health care Archives - Stable Genius Liberal

Trump’s HHS embraces socialized medicine

Canadian drugs aren’t cheaper because they went on a medical vacation to Canada. They are cheaper because Canadian socialized medicine works.

Exclusive: Sen. Schatz’s new health care idea could be the Democratic Party’s future

Democratic health care reform ideas are not being given the attention as the GOP plans. There is no debate, no discussion, nearly zero coverage. And the narrative of how the Dems have nothing to offer working class voters persists.

How the Affordable Care Act Drove Down Personal Bankruptcy

Worth a read.

New study shows that the savings from ‘tort reform’ are mythical

“Tort reform,” which is usually billed as the answer to “frivolous malpractice lawsuits,” has been a central plank in the Republican program for healthcare reform for decades. The notion has lived on despite copious evidence that that the so-called defensive medicine practiced by doctors merely to stave off lawsuits accounts for, at best, 2% to 3% of U.S. healthcare costs. As for “frivolous lawsuits,” they’re a problem that exists mostly in the minds of conservatives and the medical establishment. A new study led by Michael B. Rothberg of the Cleveland Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association aimed to measure how much defensive medicine there is, really, and how much it costs. The researchers’ conclusion is that defensive medicine accounts for about 2.9% of healthcare spending. In other words, out of the estimated $2.7-trillion U.S. healthcare bill, defensive medicine accounts for $78 billion.

Southerners Don’t Like Obamacare. They Also Don’t Want to Repeal It.

Despite strong dislike of President Obama’s handling of health care, a majority of people in three Southern states – Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina – would rather that Congress improve his signature health care law than repeal and replace it, according to a New York Times Upshot/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

I can’t wait until i start reading about red states where they want government to stay out of their obama-care.

Where is the Outrage over Employer-Sponsored Coverage in the “Rate Shock” Debate?

McIntyre by way of Thoma:

Some 90% of people with private insurance receive it through an employer, and those plans are generally priced using “pure” experience-rating. This means the company serves as one giant risk pool, and a firm’s youngest employees have the exact same insurance premium as their eldest colleagues.

…

Yet, I’ve seen exactly zero Obamacare opponents railing to amend the employer-based practices that require most young healthies to pay more than their “fair share.” No one is plying Congress to amend HIPAA or the ADA so young invincibles can pay premiums appropriate to their health status. No one is calling out employers on their “redistributionist” policies, even though uniform insurance premiums force a substantial transfer from the young to the old.

If you’re expecting honest debate from the people who came up with death panels and takeover messaging, you are asking too much.

Kaiser Obamacare premium study: Affordable Care Act will be cheaper than expected.

The real success will be when the right starts using it as an example of market based reforms rather than dismissing it as socialized medicine.

It Takes A Government (To Make A Market)

there’s an additional factor, that even supporters of the Affordable Care Act mostly missed: the extent to which, for the first time, the Act is creating a truly functioning market in nongroup insurance.

Market based reforms often require government. This should be obvious, but since it violates right-wing political correctness, it is ignored or shouted down.

How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater

as the tale of the humble IV bag shows all too clearly, it is secrecy that helps keep prices high: hidden in the underbrush of transactions among multiple buyers and sellers, and in the hieroglyphics of hospital bills.
At every step from manufacturer to patient, there are confidential deals among the major players, including drug companies, purchasing organizations and distributors, and insurers. These deals so obscure prices and profits that even participants cannot say what the simplest component of care actually costs, let alone what it should cost.

The term is information asymmetry. And it is one of the reasons why health care in the US is so damn costly and everyone claims that they are not the ones making money on health care.

Generic vs. brand-name pills: Research shows billions of dollars are wasted on over-the-counter medicine.

Registered nurses have more modest incomes than doctors, but are shown to be far more likely to buy generic pain relievers than other people with similar incomes. Most strikingly of all, professional pharmacists—the people who know which pills are which—are even less likely to buy name brand than are doctors and nurses. This all strongly suggests that rich people avoid generics not because the pills are inferior, or even because they’re showing off, but simply because they’re careless.
…
Nobody I know thinks advertising works on them or on anyone else. But it’s clear that even when marketers don’t have any meaningful information to convey about why you should buy their product, investments in branding nonetheless move purchasing decisions.