Zane Safrit

Majority of Children Opposed to Their Affordable Health Care

I knew they're must be a constituency, an important constituency, that opposes affordable health care and health insurance for children.

I found it. It's the children themselves. Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed to Children's Healthcare.

And their elected representatives are listening.

Job-Lock: Which Candidate Has the Key?

First off, what is job lock?

[T]the present employer-based [ health care] system creates a nasty side effect: "job lock." It impedes ingenuity and job growth because employees, fearful of losing health coverage or being rejected, will stay in longtime jobs. This reduces the number of people willing to take on entrepreneurial risk. It also makes it harder for small businesses to recruit and retain good employees.

That's what job-lock is. Ultimately, it's a competitive disadvantage for small business, startups, entrepreneurs. You know, those people who:

employ 50% of private sector, have generated 60% to 80% of all new jobs in the last decade and create more than half of the nonfarm private Gross Domestic Product.

Job creation increasingly is happening only at small businesses, those with under 50 employees. And it's happening despite the possibility of affordable health care/health insurance as a company benefit for most such companies.

Insurance companies won't offer to small businesses and their employees the same group savings offered to big business and their employees. And as the costs of health insurance and health care rises, as our population ages (especially for the talented and skilled members) the issue of affordable health care/insurance as an employee benefit becomes more central for job opportunities.

And still, the talent and abilities of the most skilled and engaged employees remain locked in jobs at large companies whose business model too often is the cash-cow model. That's where innovation and its expenses are minimized in favor of maximizing profits from an established mature market, product and demographic.

Why? The employees need the health insurance for themselves and their families. It's too often not affordable or not offered with a small company whose creating jobs, innovating new products, serving as the driver for our economy.

So, when McCain and Obama talk about small business...listen instead for what they plan to do to offer affordable health care for all, and what they plan to do to minimize the impact of our current employer-based health care system and its side-effect,  job-lock, on small business and our ability to attract the talent needed to continue to add jobs to our economy.

Here's a profile of their positions by John Fout at The Street: McCain, Obama Eye Small Business.

The quotes in the first paragraphs are taken from this article.

Doctors are Frustrated by the System, too

Doctors aren't happy with our current health care system, either.

" I love being a doctor but I hate practicing medicine."

"Thirty percent of my hospital admissions are being denied. There’s a 45-day limit on the appeal. You don’t bill in time, you lose everything. You’re discussing this with a managed-care rep on the phone and you think: ‘You’re sitting there, I’m sitting here. How do you know anything about this patient?"

In a survey last year of nearly 2,400 physicians conducted by a physician recruiting firm, locumtenens.com, 3 percent said they were not frustrated by nonclinical aspects of medicine. The level of frustration has increased with nearly every survey. - Eyes Bloodshot, Doctors Vent their Discontent

EMR (electronic medical record)

There is much discussion of the EMR in health care today.

Do you see what is wrong with that statement? Why is there discussion of something that should absolutely exist, that should have existed for years? Your doctor probably doesn't have an EMR, your hospital probably only has a partial EMR. The EMR would enable your physician to see your history, what medications you are on, what diagnostic examinations you have had, when you had them and what the results are. If you went to the emergency room and were then admitted you would not have to repeat the same tests you had just a couple of hours ago, because the attending physician would know that they had been performed and what the results were.

The primary reason that the EMR is not fully implemented is that it is expensive and the benefit provided accrues primarily to the insurers. But it should be done because it is the right thing. Ezra Klein does a good job of commenting on it today.

If you call Domino's and order a pizza they know from your phone number what your address is and what your usual pizza order is. Why is it that Domino's has a better record system than your community health center?

Jamie Jacoby, CPA, MBA, AInstIB

Almost 3 times as many

Prescription drugs killed nearly three-times as many as non-prescription drugs.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328. -  NY Times

Health Care Industry: The heartbeat of our economy?

The Economy's Steady Pulse.

In the past 15 years, the health-care economy has pumped out 4.5 million new jobs, including related fields such as drug development and health insurance. A dozen of the 30 fastest-growing occupations are related to health care. Even last month -- as the unemployment rate took its biggest jump in 22 years -- health care continued to add thousands of jobs...

The health-care economy now employs about 16.5 million Americans. In the past three decades, the total national spending on health care has more than doubled to 16 percent of the gross domestic product. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that by 2082, rising health care costs will push that spending to nearly 50 percent.

There's something wrong with this picture. I'm sure the current numbers are very correct. Projections for the future...?

Regardless, there's something wrong about this picture.

The health care industry is supposed to be providing solutions for our health care. These growth rates, current and projected, point to a different mission, one that's more associated with the health of their industry and not the health of our bodies.

Straight Answers Always Work.

I really like health insurance 411 blog. It's written by a health insurance agent of 30 years. His posts are answers to questions posed by his readers or his clients. He's direct, clear, accountable, expects the same of his audience, helpful.  If we had more of him throughout the industry, we'd be well on our way to finding solutions we can all be accountable for.

Ask Questions

Joe Paduda, at Managed Care Matters blogs, reminds us it's campaign season. ( I know you probably forgot it in between the incessant sound bites and ads and news stories...) And in this campaign season, there'll be lots of talk about health care solutions by the candidates, each with their own stock of stories and examples and numbers.

Joe suggests arming ourselves with three things that might make useful the conversations they spawn among us:

First, when approached at a cocktail party, kid's lacrosse game, or backyard barbecue by someone touting the latest statistic or quoting a health care horror story, just ask for the details. What is the source?

Second, ask what the solution is. How could this be fixed? What could have been done better/faster/cheaper/smarter...

Third, ask for definitions. What exactly do they mean by 'socialized medicine'? Are providers government employees? Is this single payer?

Take Your Meds...Correctly.

...poor adherence to drug regimens in these categories of chronic disease adds $22 to $34 billion in increased costs. Running a Hospital

Take your meds...correctly.

Makes sense.

The current Indiana Jones movie (yawn) has numerous marketing tie-ins with fast food feeders, particular with Burger King’s Indy Double Whopper.

But if he, Dr. Jones, actually ate the food that the movie sells to its fans, he'd would have to stop a car chase during the movie to take his Lipitor. - Indiana Jones and the Burger of Doom

Now I understand why we're overweight as a nation. We're collectively susceptible to the branding connection between action heroes and diets of high-fat, high-calorie, high-cholesterol diets with untested beef.

Makes sense.