Author Topic: The Politics of Health Care  (Read 731741 times)

ccp

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Leftist medical academics
« Reply #1750 on: December 15, 2019, 08:08:32 AM »
https://townhall.com/columnists/janerobbins/2019/12/15/medical-associations-embrace-propaganda-not-science-n2557967

"Under AAP policy, any position statement is drafted by a small committee (usually 10-12 members, and maybe as few as seven) and then voted on by the roughly 12-member board of directors. The broader membership has no direct input into the statement and would generally learn of it only after it’s issued. So the only thing the AAP policy tells us is that less than 0.05 percent of the pediatricians who are still members of AAP believe in experimenting medically on gender-confused children."

This is what I see in the adult medical organizations

A bunch of academic libs direct the their positions and declarations

I have never had any one of them reach out and ask for my opinion.
or take a survey etc

It is the academic self appointed elites - again .

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ on the Fifth Circuit decision
« Reply #1751 on: December 21, 2019, 11:22:43 AM »
An ObamaCare Judicial Morass
Democrats get new ammunition as an ill-fated lawsuit drags on.
By The Editorial Board
Dec. 20, 2019 7:10 pm ET
SAVE
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TEXT
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A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Diego, October 2017. PHOTO: MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS
Even as Democratic presidential candidacies implode over Medicare for All, Republican state attorneys general and the Trump Administration are handing the left a political lifeline with an overbroad attack on ObamaCare in the courts. On Wednesday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ensured this will drag on as it struck down the individual mandate and asked a district-court judge to determine if other parts of the law have to go too.

The finding that the mandate is unconstitutional is straightforward though it should have little impact. Chief Justice John Roberts in 2012 upheld the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) command that everyone purchase insurance on grounds that it was a “tax” on failing to buy insurance. In 2017 the GOP Congress set the penalty for failing to buy insurance at $0. If it doesn’t collect revenue, the Fifth Circuit now says, it can’t be a tax.

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That’s a clever legal twist, but states and the Trump Administration want to go further. They say the mandate’s illegality means that much or all of the rest of ObamaCare’s regulations and subsidies must also be dismantled. A district court judge agreed.

The Fifth Circuit panel didn’t affirm this view but also didn’t repudiate it. The judges appear open to the idea that big parts of the law need to fall with the mandate. Most vulnerable would be ObamaCare’s “community rating” and “guaranteed issue” provisions that regulate insurance prices and require companies to cover pre-existing conditions.

The legal issue is called “severability.” The test is whether removing the unconstitutional part would blow up the functioning of rest of the law, as well as the thornier question of whether “Congress would have preferred no ACA at all to an ACA without the mandate.” We’ve opposed ObamaCare’s baleful effects as much as anyone, but there’s little doubt the mandate is severable.

The confusion comes from the misjudgment of the law’s drafters. They said the mandate would cause healthy people to buy insurance and create a thriving individual health-insurance market. If that had happened, then the mandate may have been difficult to sever.

Yet the mandate turned out not to be much of an inducement for people to buy health insurance they couldn’t afford. Congress’s elimination of the penalty in 2017 hasn’t resulted in higher insurance premiums. And the same Congress kept the rest of the law in place. The Fifth Circuit judges seem to want an open-ended inquiry into the “intent” of two different Congresses making complex policy decisions in light of different facts. The simpler solution is to defer to the most recent Congress.

ObamaCare created an entitlement through subsidies and Medicaid; the mandate was mostly superfluous in practice. If conservatives declare that the mandate is an inextricable part of ObamaCare, they would ironically vastly overstate the law’s success in an attempt to sink it.

Millions of people now rely on the law, and “reliance interests” will also doom this challenge if it ever reaches Chief Justice Roberts. He’s unlikely to be amused that other judges are using his saving construction for the law to overturn it today. Yet the GOP will be battered politically in the interim.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in response to the ruling that “Republicans have taken every opportunity to dismantle” coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions. The GOP would do better to develop a health agenda that candidates can defend politically rather than use the judiciary as a legislature of last resort.


ccp

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Trump kept "pre existing conditions"
« Reply #1753 on: January 20, 2020, 05:01:06 PM »


Trump kept "pre existing conditions"

https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/950533/1

my opinion - one of 7 billion - is whoever works health care wins 2020.

 :-)

DougMacG

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Re: Trump kept "pre existing conditions"
« Reply #1754 on: January 21, 2020, 09:11:08 AM »
"whoever works health care wins 2020."

Trump should partner up right now with House Republicans and all the best minds of conservative think tanks and hold real policy talks (alongside the impeachment hearings) and propose more moves toward market solutions that they can run on in the fall.  More consumer choices, more deregulation, more details on disclosures of prices, and so on. 

How about a 10 point (conservative) Contract with America on Health Care that will pass the House if the nation elects them?  Build it, perfect it and put it on the ballot.

ccp is right.  Silence on health care will cost them (another) election.  They better have a plan and it better be a good one.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1755 on: January 21, 2020, 09:55:53 AM »
Call in Dr. Ben Carson!  Sen and Doctor Rand Paul too!

ccp

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1756 on: January 21, 2020, 11:16:57 AM »
"How about a 10 point (conservative) Contract with America on Health Care that will pass the House if the nation elects them? "

Now that is a good idea!

put that up against "free Medicare for All"  that would bankrupt this country and make everyone debt poor for the next 100 yrs!

DougMacG

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Imagine Health Care Deregulation
« Reply #1757 on: February 03, 2020, 09:08:51 AM »
I miss the posts from Venezuela and have wondered where Denny has gone.  I see he is still active at Motley Fool discussion board:
https://boards.fool.com/LastPosts.asp?limit=10&uid=95826397

Here is a comment I like, with apologies to our own fully certified MD:

"I have read that part of AMA's unspoken mission is to restrict the number of doctors which is typically the function of all professional and artisan guilds. It's a form of restraint of trade to benefit the current guild members. Then, of course, the blame is placed on the "free" market which is not free from manipulation by the guilds (a. k. a. labor unions -- AMA being the US medical labor union).

Imagine deregulating medicine! ;)   
"

    - (our) Denny S  ?

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1758 on: February 03, 2020, 10:33:25 AM »
Sounds like how he sees things :-)

ccp

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BMI discriminates
« Reply #1759 on: February 07, 2020, 05:52:24 AM »

"  body mass index (BMI) is discriminatory to gender nonbinary students."  WHAT??????????


https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-gavin-newsom-moves-pause-student-fitness-tests-citing-bullying-concerns

 :-o :-(

DougMacG

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Re: BMI discriminates
« Reply #1760 on: February 07, 2020, 06:28:59 AM »
"  body mass index (BMI) is discriminatory to gender nonbinary students."  WHAT??????????

https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-gavin-newsom-moves-pause-student-fitness-tests-citing-bullying-concerns

 :-o :-(

Forget about discrimination, what is a "gender nonbinary" student?  The ones who don't know which bathroom to use? 

"Hey Joe (Biden), How many genders are there?" "I know there are at least two.  Wait, is that a trick question?"

Back to BMI, did anyone think there was a perfect number for everyone?  We can't even judge by credit score or criminal background anymore.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2020, 06:48:42 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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American College of ACP (Liberals)
« Reply #1761 on: February 11, 2020, 11:41:03 AM »
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/482437-doctors-group-breaks-from-health-care-industry-with-support-for-medicare

Well I cancelled my membership 1 to 2 yrs ago

I don't recall ever being surveyed as to my opinion


They take all these political positions always siding  with the political correct crowd .

and then suggest we all agree with it.

From climate change, to abortion, to me too, to trans gay, to anti Republican anything , and on and on and on

Doherty was never elected.  He is just there for many years pretending he speaks for me .

Well since i am no longer a member, he doesn't.

I was not from my memory politically activist until the last maybe 10 yrs........?




ccp

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high costs of insulin
« Reply #1762 on: February 18, 2020, 06:37:40 AM »
and how we foot the bill for the rest of the world
where insulin sells for 10 times less

and despite insulin being around since 1921
the cost keeps going endlessly higher even for basic insulins

and how the pharmacy benefits managers , drug companies are ripping off the patients and their insurances:

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(19)31008-0/fulltext

There is no possibility there is not some form of collusion and price fixing .

Even if not a direct agreement it is an unsaid fact that all the drug companies are keeping their prices high in tandem.

DougMacG

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Re: high costs of insulin
« Reply #1763 on: February 18, 2020, 08:23:07 AM »
and how we foot the bill for the rest of the world
where insulin sells for 10 times less

and despite insulin being around since 1921
the cost keeps going endlessly higher even for basic insulins

and how the pharmacy benefits managers , drug companies are ripping off the patients and their insurances:

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(19)31008-0/fulltext

There is no possibility there is not some form of collusion and price fixing .

Even if not a direct agreement it is an unsaid fact that all the drug companies are keeping their prices high in tandem.

I remember after Katrina oil prices spiked with the closing of refineries and shipping lanes and a Dem leaning friend commented on the greed of the oil companies.  But in fact, oil company greed was the only factor that held constant during that supply interruption and price spike up and back down. 

The economics of insulin is simple, same as every other commodity or manufactured good or service - UNLESS something is standing in the way of market forces working.

When the price and profits go up, the incentive to produce more goes up and the new supply and competition brings down the price.  I can only guess why that isn't happening, government interference in the market, probably at every step and every level.

I know nothing about insulin but one crazy idea would be to legalize it.
-------------------
From the Mayo Clinic article:
Reasons for the High Cost of Insulin
"The number 1 reason for the high cost of insulin is the presence of a vulnerable population that needs insulin to survive (Table 1). This population, which numbers in the millions,14 is willing to pay anything to have access to a lifesaving drug. The desperate need for a lifesaving product allows insulin to be priced at high levels because it is not a luxury item that one can forego. The manufacturers of insulin know that patients who need it will spend whatever it takes to acquire it, regardless of price. It is a matter of life and death."

    - No, that isn't the reason insulin isn't a plentiful, affordable medicine in the year 2020.

Back to Mayo reason list:
1 • Vulnerable population who is willing to pay high costs to have access to a lifesaving drug
2 • Virtual monopoly/oligopoly
3 • Patent abuse and evergreening
4 • Barriers to biosimilar entry
5 • Pharmacy benefit managers and other middlemen who benefit from a high list price
6 • Lobbying power of insulin manufacturers


Note the 2nd, 4th and 6th reasons. Virtual monopoly.  Why?  Barriers to entry.  Why?  Lobbying power?  No, it's not the "lobbyists", it's the government they are lobbying.

If the government is failing you, why not get them out of the business, turn the quality certification over to something non-government such as the American Diabetes Assn, diabetes.org.

The only barrier to entry should be you need to have a safe, pure, effective product.

I'm not diabetic but I would be happy to have a Mayo Clinic certification on a med if the government is too slow, too stupid or too corrupt to do the job.  Why is the answer to bungled government always more government or complete government takeover?  It makes no sense to me.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 08:31:57 AM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1764 on: February 18, 2020, 09:12:26 AM »
Very good points Doug

If we take the position that the companies will go ahead and "abuse the system "

because they can,  and this is consistent will human behavior in general
then

the problem must be the system is broken (like at the Copyright Office)
this the system needs to fixed. so the greedy cannot manipulate the system to their benefit

removing barriers of entry seems like it would help.

however I am not sure it is just this.

Even the biosimilars still seem to charge a lot .
only somewhat less then the ibg monopoly players according to this article.

one interesting thing is Walmart has availability of one type of insulin at low cost
 because of their purchasing power.

the pharmacy benefits managers are supposed. to have the same effect
but while they may save some insurers money NONE of that saves patients money.

I thinks some wholesale prescription plans have tried to break the strangle hold but I am not sure if any really successful

I don't think I can say it is due to regulations.

I think price collusion is clearly a factor

Just like market forces have not really been able to break the stranglehold of the big tech companies that control most of the market in on line ads and data etc.

DougMacG

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1765 on: February 18, 2020, 09:47:46 AM »
Thanks ccp.

"I think price collusion is clearly a factor"

Yes, price collusion between near monopoly players is broken only with new supplies entering the market.  They don't have to talk to each other to collude.  They just do market price studies like everyone does.

"Just like market forces have not really been able to break the stranglehold of the big tech companies that control most of the market in on line ads and data etc."

Ever since the rise of Microsoft, these big companies can't be beat because of their low price and high functionality.  Google and Facebook are mostly "free" to the user with massive functionality.  There are no barriers to entry to sell (most) products on the internet without a middleman for less, just the challenge of getting costs down and getting the word out.

Back to Insulin, something or somebody is stopping more supplies and new suppliers from entering the market.  Mayo Clinic pointing the finger at "Lobbying power of insulin manufacturers" makes me wonder...  Lobby whom?  To do what?  Government.  To block new supplies and suppliers, I presume.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 09:52:15 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Cost of Wuhan treatment
« Reply #1769 on: March 27, 2020, 08:53:17 AM »


Crafty_Dog

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G M

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Re: NYC, Medicare, and closing hospitals
« Reply #1772 on: March 28, 2020, 08:06:02 PM »

ccp

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oversight of the ballout
« Reply #1773 on: March 29, 2020, 09:12:40 AM »
Just the thought of "Congress" overseeing the 2 trillion "bailout " is nauseating.

I am not sure I could trust Minuchin though completely either.


https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-resisting-congressional-oversight-of-corporate-bailout-program/

fraud waste nepotism - we all know will be rampant.

from top to bottom



DougMacG

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1775 on: April 08, 2020, 06:04:42 AM »
What a kook - crazy eccentric person. Was he 12 when he wrote that? Did he wish his grandparents dead?  I would hire him for NOTHING. Instead the leading opponent makes him lead adviser, in charge of healthcare rationing - for people over 75.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2020, 12:43:57 PM by DougMacG »

ccp

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Jimmy Earl Carter forgot why RR kicked his ass in 1979 electioin
« Reply #1776 on: April 16, 2020, 06:40:38 AM »
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/15/jimmy-carter-distressed-over-trump-halting-who-funding/

US fund to WHO 500 million and the Chinese 40 million

yet the WHO leader covers up for the Chinese
he must be getting cash under the table  - must be


Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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ccp

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sounds politically motivated
« Reply #1779 on: July 11, 2020, 10:21:28 AM »
I  never heard of anything like this assuming it is true
A Board of Medicine  investigating a doctor/senatore (Rep. of course) because of some public comments - which are almost certainly true.

https://www.minnpost.com/glean/2020/07/minnesota-state-senator-says-he-is-being-investigation-by-board-of-medical-practice-over-covid-19-comments/

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: The Federal Program that keeps Insulin Prices Hight
« Reply #1780 on: September 11, 2020, 09:57:21 AM »
The Federal Program That Keeps Insulin Prices High
Middlemen pocket discounts while forcing patients, employers and Medicare to pay more.
By Adam J. Fein
Sept. 10, 2020 7:10 pm ET

Perhaps the biggest flashpoint in the political debate about prescription drug prices is the cost of insulin. This summer an executive order from President Trump required low prices for some patients, and Eli Lilly last week announced new measures to make insulin more affordable for diabetics. Yet many aren’t aware that a federal program is goosing the price of insulin and other treatments, and keeping the prices high for patients who need these drugs.

Over the past few months the little-known 340B Drug Pricing Program has become the source of intense jockeying over who should benefit from the deep drug discounts—sometimes as much as 100%—that manufacturers provide to hospitals and their pharmacy partners. Drug manufacturers Sanofi, Merck and Novartis are demanding transparency to ensure that their discounts aren’t diverted.

Congress created the 340B Drug Pricing Program in 1992 with the vague goal of helping providers “stretch scarce federal resources” by requiring manufacturers to offer steep drug discounts to certain “safety net” hospitals. But the program includes no clear mandate on how the rebates should be spent. Good intentions have been swamped by middlemen that pocket discounts while forcing patients, employers and the Medicare program to pay more for prescription drugs.

For 18 years, 340B remained a minor, generally uncontroversial part of the U.S. health-care system. But shortly after the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, the Obama administration announced an expansion: Hospitals could purchase and dispense discounted drugs through an unlimited number of external (or contract) commercial pharmacies.


For years I’ve been studying the economics of the complex and opaque intersection of the 340B program and the pharmacy industry. My analysis has found that since 2010 the 340B program has grown by almost 500% and is approaching the size of the nation’s Medicaid outpatient drug market. The number of external pharmacies in the 340B program has also skyrocketed, from fewer than 1,300 in 2010 to 28,000 in 2020. That means almost half the U.S. pharmacy industry now profits from the 340B program, which was designed as a narrow support to certain hospitals.

Profit margins of up to 100% allow hospitals to pay inflated fees to their pharmacy partners, which can earn margins well above what the patient’s insurance company usually pays. Public companies such as Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Cigna, UnitedHealth Group, and Kroger have rushed into the 340B business. A booming industry of consultants and technology companies helps hospitals and commercial pharmacies profit from this aspect of the 340B program.

Patients don’t benefit from these discounts. Instead, they are expected to pay their health plans’ full out-of-pocket costs. A patient with a high-deductible health plan must pay the full list price for his medicine. The same sad math applies to seniors in the Medicare Part D program. Seniors taking many expensive specialty therapies must pay 5% of their prescription’s price without discounts—even when the manufacturer has practically given the product away.

Unlike Medicaid, the pharmacy component of 340B doesn’t have—and has never had—a regulatory infrastructure. That’s because the Obama administration’s 2010 notice bypassed the usual rule-making and comment procedures. Consequently, there’s no requirement that hospitals appropriately use the billions in 340B pharmacy discounts, no fair-market-value standards for pharmacies’ fees, and zero transparency around the profits earned by the billion-dollar public companies that dominate 340B pharmacy networks.

Even worse, multiple government watchdogs have found that hospitals often don’t provide discounted drug prices to uninsured low-income patients who filled prescriptions at a hospital’s 340B contract pharmacy. The Government Accountability Office discovered that in a sample of 28 hospitals, 16 (57%) didn’t provide discounted drug prices to needy patients at 340B pharmacies.

Manufacturers can find themselves paying a Medicaid rebate and a 340B discounts for the same prescription. Such double dipping occurs because there is a lack of transparency into claims data that would allow states and manufacturers to apply payment policies correctly. Health and Human Service’s Inspector General in a report last month identified this lack of transparency as one of its top unimplemented recommendations to the agency.

Manufacturers understandably oppose paying 200% in discounts while others in the system make money. Hospitals and pharmacies have fought requests for data that manufacturers need to verify or track 340B discounts.

Congress needs to clean up this mess. The health-care system has changed a lot in the 28 years since the discount program was introduced. The 340B program needs to be modernized so that it benefits seniors and other patients—while supporting the genuine safety-net services of health-care providers. In the absence of sensible regulations, manufacturers will struggle to make sure that patients benefit from discounts on prescription drugs.

Mr. Fein is CEO of Drug Channels Institute.

ccp

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the woke CDC
« Reply #1781 on: September 15, 2020, 05:15:12 PM »
they screwed up big time the corona virus pandemic
but we need to be teaching the evils of white people ?

 :-(

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/cdc-critical-race-theory-racism-colorism/2020/09/15/id/987084/

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: The Pre-Exiting Condition Fiction
« Reply #1782 on: October 01, 2020, 01:08:27 PM »
Pre-Existing Condition Fiction
Biden repeats the same false claims about ObamaCare that Democrats use every election.
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 30, 2020 7:19 pm ET

Joe Biden claimed at Tuesday’s debate that “100 million people who have pre-existing conditions” will lose insurance if the Trump Administration wins an Affordable Care Act case at the Supreme Court. Democrats have terrified voters with this fiction for years, and Republican confusion has helped keep the fear alive. So let’s explain the reality one more time.

Stipulate first that the GOP attorneys general asking the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act are committing political malpractice. As we wrote Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts’s Court is not about to strike down the entire law, and Democrats know it. But the Trump Administration’s support of the lawsuit has handed Democrats a potent line of attack.

Yet on the merits, the left overstates the problem of pre-existing conditions to justify political control of health care. Mr. Biden’s 100 million figure may come from an estimate of how many Americans have a condition but aren’t enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid. Those two programs cover about one-third of the U.S. population, including seniors and the poor who have pre-existing conditions. Another roughly 160 million Americans have employer-sponsored insurance, where rules on pre-existing conditions date to 1990s privacy law.

The question is not how many Americans have a health condition, but how many Americans buying insurance in the individual insurance market have a condition that makes them difficult to insure at prices they can pay. Keep in mind that the Affordable Care Act set up a subsidized transitional plan for anyone with pre-existing conditions denied insurance in the individual market. Peak enrollment: about 115,000 in 2013.

The White House in an executive order last week noted that, by the Obama Administration’s own report, a mere 2.7% of an estimated roughly 130 million people with pre-existing conditions gained access to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

One of the biggest political cons of the past decade is the left’s claim that only ObamaCare could keep these Americans from being deprived of health care. In fact the law’s regulations and mandates have often resulted in narrow networks and high out-of-pocket costs for patients who most need good and affordable care.

Take a 2018 survey that found more than 90% of National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers are “out of network for some or all health exchange carriers in their state.” The survey notes that coverage mandates may have “accelerated the use of narrow networks to control health plan costs” on the exchanges.

As health experts John Goodman and Devon Herrickhave noted, Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center doesn’t accept “a single private health insurance plan sold on the individual market in Texas.” Having an insurance card is no comfort to cancer patients shut out from top hospitals and doctors.

The theory of the 2017 GOP ObamaCare repeal effort was that it would be better to defray the health costs of these patients directly through high-risk pools. That would also reduce high premiums for the healthy. The GOP plan would have allowed states relief from some of the Affordable Care Act’s rules, as long as states availed themselves of billions in funding to subsidize those with pre-existing conditions.

The Galen Institute’s Brian Blase pointed out last week that the Affordable Care Act is on track to cost taxpayers $1.8 trillion over the next decade, and too much of that goes to pay insurance companies for “healthy enrollees who need massive subsidies to afford the coverage that the ACA made much more expensive.” Republicans should run with this line of thinking: $1.8 trillion could be better deployed, particularly in directly helping the seriously ill.

President Trump deserves credit for his efforts to expand insurance options like health-reimbursement arrangements that allow workers to buy a plan with pretax dollars. And it’s a pity that his rule allowing more small businesses to band together to offer insurance (association health plans) has been ensnared in a court fight. Mr. Trump says he supports protecting those with pre-existing conditions, and his health-care executive order last week included several discrete good ideas.

But voters want a larger plan for how he’d help Americans in tough times pay their medical bills while allowing everyone else more portability and choice. The media trope that the right has no ideas on health care is false. But too few Republican politicians have the discipline to learn the details and the political courage to sell reform to voters.

DougMacG

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Re: WSJ: The Pre-Exiting Condition Fiction
« Reply #1783 on: October 01, 2020, 05:45:53 PM »
Great explanation of the issue.

ccp

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Rich Lowry : Trump abdicates on health care
« Reply #1784 on: October 02, 2020, 06:00:08 AM »
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/trumps-abdication-on-health-care/

I like Mark Levin's answer when asked what is the policy on health care:

"it is called the private sector"

Nonetheless Republicans seem unable to come up with something that helps private sector cover pre existing conditions ( guarantee ),
   or better help people who can't get coverage etc.

And this is the third biggest concern people have as Rich points out.
Trump's only addresses costs of medicines.  I am not sure if costs are down or not .

Not easy to tell.
Certainly the deluge of newer biotech meds that cost a lot to get approved, long patent lives, and pharm gaming the legal system to extend patent lives unethically to prevent cheaper generics, and generic companies not reducing costs much lower than brand ,  I have not seen big difference in prices anectodely.

 


DougMacG

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Re: Rich Lowry : Trump abdicates on health care
« Reply #1785 on: October 02, 2020, 07:04:56 AM »
ccp:
I like Mark Levin's answer when asked what is the policy on health care:

"it is called the private sector"
--------------------------------

In 2019 you could call it the 90% solution.  90% of America does not live in poverty (pre-covid) and should be able to afford their own insurance and expenses.

As we generously take care of those among us less fortunate, and we do, we should be careful no to screw up the system for the 90%.  Markets and competition are the only things that bring down costs.  Markets and competition are the only things that drive up incomes.  Health care affordability is the ratio of cost to the income available to pay those costs.

Democrat plans address the 10% problem by screwing it all up for the 90%.

Pre-existing conditions?  Didn't we already solve that?  I thought Obamacare took care of it. And was NOT repealed, see voting records of John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-gop-effort-repeal-obamacare-fails-n787311

Were we oversold?  Don't you have to admit it failed in order to propose a bigger government program?

ccp

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obama care now obama biden care
« Reply #1786 on: November 13, 2020, 05:21:57 AM »
as we all know obama care was designed as first step towards single payer
or maybe some form of private insurance but with total centralized government control

so of course Zeke and crew are already working to implement the plans they have for next step:

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/11/12/klain-biden-will-take-executive-action-fixing-some-of-the-flaws-in-aca-trump-caused/

I am not sure why health stocks are so loved
this is a huge threat to them

to me it is like the gas industry
forced secular decline

DougMacG

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Re: obama care now obama biden care
« Reply #1787 on: November 13, 2020, 06:49:53 AM »
"I am not sure why health stocks are so loved
this is a huge threat to them, "
------------
Big regulation tends to thwart innovation, thwart competition, block new entrants to the market, and benefit the already entrenched players.

The need for healthcare is going up.  The money going into Healthcare is going up.  The number of choices is going down - except for that great 'public option' coming.  Public option probably means giving giant public money going to existing 'market' giants to provide worse and worse service to more and more people. Gotta like that - if you are United Health Group.

More subsidy in the industry means prices go up - for everyone.  Econ 101.  cf. college tuitions.

ccp

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1788 on: November 13, 2020, 07:25:58 AM »
"public option probably means giving giant public money going to existing 'market' giants to provide worse and worse service to more and more people. Gotta like that - if you are United Health Group."

agree that is phase 2

phase 3 eventually will be "medicare for all"

G M

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Spot the difference
« Reply #1789 on: November 13, 2020, 01:26:34 PM »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1790 on: November 13, 2020, 04:03:08 PM »
Would love to be able to post that elsewhere.  Is there a URL?

G M

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1791 on: November 13, 2020, 05:44:57 PM »
Would love to be able to post that elsewhere.  Is there a URL?

https://gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/059/793/658/original/8d8e4f54df1cae53.jpeg

BTW, Dump FaceHugger and move to Gab.com

ccp

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$ 4 + trill Democrat push
« Reply #1792 on: November 15, 2020, 10:21:49 AM »
Pelosi who blocked any bill with Republicans will of course now push for massive spending

with billions for favored Democrats

and when Senate balks she and MSM will of course go all out explaining how Repubs are letting people starve and die


ccp

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1793 on: November 16, 2020, 05:27:06 AM »
Albert Bourla
CEO of Pfizer

a Greek Jew
with a  degree in Veterinary medicine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bourla

they should add democrat to his wikipedia bio

ccp

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Crafty_Dog

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What say we to this?
« Reply #1795 on: November 21, 2020, 03:29:24 AM »

President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Nov. 20.
PHOTO: TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY IMAGES
Congratulations to drug companies for their tremendous work developing Covid-19 vaccines and therapies in record time. Their reward from the Trump Administration is a new regulation imposing drug price controls, which will make it easier for Joe Biden to go further next year.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday finalized a “most-favored nation” rule requiring drug makers to give Medicare the lowest price they charge comparable developed countries. This means the feds will refuse to pay more for medicines than government-run health systems in Europe. Didn’t Mr. Trump campaign against socialism?

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While Medicare pays more for medicines than most countries, Americans also get earlier access to more life-saving treatments. According to the Galen Institute, 96% of new cancer therapies are available in the U.S. compared to 73% in Germany, 66% in France and 54% in Japan. Mr. Trump’s penny-pinching will result in fewer breakthrough treatments.

Most drugs fail in clinical trials, including some 97% of oncology treatments. The rare successes finance research and development into new medicines. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand that drug makers will spend less on new medicines if government cuts their return on investment.


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HHS is rushing out the rule without seeking public comment under its authority to test new payment models to reduce federal spending and improve patient care. Such tests typically are voluntary and involve a small patient or hospital population. The most-favored nation rule will be imposed by fiat nationwide.

A President Biden will no doubt run with Mr. Trump’s legally dubious precedent. Mr. Biden has proposed requiring drug makers to charge even private insurers the same price as Medicare, and his regulators could use Mr. Trump’s same flawed administrative edict to impose it.

Politico reported this week that Mr. Trump pushed HHS to jam through the most-favored nation rule because he is angry that Pfizer didn’t publicly disclose that its Covid-19 vaccine was 95% effective until after the election. “Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words, not come out with a vaccine, until just after the election. That’s because of what I did with favored nations and these other elements,” President Trump said Friday, more or less confirming the Politico story. But perhaps Pfizer’s delay was because the data wasn’t available.

The new rule is likely to be blocked in court, but it will tarnish the Administration’s record of accelerating drug approvals, Covid vaccines and therapies. Industry experts expect the next Congress to pass some form of drug price legislation. Maybe it’s good the pandemic hit before politicians could do more damage to pharmaceutical innovation.

ccp

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what say we to this?
« Reply #1796 on: November 21, 2020, 04:39:49 PM »
"Politico reported this week that Mr. Trump pushed HHS to jam through the most-favored nation rule because he is angry that Pfizer didn’t publicly disclose that its Covid-19 vaccine was 95% effective until after the election. “Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words, not come out with a vaccine, until just after the election. That’s because of what I did with favored nations and these other elements,” President Trump said Friday, more or less confirming the Politico story. But perhaps Pfizer’s delay was because the data wasn’t available."

If true this is no way to run a country.

He did promise lower drug prices but this may stifle innovation
I personally am in favor of stopping the patent expiration shenanigans the Pharma do.

Like buy off generic competitors
find bullshit excuses to extend patents lives
like make a drug slightly different etc.

There are generic drugs that are NOT cheap
not enough competition

there is no question unwritten price fixing
such as with insulins - it is as obvious as that there was clearly fraud in this election (as well in past elections)


ccp

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health care taken over by the politically correct
« Reply #1797 on: December 17, 2020, 08:01:41 AM »
can't post the entire article as I do not subscribe to the political rag Journal of the American Medical Association

but they send me their journals for free
I guess to further force feed me political correct articles

this one seem worse than usual as they name a Supreme Court Justice and of course Trump by name
as threatening birth control the unaffordable care act and the usual LEFTIst propaganda
this came out in Dec 1 issue

other articles in JAMA this week, Dec 8 if loaded with "trust" in healthcare
with mentions of misinformation on social media and of course digs at Trump

It all fits with tony faucet recently telling America that our problem as a country is our freedom and independent spirit

yes , elites would love to control us and tell us how to live
remember when he told us masks do not work?

rights of unborn are NEVER, EVER put forth , never in 35 yrs have a read anything that supports that.
EVER

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


October 27, 2020
Health Policy in the Supreme Court and a New Conservative Majority
Lawrence O. Gostin, JD1; Wendy E. Parmet, JD2; Sara Rosenbaum, JD3
Author Affiliations
JAMA. 2020;324(21):2157-2158. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.21987
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Within 8 days of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a pioneer of women’s rights and a liberal icon—President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill her seat. Her elevation to the Supreme Court will have profound consequences for health care and policy.

Justice Barrett opposed the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In California v Texas,1 to be argued on November 10, the Court will decide whether legislation zeroing-out the ACA’s “shared responsibility” tax penalty renders the individual mandate unconstitutional and if so, whether the entire law must be invalidated. If the Court strikes down the law, insurance safeguards will be eliminated, including protection against preexisting condition exclusions. Invalidating the ACA could cause 20 million people to lose subsidized coverage, with the number of uninsured increasing to 50 million people. With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and rising unemployment, the consequences could not be greater.

Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: Surprise! A health lobby cage match
« Reply #1798 on: December 31, 2020, 03:13:56 PM »
Surprise! A Health Lobby Cage Match
Insurers and providers duke it out, and politicians take credit.
By The Editorial Board
Dec. 30, 2020 6:35 pm

It will take months to digest everything in the Covid relief bill rammed through Congress and signed by President Trump over the weekend. Both parties are hailing an end to “surprise” medical billing, though a word about this cage match between doctors and insurers.



Here’s what we mean by surprise billing: Say you have surgery at a hospital that participates in your insurance network. Unknown to you, the anesthesiologist who puts you under isn’t part of the network. Later this provider bills your insurer for her services, at high prices without a negotiated plan discount. Then the provider sticks you with whatever the insurer refuses to pay. Surprise!

Awful stories abound: a family billed $50,000 for a neonatal intensive care unit stay at a hospital in their insurance network. A 2019 analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine found that 39% of more than 13 million visits to an in-network emergency room between 2010 and 2016 ended in an out-of-network bill, frequently for services like radiology.


Other evidence suggests the practice is concentrated among a small number of hospitals. A subset of physician staffing agencies seems to have figured out it can be lucrative to leave networks and bill patients directly—a nice little arbitrage game on an opaque, third-party payment system. No one with chest pains looks up his doctor network before dialing 911.


Congress has debated intervention that would shield consumers from the damage by limiting them to paying their typical network cost-sharing. As for the rest of the charges, insurers favored a “benchmark” that would reimburse providers at the median rate of in-network services. This is government dictation of what providers can charge. Hospitals and doctors preferred arbitration that would allow a supposedly neutral party to divine the proper price of the service. In other words, both want to club the other with price controls. It’s a pity they couldn’t both lose.

The deal in Congress tries to hold patients harmless for emergency care and some non-emergencies, and erects an arbitration process to settle payment fights. Health-care experts Doug Badger and Brian Blase have pointed out that arbitration, which we support in other contexts, exists for parties who have entered a contract. Here the doctor and insurer have declined to do so. Most distortions in health care derive from price setting in Medicare and Medicaid, and you can expect this political response to surprise billing to cause more surprise complications.

Congress could have penalized insurers who advertise a facility as “in network” if many of the doctors aren’t, or put the onus on hospitals to align the doctors they employ with the insurance networks they join. It would have been better to stop at banning this form of billing patients—and tell hospital systems and insurers to sort out their own problems through the rough and tumble of negotiation.

But both Republicans and Democrats were eager to claim credit for doing something, and the hope is that this will at least help some consumers who were collateral damage in a fight between doctors and insurers. A parting word to the private health industry: Begging government to resolve your internecine wars will make the public more sympathetic to a single-payer system that puts you out of business.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Politics of Health Care
« Reply #1799 on: February 25, 2021, 01:07:37 PM »
upersizing ObamaCare Subsidies
The Covid bill hides a major expansion of the Affordable Care Act.
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 24, 2021 6:42 pm ET





We’ve been telling readers about the progressive policy priorities hitching a ride on Congress’s “Covid relief” bill. That includes shoveling billions into the Affordable Care Act, with the goal of making government insurance a middle-class entitlement on the way to Medicare for All.

Provisions of the $1.9 trillion bill moving through the House make Affordable Care Act subsidies more generous and available even to the affluent. Buying an ObamaCare policy makes sense if a subsidy shields you from fearsome premiums and out-of-pocket costs; more than 85% of enrollees receive such a subsidy. But those who earn too much to qualify for government subsidies have been fleeing the exchanges. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servicessaid last fall that unsubsidized enrollment dropped 45% between 2016 and 2019.


Instead of making the underlying product better or less expensive, Democrats now want to pass more of the cost onto taxpayers. More low-income buyers would pay little to nothing for insurance. Democrats would also remove the income cap for receiving subsidies, which is 400% of the poverty line, and reduce a person’s maximum contribution to 8.5% of income from 10%.

The ObamaCare “subsidy cliff” is poor policy that punishes Americans for working and earning more, but now government will spend scarce resources on those who don’t need help. Brian Blase of the Galen Institute has pointed out that a family of four headed by a 60-year-old earning $240,000 could qualify for a nearly $9,000 subsidy. These are not the folks hit hard by the pandemic, many of whom are eligible for Medicaid.



The supersized subsidies would cost $34 billion over two years but that is merely the beginning. The politics are such that the benefit will never be revoked. The more generous subsidies will be captured by insurers, who will continue to raise premiums, and the specter of high costs will push lawmakers to intervene again. Rinse, repeat. Smaller businesses may move their workers onto the exchanges instead of offering their own insurance.

The House bill also offers a temporary five-percentage-point increase in federal funding to states that decide to expand Medicaid to childless, prime-age adults above the poverty line. This has nothing to do with Covid relief.

Texas, Florida and 10 other states declined to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act, and that decision looks smart in retrospect. States have spent more money on more enrollees, without improving emergency room visit rates or other health outcomes, while burning a hole in state budgets. State legislators will have to tie themselves to the mast amid interest-group demands to take advantage of “free” money from the feds.

Oh, and would you like to pay more at the counter for your prescription drugs? Democrats have you covered. Here’s how: Drug manufacturers are required to offer steep discounts to Medicaid, and these discounts are capped at 100% of the average manufacturer price of the drug. House Democrats would remove that cap.

Some companies could end up paying state Medicaid programs to take their drugs. The cost of such Medicaid dysfunction is spread across commercial markets, raising drug prices elsewhere, and it is one reason some diabetics pay too much for insulin.

Democrats will talk all of this up as merely helping struggling Americans get health coverage. The true plan is to continue to chip away at private health insurance, creating more market dysfunction that they will later claim to solve with more government insurance.