Leno's SB 810, a reintroduction of Sen. Sheila Kuehl's single payer bill that was passed and vetoed twice in prior legislative sessions.

This is not a simple Gotcha! The largest private insurers in the nation have been caught red-handed, secretly passing funds through their lobby organization, AHIP, to the United States Chamber of Commerce to help fund the Chamber's advertising campaign opposing the reform proposal currently before Congress.