Consumer Directed Healthcare

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writers Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar And Jennifer Loven, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – With tempers flaring, President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans clashed in an extraordinary live-on-TV summit Thursday over the right prescription for the nation’s broken health care system, talking of agreement but holding to long-entrenched positions that leave them far apart.

“We have a very difficult gap to bridge here,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. “We just can’t afford this. That’s the ultimate problem.”

With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats’ Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props “that prevent us from having a conversation.”

And so it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House — a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public.

The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation’s health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favor much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next.

Obama and his Democratic allies argued at Thursday’s meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation’s future economic vitality. The president cast health care as “one of the biggest drags on our economy,” tying his top domestic priority to an issue that’s even more pressing to many Americans.

“This is the last chance, as far as I’m concerned,” Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.

Obama lamented partisan bickering that has resulted in a stalemate over legislation to extend coverage to more than 30 million people who are now uninsured. “Politics I think ended up trumping practical common sense,” he said.

And yet, even as he pleaded for cooperation — “actually a discussion, and not just us trading talking points” — he insisted on a number of Democratic points and acknowledged agreement may not be possible. “I don’t know that those gaps can be bridged,” Obama said.

With hardened positions well staked out before the meeting, the president and his Democratic allies prepared to move on alone — a gamble with political risks no matter how they do that.

One option — preferred by the White House and progressives in the Democratic caucus — is to try to pass a comprehensive plan without GOP support, by using controversial Senate budget reconciliation rules that would disallow filibusters. GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander asked Democrats to swear off a jam-it-through approach, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., defended it. Obama weighed in with gentle chiding, asking both sides to focus on substance and worry about process later — a plea he made repeatedly throughout the day with little success.

A USA Today/Gallup survey released Thursday found Americans tilt 49-42 against Democrats forging ahead by themselves without any GOP support. Opposition was even stronger to the idea of Senate Democrats using the special budget rules, with 52 percent opposed and 39 percent in favor.

A second alternative for Obama and his party is going smaller, with a modest bill that would merely smooth some of the rough edges from the current system. A month after the Massachusetts election that cost Democrats their Senate supermajority and threw the health legislation in doubt, the White House has developed its own slimmed-down health care proposal so the president will know what the impact would be if he chooses that route, according to a Democratic official familiar with the discussions. That official could not provide details, but Democrats have looked at approaches including expanding Medicaid and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health plans until around age 26.

Obama himself hinted at a Democrats-only strategy. When asked by reporters as he walked to the summit site if he had a Plan B, he responded: “I’ve always got plans.”

Many lawmakers and Obama stressed areas of agreement, including items such as allowing parents to keep young adult children on their health plans into their 20s, cutting fraud and waste and ensuring that sick people aren’t dropped by insurance companies. But such items occupy the edges of reform.

Indeed, any skepticism about reaching broad consensus was vindicated as soon as the first Republican spoke — in opposition to the mammoth bills that have passed the House and Senate. Alexander, of Tennessee, said Congress and the administration should start over and take small steps, including medical malpractice reform, high-risk insurance pools, a way to allow Americans to shop out of state for lower-cost plans and an expansion of health savings accounts.

“We believe we have a better idea,” Alexander said. “Our views represent the views of a great number of American people.”

Disagreements were not always expressed diplomatically.

Alexander challenged Obama’s claim that insurance premiums would fall under the Democratic legislation. “You’re wrong,” he said. Responded Obama: “I’m pretty certain I’m not wrong.”

As with much in the complicated health care debate, both sides had a point. The Congressional Budget Office says average premiums for people buying insurance individually would be 10 to 13 percent higher in 2016 under the Senate legislation, as Alexander said. But the policies would cover more medical services, and around half of people could get government subsidies to defray the extra costs.

Obama and his 2008 GOP opponent for the presidency, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, had a barbed exchange. McCain complained at length about what he said was a backdoor process to produce the original bills that resulted in favors for special interests and carve-outs for certain states.

“We’re not campaigning anymore. The election’s over,” responded a clearly irritated Obama.

“I’m reminded of that every day,” McCain shot back, adding that “the American people care about what we did and how we did it.”

Said Obama: “We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we’re actually going to help the American people at this point. And I think that’s — the latter debate is the one that they care about a little bit more.”

Generally, polls show Americans want solutions to the problems of high medical costs, eroding access to coverage and uneven quality. But they are split over the Democrats’ sweeping legislation, with its $1 trillion, 10-year price tag and many complex provisions, including some that wouldn’t take effect for eight years.

The Democratic bills would require most Americans to get health insurance, while providing subsidies for many in the form of a new tax credit. The Democrats would set up a competitive insurance market for small businesses and people buying coverage on their own. Democrats also would make a host of other changes, which include addressing a coverage gap in the Medicare prescription benefit and setting up a new long-term-care insurance program. Their plan would be paid for through a mix of Medicare cuts and tax increases.

“Not only are lawmakers polarized, the parties’ constituencies are far apart,” said Robert Blendon, a Harvard University professor who follows public opinion trends on health care. “The president is going to use it as a launching pad for what will be the last effort to get a big bill passed. He will say that he tried to get a bipartisan compromise and it wasn’t possible.”

The Blair House setting wasn’t grand, or even particularly comfortable. About 40 senators, representatives and administration officials were crowded shoulder-to-shoulder around a hollow square table, perched for the six-hour marathon on wooden chairs with thin cushions. Coffee breaks were ruled out, so the only pause in the action came during lunch.

C-SPAN carried complete coverage, while news operations from cable networks to public broadcasting were making it the focus of their day.

Leaving the site during a lunch break, Obama was asked by waiting reporters if he thought the debate was engendering a lot of interest across the country.

“I don’t know if it’s interesting watching it on TV,” he responded.

___

Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Ben Feller and Natasha Metzler contributed to this story.

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By Bernadine Healy, MD

Salvage efforts are underway for the president’s health reform package, put into a stall by the recent surprise election of Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts, which disrupted the one-vote margin that would have passed the legislation last month. On the one hand, President Obama seems conciliatory; a proposed televised summit in late February would allow key members from both sides of the aisle to hear from those who have different ideas. On the other, he does not seem willing to scrap the health reform bills that were a year in the making and would radically restructure both the financing and delivery of healthcare. Last week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius delivered the message that the administration would not budge from its comprehensive approach to lowering costs and covering the uninsured, since the “pieces of the puzzle are too closely tied to one another.”

She has a point there. The Obama­care puzzle, a centrally driven plan that requires at least a trillion dollars to succeed, counts on a combination of taxation, fines, penalties, and cost savings; a reallocation of major resources within the current health system; and a willingness among doctors and patients to accede to substantial new government controls. Regardless of how workable the administration’s grand design appears to be on paper—about 4,000 pages of paper—it will fail if all of these big puzzle pieces are not in place. Most obviously, are the needed resources there for the tapping? There are at least two giant reasons that I think the puzzle is now imploding on its own, and neither has anything to do with political partisanship. And no televised show of hand-holding will make one whit of difference.

The first fatal flaw: leaning on Medicare. Obamacare counts heavily on its ability to drain off money from Medicare—which, by the administration’s own accounting, is slated to go into bankruptcy in seven years even as it is. It seems like a heavy dose of voodoo eco­nomics to expect that this program, with its ranks just starting a big swell because of aging baby boomers, has the capacity, no less the will, to cough up half a trillion dollars to pay for half of the cost of health reform. Much has been made of the savings to be found in ending fraud and abuse, but success there would in no way be sufficient to prevent a hike in Medicare payroll taxes on working Americans (who would not be pleased), higher Medicare premiums for beneficiaries, and a big bite out of the medical care our elders now receive.

Health reform proposes to save lots of government money by keeping seriously and chronically ill old folks from being readmitted to the hospital too frequently, a major source of Medicare expenditure. Sounds good, but it is easier said than done, both medically and ethically. Political pundits who would have you think that a hospital admission should cure the disease and that a readmission is a sign of doctor or hospital failure know little about the nature of the formidable degenerative diseases that affect the hearts and lungs, bones and brains, and immune systems of the elderly. Patients who can be tuned up with a few days in the hospital and return home better, even if it’s more than once, are not candidates for hospice. Where else are they to turn? Washington is threatening to cut reimbursement to the doctors and hospitals with higher readmission rates, or label them as poor performers, without analyzing the circumstances. It won’t work.

Another source of money is slated to come from ending Medicare Advantage, a popular but costlier option that covers 10 million elderly in privately managed healthcare organizations that provide pharmaceuticals and impose small or no copayments. Though the savings here are sure to be realized, they come at the risk of citi­zen discontent. Especially so when some elders, namely Floridians, are exempt. Who was the hero who saved Advantage for the 1 million elderly in the Sunshine State? It was their own Sen. Bill Nelson, who made that loophole the price for his health reform “Aye” vote.

The second seed of destruction: counting on Medicaid. The current plan to cover half of the uninsured by putting them into Medicaid has special appeal to federal budgeteers, since the states would be forced to kick in as much as 50 percent of the expense. But Medicaid is already literally bankrupting many states, which unlike the federal government have no way to print money. This new unfunded federal requirement would inevitably mean higher state income taxes that, yes, would hit the middle class despite the president’s promise otherwise.

On this point, give a tip of the hat to the other Nelson, the unrelated Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who got the bill passed even as he struck a special—and a bit tacky—deal to protect his state. Stridently opposed to the health bill up until the 11th hour, Nelson finally traded his 60th and winning vote in return for a promise that the feds would pay for Nebraska’s portion of Medicaid costs related to health reform in perpetuity. This did not sit well with other governors. Indeed, in his January State of the State address, California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger went ballistic about reform that would dump huge costs on states already struggling to pay their bills. Once a supporter, he called health reform a “trough of bribes, deals, and loopholes” and challenged the state’s congressional delegation “to fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State.”

If the federal government were to make the Nebraska deal with every state, reform would add billions more to the federal deficit, and the president by his own promise would have to veto the bill. But if the “I’ll vote for the law as long as I don’t have to follow it” approach is what carries health reform to his desk, he should by his own conscience consider using his veto pen.

Clearly, fixing the Obamacare mess will take time, if it’s possible at all. But one bipartisan effort that’s worth tackling and is doable right away is targeted insurance regulation. Let’s begin creating a health reform puzzle with this key piece: a system with no denials of access; no cherry-picking of the healthy over the sick; and, rather than one-size-fits-all coverage, an open market where people can search anywhere across the country to find the best policy at the best price for their own needs. Such change would cause insurers to compete to win the trust of, and lower the premiums for, their “covered lives” in order to keep their business. That would be real change.

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Health Insurers Post Record Profits

Insurance Firms Rake in Profits as They Cut Patients, Advocacy Group Says

 

By EMILY WALKER
MedPage Today Staff Writer
Feb. 12, 2010—

In the midst of a deep economic recession, America’s health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent in 2009, a year that saw 2.7 million people lose their private coverage.

The nation’s five largest for-profit insurers closed 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion, according to a report by the advocacy group Health Care for American Now (HCAN).

“The outsized earnings are a vivid reminder that without comprehensive national health care reform, the gatekeepers of our broken health insurance system always will put the short-term interests of Wall Street before the needs of millions of patients and a national economy plagued by joblessness,” the report said.

A spokesman for the nation’s health insurers said their profits are reasonable and represent only a small part overall increase in health insurance costs.

The HCAN report attributed this year’s profits largely to insurers’ dropping coverage of 2.7 million people, who then moved onto public insurance plans such as Medicaid.

Under questioning from reporters, Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for HCAN, conceded that insurance companies don’t bear all the blame for eliminating people from their rolls. He said the recession induced many employers to cut back on benefits, including health plans. Also, many who were laid off lost their insurance coverage and were forced to enroll in Medicaid.

Even so, insurance companies have also offloaded their most expensive patients by cancelling their policies and raising premiums drastically, Kirsch asserted in a Thursday press call.

Among the report’s findings on specific insurance companies:

 - Wellpoint increased profits 91 percent from 2008 while it chopped 3.9 percent of its total enrollment.

 - United Health’s profit increased 28 percent from 2008, while enrollment dropped by 3.4 percent.

 - Cigna’s profit increased 346 percent and enrollment dropped 5.5 percent.

 - Humana’s profit increased by 61 percent while enrollment decreased by 1.7 percent.

 - Aetna was the only company with a drop in profit and a gain in enrollment. The company’s profit declined by 8 percent from 2008, and enrollment grew by 7 percent.

Lawmakers and critics who took part in the HCAN call said they were disgusted by the notion of insurance companies profiting while unemployment rates soar and more than 40 million people lack health insurance.

“How did they accomplish this feat in the midst of a sharp economic downturn that reduced wealth across the board?” asked Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). “Easy. They delayed payments to doctors, hospitals, patients. They raised premiums, increased co-pays and deductibles.”

California’s largest insurer, Blue Cross, announced last week that it will raise premiums 30 percent to 39 percent for many of its 800,000 customers.

“Without reform, we’re going to continue to see double-digit rate increases,” Kirsch said. “Without requiring that everyone’s covered, without regulating insurance companies, and without subsidies for people to make it more affordable, the data this year will continue unabated,” Kirsch said.

The health care bills being considered in Congress would impose regulations on insurance companies, prohibiting them from denying insurance or cancelling policies based on a pre-existing health condition. Both bills would also require insurance companies to spend money from premiums on health care, not on administrative costs.

Insurance companies agreed to the deal because of a provision that would require most Americans to buy health insurance, which would increase their customer base.

Some say the health care reform movement stalled with the election of Republican Scott Brown to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s old Massachusetts Senate seat, and President Barack Obama is holding a televised health care summit on Feb. 25 in hopes of bringing Republicans and Democrats together on some kind of agreement.

A spokesman for the insurance industry said health insurance profits “are well below other industries in the health care sector.”

“For every dollar spent on health care in America, less than one penny goes towards health plan profits,” said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). He argued that in 2009, it was spending on hospitals, physicians and prescription drugs that “continued to soar.”

Indeed, a recent report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) found that health spending grew 5.7 percent, reaching $2.5 trillion in 2009, even though the overall economy declined by 1 percent. The report pointed to increased spending on hospitals, doctors, and medications as major drivers in the rising cost of health care.

Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures

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By Bernadine Healy M.D.,

Posted: February 2, 2010

In his State of the Union address, President Obama vowed not to “walk away” from healthcare reform, though he was clearly chastened by the upset in Massachusetts that had swept Republican Scott Brown into the Senate, depriving Obama, at the 11th hour, of a signed bill before the speech. The legislation barely made it through each chamber, and the 60-vote victory on Christmas Eve in the Senate came without a vote to spare. The president did not reveal how he would move forward, but his rescue options are sorely limited. Still, whatever path he chooses, the walk provides a totally unexpected opportunity for the country: the chance to go back and make changes that would not have been possible before Massachusetts voters weighed in.

There are really only two paths forward, and both will take time. In the faster (and perhaps too clever) way, the House would pass the Senate bill untouched and send it to the president, bypassing the need for a final Senate vote that includes Brown. Secret negotiations are underway at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to modify the 2,700-page Senate monster to the House’s liking—but any changes can be voted on only after the president signs the bill into law. The post-facto recasting would use a political gimmick, a process called reconciliation, that applies to budget issues and requires a simple majority vote (51 percent) rather than the supermajority (60 percent) often needed to pass controversial legislation in the Senate. If the House balks at this feat of legislative engineering, Congress will have to take a deep breath, step back, and fashion a more bipartisan bill.

Both scenarios mean that healthcare reform could still be made far more respectful of patients’ individual choices and their pocketbooks—not just the federal purse. Let me suggest two big-ticket areas that badly need attention: prescription drug costs and insurance premiums. Both must be affordable, or a central goal of reform—ready healthcare for all—will never be achieved.

Pharmaceuticals: In the United States, medicines in exactly the same doses commonly run three to four times, and in some cases 10 times, prices in other places on the planet with drug-safety and approval systems like our own. The issue became hot in 2003, when older folks were caught boarding buses to Canada to buy their drugs at huge discounts. Rather than being cheered on by Uncle Sam for saving healthcare dollars, the renegades were threatened with confiscation of their “illegal” purchases. The federal government refused to relax the Food and Drug Administration’s rules against citizens’ importing drugs, even those obtained from perfectly legitimate pharmacies. And the consumers’ revolt was vigorously opposed—surprise, surprise—by the drug companies, which lobbied heavily to continue to soak American taxpayers under the guise of safety. A bill to allow such drug imports, cosponsored by none other than Barack Obama when he was in the Senate, was roundly defeated.

 Shortly after he was inaugurated, Obama vowed to bring down the cost of drugs by making it possible for Americans to fill prescriptions outside the country. It did not take long, however, for the special interests to entice him to cave. In a stunning surprise, given his legislative record and earlier promises, Obama made a backroom deal with the pharmaceutical lobby. Big Pharma would support Obamacare and even contribute $80 billion to the healthcare reform effort. The president would quash efforts in support of the citizen revolt.

Then, in mid-December, in one of the few bipartisan moves related to health reform, a majority of senators voted to amend the bill to allow Americans to buy drugs from Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. How could they not do so? The Congressional Budget Office had just estimated that the amendment would save the government almost $20 billion, and Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who sponsored the bill, said it would lower patients’ costs by $80 billion. The amendment did not get the 60 votes necessary to be added to the health reform bill, but a reconciliation strategy that needs only 51 votes, or a new bill fashioned from scratch, could and should get the gray panthers a win after all. Health reformers ought to place value on healthy competition, which, if allowed to flourish, can lower costs to individuals as well as to the U.S. Treasury.

Insurance reform: In the same spirit of allowing competition and consumer choice to thrive, the way health insurance is sold should be addressed. The current system bears no resemblance to an open market where people can shop for the best policy for themselves and their families at the best price, as they can, say, for car insurance. Now, patients have little leverage. Those with health risks can be rejected out of hand, existing coverage can be canceled, and claims can be denied for little or no reason. Outlawing such abuses is the one part of the current healthcare reform legislation that has strong bipartisan support. And this is an imperative that cannot be walked away from.

But even then, a nagging problem remains: People don’t feel insurers are working for them, although the companies manage lots of their money and weigh in on their health. This could get worse, since a keystone of health reform—the individual mandate—would force people to buy coverage restricted to that sold through either a government-run exchange or an employer. Only the federal government would define the “essential” coverage every American must have and would set up the rules of the exchange.

Instead, to preserve patient choice while trimming cost, we need multiple nationwide exchanges, public and private, that will foster competition among insurers, expand choices, and lower prices by helping patients to be smart consumers. Rather than being forced to buy a one-size-fits-all, comprehensive, government-approved policy, for example, most young people could get insurance for thousands of dollars less by choosing a scaled-back, high-deductible cata­strophic plan that brings access to discounted ­prices for preventive and primary care.

Face it: Since most of the uninsured fall into the relatively healthy under-40 group, the current bills will force tens of millions of Americans to overpay for coverage, a juicy deal for insurers but not for anyone else. A bonus to allowing high-deductible plans is that they force people to think about the cost of their care and, much as those elders did when they boarded buses to cross the border to get cheaper drugs, to search for ways to save. We cannot ignore the power of the people to make their own wise decisions. Let’s give them an incentive to do so, and we’ll develop a generation of prudent healthcare consumers. 

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