The state exchanges will quickly break down into total regulatory bodies. read past the language.... read the data already accumulated in Massachusetts.... the same model. It's a big failure.
Everyone loses choice.... everyone loses quality.... it's a loser.
Check out Massachusetts and get back to me. it isn't pretty, I'll tell you that. that's the model.... the model of failure.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/02/mass_healthcare_reform_is_failing_us/
MASSACHUSETTS HAS been lauded for its healthcare reform, but the program is a failure. Created solely to achieve universal insurance coverage, the plan does not even begin to address the other essential components of a successful healthcare system.
Sounds bad! So I kept reading on...
What would such a system provide? The prestigious Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, has defined five criteria for healthcare reform. Coverage should be: universal, not tied to a job, affordable for individuals and families, affordable for society, and it should provide access to high-quality care for everyone.
The state's plan flunks on all counts.
First, it has not achieved universal healthcare, although the reform has been a boon to the private insurance industry. The state has more than 200,000 without coverage, and the count can only go up with rising unemployment.
Second, the reform does not address the problem of insurance being connected to jobs. For individuals, this means their insurance is not continuous if they change or lose jobs. For employers, especially small businesses, health insurance is an expense they can ill afford.
Third, the program is not affordable for many individuals and families. For middle-income people not qualifying for state-subsidized health insurance, costs are too high for even skimpy coverage. For an individual earning $31,213, the cheapest plan can cost $9,872 in premiums and out-of-pocket payments. Low-income residents, previously eligible for free care, have insurance policies requiring unaffordable copayments for office visits and medications.
Fourth, the costs of the reform for the state have been formidable. Spending for the Commonwealth Care subsidized program has doubled, from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion for 2009, which is not sustainable.
Fifth, reform does not assure access to care. High-deductible plans that have additional out-of-pocket expenses can result in many people not using their insurance when they are sick. In my practice of child and adolescent psychiatry, a parent told me last week that she had a decrease in her job hours, could not afford the $30 copayment for treatment sessions for her adolescent, and decided to meet much less frequently.
So lets look at this in context of the senate bill:
1. Stays the same, not everyone will be covered.
2. Still connected to jobs, but they have language that says you can keep the same insurance if you change jobs, so that gap in coverage is no longer there, so they fixed that.
3. Low income families will have subsidies and other federal discounts available to fix this part up, still won't be perfect, or even the optimal system, but it will be an improvement over the current system.
4. They spend a lot of money. So I decided to find out a little more about Mass.
Mass. spends the most money per capita on healthcare in the country. But this chart is from 2004, and the new system was not put into place until 2006. So this is outdated. Great read:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8972/MainText.3.1.shtml
Check this link for current trends:
http://www.mass.gov/Ihqcc/docs/meetings/2009_02_04_cost_projections_cost_containment_committee.ppt
What you will see is that their healthcare cost per capita was rising very fast in 2004.
Why could that be?
Issue: Demographic change
The most salient statistics in a gubernatorial campaign typically involve crime, taxes, and jobs, but this year they are joined by one of the simplest measurements of all: the number of people who live here. According to US Census Bureau estimates, Massachusetts is the only state in the nation to lose population for two years in a row (from 2003 to 2005). This Mass Exodus may seriously hamper efforts to bring new jobs to the state, since highly skilled workers seem especially inclined to move elsewhere. And as young, native-born residents continue to leave, two groups are expected to make up growing shares of the Massachusetts population: people over 65, including many who are ready to leave the workforce, and immigrants, many of whom require English instruction and job training.
In every year since 1990, Massachusetts has lost more residents to other states than it has gained. The Census Bureau estimates a net loss of 169,606 residents just from 2000 to 2004, which amounts to an annual decrease of 6.6 per 1,000 residents. (Maine and New Hampshire each had a net increase of about 30,000 over the same period, suggesting that not everyone leaving Massachusetts is doing so because of the weather.) Only New York lost a bigger share of its population, but its loss rate was lower than in the 1990s, while the Bay States has accelerated. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), in its Summer 2006 analysis of the state, warned, Domestic outmigration has
worsened in recent years, a pattern that does not bode well for the states economy. The FDIC also noted that Massachusetts saw a decline of 4.8 percent in 25-to-34-year-olds from 2000 to 2004, while the US as a whole saw an increase of 0.5 percent in the same category another warning sign, since this group can set the pace for economic development as they join the workforce and form households.
They are losing their healthy younger people. So that would be a very direct reason for the per capita spending on this to go up.
So they are losing about 6.6 younger healthier people per 1000 residents, and are ahead of the us trend in rising healthcare about 1.3 percent. Seems like a very direct cause to me.
So is mass. could the costs of healthcare be rising at such a fast cause because of the younger people leaving (has been going on far longer than the health insurance reform there has been) and not because of the reform?
5. Out of pocket costs and deductibles are tough, all of the insurance programs have them. But with the federal plan if people cannot pay there is programs that they can get onto to help out their children.
I cannot find anything conclusive that is saying people are 'losing choices' or 'losing quality' I have found articles saying that about 1/2 the medical graduates are leaving the state, but you will find that in any field in any state, that about 1/2 the people that graduate do not end up staying in the state. And I have found that in rural areas there are shortages of primary care doctors, but that is the same anywhere you go, rural areas are so spread out, that people don't want to drive to the doctor that is available, so instead say they cannot find one.
lest we forget about how Obama is now going to cut back on medicare.... there goes the senior vote. You never want to piss off the seniors.... but what can he do? The system is belly up fiscally. How can that be?
Surely it will be done better with national health care ......... right????
use ur heads...........
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/02/26/obama-budget-cuts-medicare-advantage-helps-generic-biotech/
This is just a play on words. Cutting costs of worthless practices that cost money and have zero benefit is technically 'cut backs', but what is intended by saying that is nothing even close to the truth.
You know that when doctors treat viruses about 50% of the time (this is a fact not just made up) they will prescribe antibiotics?
Do you know the reason why this is a bad thing?
It is because antibiotics are 100% ineffective against viruses. And that is just wasted money. How many billions every year need to be spent for nothing? Absolutely garbage that they are allowed to do this, they are wasting everyones money to prescribe what is essentially a sugar pill.
And there is another side to this, eventually when those people get a bacteria infection, they already have built up immunities to those antibiotics. So it is MUCH more expensive to then treat them, because of over prescribing garbage.
These 'cuts' are made to seem like someone is going to kick out their cane from underneath them, but that cannot be the farthest from the truth. And I feel irresponsible of the people reporting this garbage, because they are stirring up fear in the elderly, when really it is to help everyone.
There are thousands of examples of waste in the system that can be 'cut'. But as soon as the government tries to do some good and change a system that is becoming the bloated monster that you all seem to hate so much, the other side sits there and shouts "THEY ARE CUTTING BENEFITS!!!" and the bloated monster continues to roll sucking up everything in its wake.
Let go, allow them to cut out the B.S. like acne treatment for medicaid and make everything more manageable. And then lets get the people to become covered with insurance, because they are not doing it on their own, and start to clean up this mess that we call our healthcare system.
