Building a better health care system

[auditor0007]

In theory, purchasing health insurance across state lines sounds like a great idea. I'm afraid in practice though, it would create a nightmare for many who chose cheaper insurance from out of state companies. I could be wrong, but it seems that the door would be open for much more fraud.

It is no different than investing in companies across state lines or banking across state lines.

The McCarran–Ferguson Act of 1945 is the only reason you can't buy out of state insurance forcing free market competition to drive down cost. This act exempts insurance companies from the interstate commerce laws. It makes it legal for insurance companies to engage in price fixing, racketeering & have antitrust exemptions.

You do realize that most of these companies already do operate in multiple states? They just operate as individual companies under a bigger parent company.

 

[ClaimTechnologi]

The quantity and quality of many health care interventions are improved through the results of science, such as advanced through the medical model of health which focuses on the eradication of illness through diagnosis and effective treatment.

 

[KissMy]

Obamacare is now preventing people from being able to afford health-care!

Doctors visits around here increased 75% this year due to the electronic record requirements in the health-care law. Lets hear it for Obamacare.

Electronic Health Records are a very heavy toll for small practice.

Start-up costs - In a survey by DesRoches et al. (2008), 66% of physicians without EHRs cited capital costs as a barrier to adoption, while 50% were uncertain about the investment. Around 56% of physicians without EHRs stated that financial incentives to purchase and/or use EHRs would facilitate adoption. In 2002, initial costs were estimated to be $50,000–70,000 per physician in a 3-physician practice. Since then, costs have decreased with increasing adoption. A 2011 survey estimated a cost of $32,000 per physician in a 5-physician practice during the first 60 days of implementation.

One case study by Miller et al. (2005) of 14 small primary-care practices found that the average practice paid for the initial and ongoing costs within 2.5 years. A 2003 cost-benefit analysis found that using EMRs for 5 years created a net benefit of $86,000 per provider.

Some physicians are skeptical of the positive claims and believe the data is skewed by vendors and others with a interest in EHR implementation.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, estimated it achieved net savings of $5 million to $10 million per year following installation of a computerized physician order entry system that reduced serious medication errors by 55 percent. Another large hospital generated about $8.6 million in annual savings by replacing paper medical charts with EHRs for outpatients and about $2.8 million annually by establishing electronic access to laboratory results and reports.

Maintenance costs - Maintenance costs can be high. Miller et al. found the average estimated maintenance cost was $8500 per FTE health-care provider per year.

Furthermore, software technology advances at a rapid pace. Most software systems require frequent updates, often at a significant ongoing cost. Some types of software and operating systems require full-scale re-implementation periodically, which disrupts not only the budget but also workflow. Costs for upgrades and associated regression testing can be particularly high where the applications are governed by FDA regulations (e.g. Clinical Laboratory systems). Physicians desire modular upgrades and ability to continually customize, without large-scale reimplementation.

Training costs - Training of employees to use an EHR system is costly, just as for training in the use of any other hospital system. New employees, permanent or temporary, will also require training as they are hired.

In the United States, a substantial majority of healthcare providers train at a VA facility sometime during their career. With the widespread adoption of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) electronic health record system at all VA facilities, few recently-trained medical professionals will be inexperienced in electronic health record systems. Older practitioners who are less experienced in the use of electronic health record systems will retire over time.

 

[editec]

I know how we can end the problem forever.

End third payments regardless of who is paying them or how the payment system is structured.

If people just had to pay their own HC bills, two things would happen immediately and one shortly thereafter.

Immediately

1. A lot of older people would get sick and stay sick. Mortality and morbitity stats would climb.

2. The HC providers would get poorer than they are now relative to what people make generally.

IN the longer run

HC tecnology would stop making so many advances and the overall quality of HC available (even to people with scads of money) would decline.

HC is a physical science.

But the HC delivery system is a social science.

Every time we tinker with the HC delivery system the effects of that tinkering will resonate throughout the entire society.

Your place in the society will determine how tinkering with the delievery system affects your quality of HC.

 

[Greenbeard]

Doctors visits around here increased 75% this year due to the electronic record requirements in the health-care law. Lets hear it for Obamacare.

EHR use isn't required under the law.

 

[Katzndogz]

The government's solution to decreasing health care costs is to kill off the sick people. Health care can easily be given to people with recoverable conditions like the flu or a cold. Treating people with injuries is permitted, but the very sick and chronically ill, just let them die and shift those resources elsewhere.

 

[Oddball]

In theory, purchasing health insurance across state lines sounds like a great idea. I'm afraid in practice though, it would create a nightmare for many who chose cheaper insurance from out of state companies. I could be wrong, but it seems that the door would be open for much more fraud.

It is no different than investing in companies across state lines or banking across state lines.

The McCarran–Ferguson Act of 1945 is the only reason you can't buy out of state insurance forcing free market competition to drive down cost. This act exempts insurance companies from the interstate commerce laws. It makes it legal for insurance companies to engage in price fixing, racketeering & have antitrust exemptions.

You do realize that most of these companies already do operate in multiple states? They just operate as individual companies under a bigger parent company.

Operating in different states doesn't mean that they can sell a cafeteria style plan to customers in states that have must-cover laws.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

A two-tier system, like Australia, will control the health cost spiral. Just as USPS keeps FedEx, Airborne, etc., honest on their prices, so will a government payer option along side the health insurance industry. That is why the health insurance folks are squealing so loud and why they are buying such huge ad loads with Laura, Michael, Glenn, Sean, RushbinLimbaugh and the other demagogues of the right. A government payer option will stop the bleeding and permit the healing.

I believe you have this totally backwards. It is never government competition which keeps the private sector "honest" It is indeed the fact we do have private delivery companies which keeps the Post Office on their toes.

 

[KissMy]

Obama promised to lower Medicaid fraud to pay for the Affordable Care Act. Yet Medicaid Fraud has increased by 30% since Obama & the Democrats took office. Government only intervenes in 20% of the fraud cases brought to their attention. Only about 69% of every dollar that Medicare spends goes to the intended Medicare beneficiaries.

Source: C-SPAN2 House Committee on Medicaid Fraud, Waste & Abuse.

That lazy bitch Angela Brice-Smith director of CMS needs to be fired ASAP.

Elijah Cummings & Paul Gosar are pissed & chewing some serious ass.

 

[dblack]

that is a states issue though
the states need to allow that

Right, and this is just where the feds should step in.... that's exactly the kind of protectionism and barrier to trade that the commerce clause was intended to prevent. If Congress used their power to regulate interstate commerce as it was intended, as a tool to maintain free and open trade, rather than as a lame excuse to control the economy, we'd be in a lot better shape.

 

[dblack]

Hy every body,......
We should build a better care system.Its a very good system for health.
Fitness have own importance in our life.Its a system giving good importunity.

Hey... not to get too nitpicky, but spaces after sentences - please. I'll forgive a non-English speaker grammar and idioms, but that no space at the end of a sentence thing really makes your posts a pain in the ass to read.

 

[Bird]

Heard recently.... 5% of the population uses up 50% of the $ spent on health care.... 50% of the average Americans health expenditure is spent in the last 2 days of life.

Sounds like a pretty big problem for somebody.

 

[starcraftzzz]

The main problem with the current administration's health care reform proposal is that it does nothing to control the spiraling costs of health care and

Incorrect Obamacare despite expanding health insurance to include 35million people reduces total health care spending by slashing wasteful spending.
The Impact of Health Reform on Health System Spending
^Analysis concludes that health reform will expand health insurance for 35million people while simultaneously reducing overall health spending by around 2% (or .2% yearly)
This analysis does not include savings, from reduced job lock, less ER visits, and increased productivity/lifetime earnings.

Second here is a list of some of the measures in Obamacare that will reduce wasteful health care spending.
Ezra Klein - The five most promising cost controls in the health-care bill
^ways ACA reduces costs
IMBD board
Invests in community health centers
Invests in computerized health care records, and other new technology.
Reduces drug patents by 2 years.
Requires health insurance companies to spend more money on benefits and less on profits and administration fees.
Invests in comparative effectiveness research.
Creates a completive insurance market for those without employer based health care.
Switches to a payment system that is bundled, and based on the quality of care received instead of the amount of care.
Puts a Pigovian tax on tanning booths
Requires food companies to put accurate and seeable food labels.

adds a large tax burden to be paid of in the future.

Again you are incorrect Obamacare reduces the deficit by over 200billion dollars over the first ten years, the next ten years the deficit is reduces by 1.2 trillion dollars. This is according to the CBO.
New CBO Analysis: GOP's Push For Health Law Repeal Would Increase Deficit By $230 Billion Over 10 Years | ThinkProgress

However private analysis shows that Obamacare reduces the deficit 2 times what the CBO projects
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/pdf/system_spending.pdf

 

[Meister]

The main problem with the current administration's health care reform proposal is that it does nothing to control the spiraling costs of health care and

Incorrect Obamacare despite expanding health insurance to include 35million people reduces total health care spending by slashing wasteful spending.
The Impact of Health Reform on Health System Spending
^Analysis concludes that health reform will expand health insurance for 35million people while simultaneously reducing overall health spending by around 2% (or .2% yearly)
This analysis does not include savings, from reduced job lock, less ER visits, and increased productivity/lifetime earnings.

Second here is a list of some of the measures in Obamacare that will reduce wasteful health care spending.
Ezra Klein - The five most promising cost controls in the health-care bill
^ways ACA reduces costs
IMBD board
Invests in community health centers
Invests in computerized health care records, and other new technology.
Reduces drug patents by 2 years.
Requires health insurance companies to spend more money on benefits and less on profits and administration fees.
Invests in comparative effectiveness research.
Creates a completive insurance market for those without employer based health care.
Switches to a payment system that is bundled, and based on the quality of care received instead of the amount of care.
Puts a Pigovian tax on tanning booths
Requires food companies to put accurate and seeable food labels.

adds a large tax burden to be paid of in the future.

Again you are incorrect Obamacare reduces the deficit by over 200billion dollars over the first ten years, the next ten years the deficit is reduces by 1.2 trillion dollars. This is according to the CBO.
New CBO Analysis: GOP's Push For Health Law Repeal Would Increase Deficit By $230 Billion Over 10 Years | ThinkProgress

However private analysis shows that Obamacare reduces the deficit 2 times what the CBO projects
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/pdf/system_spending.pdf

hey buddy...I have a bridge to sell you.

 

[starcraftzzz]

The main problem with the current administration's health care reform proposal is that it does nothing to control the spiraling costs of health care and

Incorrect Obamacare despite expanding health insurance to include 35million people reduces total health care spending by slashing wasteful spending.
The Impact of Health Reform on Health System Spending
^Analysis concludes that health reform will expand health insurance for 35million people while simultaneously reducing overall health spending by around 2% (or .2% yearly)
This analysis does not include savings, from reduced job lock, less ER visits, and increased productivity/lifetime earnings.

Second here is a list of some of the measures in Obamacare that will reduce wasteful health care spending.
Ezra Klein - The five most promising cost controls in the health-care bill
^ways ACA reduces costs
IMBD board
Invests in community health centers
Invests in computerized health care records, and other new technology.
Reduces drug patents by 2 years.
Requires health insurance companies to spend more money on benefits and less on profits and administration fees.
Invests in comparative effectiveness research.
Creates a completive insurance market for those without employer based health care.
Switches to a payment system that is bundled, and based on the quality of care received instead of the amount of care.
Puts a Pigovian tax on tanning booths
Requires food companies to put accurate and seeable food labels.

adds a large tax burden to be paid of in the future.

Again you are incorrect Obamacare reduces the deficit by over 200billion dollars over the first ten years, the next ten years the deficit is reduces by 1.2 trillion dollars. This is according to the CBO.
New CBO Analysis: GOP's Push For Health Law Repeal Would Increase Deficit By $230 Billion Over 10 Years | ThinkProgress

However private analysis shows that Obamacare reduces the deficit 2 times what the CBO projects
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/pdf/system_spending.pdf

hey buddy...I have a bridge to sell you.

Its no surprise that Republican are stupid given that when presented with reality they deny it beccause they are to stubborn and pussy to admit that they are unable to think

 

[Meister]

Incorrect Obamacare despite expanding health insurance to include 35million people reduces total health care spending by slashing wasteful spending.
The Impact of Health Reform on Health System Spending
^Analysis concludes that health reform will expand health insurance for 35million people while simultaneously reducing overall health spending by around 2% (or .2% yearly)
This analysis does not include savings, from reduced job lock, less ER visits, and increased productivity/lifetime earnings.

Second here is a list of some of the measures in Obamacare that will reduce wasteful health care spending.
Ezra Klein - The five most promising cost controls in the health-care bill
^ways ACA reduces costs
IMBD board
Invests in community health centers
Invests in computerized health care records, and other new technology.
Reduces drug patents by 2 years.
Requires health insurance companies to spend more money on benefits and less on profits and administration fees.
Invests in comparative effectiveness research.
Creates a completive insurance market for those without employer based health care.
Switches to a payment system that is bundled, and based on the quality of care received instead of the amount of care.
Puts a Pigovian tax on tanning booths
Requires food companies to put accurate and seeable food labels.


Again you are incorrect Obamacare reduces the deficit by over 200billion dollars over the first ten years, the next ten years the deficit is reduces by 1.2 trillion dollars. This is according to the CBO.
New CBO Analysis: GOP's Push For Health Law Repeal Would Increase Deficit By $230 Billion Over 10 Years | ThinkProgress

However private analysis shows that Obamacare reduces the deficit 2 times what the CBO projects
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/pdf/system_spending.pdf

hey buddy...I have a bridge to sell you.

Its no surprise that Republican are stupid given that when presented with reality they deny it beccause they are to stubborn and pussy to admit that they are unable to think

Not a republican, but know better than to believe what Think Progress tells me.
Again, I have a bridge that I'll sell you.