Coin: Democrats Press Health Care In Ads

Well, well, well. While I was writing yesterday's post, the Obama camp was delivering the second part of a one-two punch comprised of advertisements focused on health care. We saw the first one in my last post; now the Dems have aired another ad entitled "Coin."

Martina Stewart, an associate producer for CNN's Political Ticker blog, has a great resource addressing the divergent positions taken by the candidates. Her Political Ticker post made on October 5 not only give a synopsis of the commercial along with a video link, but also includes some great responses and rebuttals from each camp.

On Sunday, the [Obama] campaign also held a conference call about health care reform policy that featured Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who was the Kansas Insurance Commissioner prior to becoming governor, and the Pennsylvania and Ohio insurance commissioners. The call focused on criticizing Sen. McCain’s health care reform proposal.

The day before, the McCain campaign held a conference call of its own where it sought to refute the Obama campaign’s assertions about the McCain health care reform plan and, at a campaign event in Virginia, Obama called McCain’s plan “radical.”

The audiocasts of these two conference calls add a much needed additional dimension to the issues presented in the advertisement. Links to them are near the bottom of the Political Ticker post cited at the bottom of this entry.

The chaos of these recent months has included its own health care aspects in each of the major issues. In the wake of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, we saw firsthand, palpable proof of the importance of electronic medical records. As Wall Street melts down and the Dow plummets, the impact of health care costs on our economy is massive. During the Presidential race, it is once more rising to the surface.

We may see health care moving back towards its proper position as a centerpiece issue for the next President.

SOURCE: "Obama camp releases another health care ad" 10/05/08
photo courtesy of KevinDooley, used under its Creative Commons license

Health Care Returning to the Presidential Race?

As the pundits rail about the race for the Oval Office and the newscasts are filled with baleful economic predictions, the American public continues to find health care reform of utmost importance. Unfortunately, the topic seems to have drifted out of the media coverage zone, eclipsed by political spots and visions of a failing Wall Street. This is especially a shame considering many have tied the ills of the health care industry directly to the economic hardships we are now facing. (See last Thursday's blog post for Elizabeth Edwards' take on the subject.)

Now that the first two debates -- Presidential and Vice Presidential -- are passed, it would seem that this vitally important topic may be returning to the spotlight it so richly deserves. Sen. Obama has brought out a new ad which brings the subject to center stage, evidently sensing a weakness on the subject in his competitors. Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor at Boston.com, has posted the video...



This is heartening to see since it was not that long ago that I wrote an entry here entitled "Health Care Falls Off the Radar".

SOURCE: "Obama sees opening on healthcare" 10/03/08
photo courtesy of Chesi Photos CC, used under their Creative Commons license

Feds Uphold San Fran Health Care Program

Sacramento, California, has been the center of much contention about health care reform. One aspect in particular has not only come under fire in the press but also has been the subject of litigation spearheaded by restaurants in the area.

Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan requires a level of financial participation from employers heretofore unseen in the state. As is usual when people or groups are asked to pay more, the reaction was far from positive. A court battle rapidly ensued as the restaurant association asserted that the payment structuring and financial participation demanded of their industry was in violation of federal law.

It would seem that the judges do not concur. Marc Lifsher of The LA Times reports:

Ruling on a suit brought by a local restaurant association, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that fees charged to employers under the 10-month-old San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance do not violate federal laws regulating employee benefit programs.

The San Francisco ordinance, which took effect Jan. 9, requires for-profit employers with 20 or more workers to offer health insurance, set aside funds in health reimbursement accounts or pay a fee to the city's Healthy San Francisco program. Nonprofit employers with 50 or more staffers are also covered.

While this news is not greeted with any joy on the part of restaurant owners, supporters of the plan, Healthy San Francisco, see it as proof that through shared responsibility the current health care crisis can be met and vanquished.

"Today's ruling is a huge victory for the city and for the 46 million Americans who don't have health insurance," [San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom said. "San Francisco is proving that it can be done. By thinking outside the box, every city and state in this country can provide health insurance if they are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom."

In the short ten months the plan has been in place, basic medical care has been extended to 30,000 San Francisco residents that lack insurance. A good beginning, but only time will tell the full impact on not only health care but also the local economy and the businesses that make it up. Another process that I would classify as well worth watching.

SOURCE: "Federal court upholds San Francisco healthcare program" 09/30/08
photo courtesy of paraflyer, used under its Creative Commons license

Elizabeth Edwards Speaks: Health Care and the Economic Downturn

Elizabeth Edwards is back in the news, and once more she is lending her voice to the cause of health care reform. Mrs. Edwards is waging two battles currently: one against incurable cancer and another for universal health care and reform of our current system.

On Wednesday, she participated in a roundtable discussion in North Carolina. It is a state whose electoral votes are up for grabs in the current race for the White House due to both an influx of new residents hailing from the more liberal northeastern area of the country and a highly mobilized African-American population that leans toward the Obama camp.

As Wall Street continues its meltdown and the word "bailout" seems to be at the center of almost every conversation about the economy, Mrs. Edwards draws a link between the ongoing crisis in health care and the economic woes facing the country.

Mike Baker of The Associated Press reports:

Elizabeth Edwards said during a conference call Tuesday that medical bills often lead to foreclosure, a primary factor in the lagging housing market that's led to the demise of several Wall Street firms. Those without health insurance are often less productive, she said, because they miss work after failing to get treatment.

"Reform of our health care system is a very important part of the answers we're going to need to solve our economic woes," she said.

I'll be bringing you more info as soon as details of the roundtable are available.

SOURCE: "Elizabeth Edwards ties health care to economy" 10/01/08
photo courtesy of NCBrianused under its Creative Commons license

Get Health Care Elsewhere, We'll Pay You!

Medical Tourism- traveling out of the country for health care and procedures.

In a story that frankly surprised me a bit, The Wall Street Journal examined the fact that some health insurance now covers medical tourism.

Via M.P McQueen at The Wall Street Journal:

Now, a handful of plans are beginning to cover treatment overseas for heart surgery, hip and knee replacements and other major surgical procedures.

While medical tourism isn't expected to be a solution to the country's soaring health-care costs, the practice is intended to produce savings for insurers, employers and workers. Open-heart surgery, which can cost roughly $100,000 in the U.S., can be done at an internationally accredited hospital in India for just $8,500, for instance. Proponents note that many international hospitals are staffed with American and European-trained physicians. Many facilities also are accredited by an affiliate of the Joint Commission, a nonprofit group that is the main accrediting body for U.S. hospitals.

Some of these plans actually pay a bonus to those who elect to travel for their medicine. This is an astounding and innovative approach.

While issues such as a lack of legal recourse and the lack of follow up care plans are certainly concerns, it would seem that this idea has gained a lot of traction since I last wrote about it. The issue that I find unsettling is the lack of certainty regarding the safety and sterility of tissues and blood used in transplant-oriented procedures and surgeries.

Still, this is an interesting option and one still in its early stages. I would say it bears watching.

SOURCE: "Paying Workers to Go Abroad for Health Care" 09/30/08
photo courtesy of crucially used under its Creative Commons license

Electronic Medical Records in the Aftermath

Alright, you've seen me post about the advantages of using electonic medical records many times over the lifespan of this blog. Now I have a practical, real world scenario to share with you, one that hits very close to home for me as someone who lives on the Gulf Coast.

As you may have heard, we have had some bad weather down here, specifically Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. As a matter fact, evacuation during these storms took your humble narrator off line for several days resulting in a lack of postings here for roughly a week.

The people of Texas, our neighbor to the west, took a beating much like the one that Louisiana and Mississippi took three short years ago during Hurricane Katrina. A beating that has left thousands of people scattered, their homes and medical records decimated by the storm winds.

MediConnect Global, Inc., is a company that provides EMR services, and today they prove the worth of digital records in a huge way.

Via The MediConnect Blog:

MediConnect has retrieved or received requests to retrieve thousands of medical records from organizations in the areas most affected by Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Gustav, and Tropical Storm Fay. MediConnect will donate digitized copies of medical records to individuals, physicians, hospitals, law firms, insurance carriers or independent agents located in the designated disaster areas who submit a request accompanied by a HIPAA-compliant patient authorization. Those who need their records can go to www.mediconnect.net to begin the process of getting any records that may be in MediConnect’s archive.

As someone directly affected by these storms, I cannot express my happiness at this news. We often speak of the savings in time and efficiency that EMRs can bring to the overall health care equation. Now we have a practical illustration of another important aspect of implementing them: disaster recovery.
SOURCE: "Medical Records Lost During Hurricanes Replaced by MediConnect Donation" 08/29/08
photo courtesy of karllehenbauer used under its Creative Commons license

Health Care Falls Off The Radar

The New York Times has debuted a new blog this weekend called Health Care Watch which kicks off with a bang as it makes inquiries into why health care seems to suddenly be missing from the ongoing Presidential debate.

Blogger Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, is the chairman of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. He likens the current political situation regarding health care to that of chronic vs. acute health conditions.

The current state of the economy as bailout becomes the word on everyone's lips is an acute condition. The sub-prime mortgage meltdown is another one. Both are immediate and painful, having symptoms that demand immediate attention. The health care crisis is a chronic ill, like heart disease or diabetes, one with far reaching a deadly ramifications if left untreated, but lacking the sharp immediate pain of the previously mentioned conditions. Anyone following this blog or other sources of info addressing the issue of chronic ills knows how much harder to deal with and more expensive they are.

In Mr. Emmanuel's words:

[...] More encouraging is that at least Mr. Obama and his advisers also recognize that solving the deep problem of the economy cannot be done without solving the health care mess. Economic, tax and health care policy are inextricably linked. Middle-class incomes have hardly grown in 30 or more years (except for five years in the 1990s when health care costs were moderated), budget deficits are escalating and will only worsen and investment in education and other engines of long-term economic growth are declining.

These problems are all driven by health care. Rather than go to wage increases, almost all of the growth in workers’ productivity has been swallowed up by rising health care costs. Medicare cost increases are the tsunami that will drown the federal government in red ink; health care — Medicaid and insurance for state workers — is now the No. 1 item in state budgets, consuming tax receipts used to support primary, secondary and college education.

His premise is that in order to cure the ills our economy is currently suffering, we need to address the state of health care in our nation. In this regard, the acceptance speeches from both sides of the aisle are less than encouraging. In Sen. Obama's speech, less than a minute was devoted to health care, approximately 100 words out of 4,900. Sen. McCain's is even more worrisome with less than 50 words out of his 4,000 word speech covering health care issues -- a whopping two sentences.

Let us hope that this issue finds itself back on their radar soon. Health care is suffering a chronic set of ills that impact our entire economy and touches almost every single American.

SOURCE: "What’s Happened to the Health Care Debate?" 09/28/08
photo courtesy of benfrantzdale used under its Creative Commons license