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Table of Contents -- Health Insurance 

May 20, 2008 6:25 AM        

Another Weak Chink In The Insurance Wall	03/29/2005	The government is likely to join a growing number of private health plans that are attempting to rein in the use of diagnostic scans. This week, a Medicare advisory panel is expected to make several recommendations to Congress on the best way to curb the sharply escalating costs of MRIs and other scans.
Believing False Information	03/29/2005	"People build mental models," explains Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychology professor at the University of Western Australia, Crawley, who led the study that will be published in Psychological Science. "By the time they receive a retraction, the original misinformation has already become an integral part of that mental model, or world view, and disregarding it would leave the world view a shambles." Therefore, he and his colleagues conclude in their paper, "People continue to rely on misinformation even if they demonstrably remember and understand a subsequent retraction."
Better Care -- Not MORE Care	03/29/2005	About 46 cents of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. comes from the government, the bulk of it from the Medicare and Medicaid health-insurance programs for the old, the poor and the disabled. The government pays nearly 60% of the hospital bills and 20% of the doctor bills. So if the government changes the way it pays doctors or hospitals, it makes big waves in the health-care system. Which is why it's worth paying attention to the latest government experiments in paying doctors not for providing more care, but for providing better care.
Cheap But Good Fix To Healthcare Insurance	03/29/2005	The health care agenda of the second Bush term is immense, and the administration can begin by pushing a simple idea that won't cost a penny from the treasury: Allow interstate sales of health insurance.
Drug Prices Poised To Rise Again:  WSJ, December 2004	03/29/2005	Despite the slowdown in the third quarter, drug prices for the 12 months ended in September as a whole rose 7.4% on average, AARP said, or more than three times the 2.3% rate of general inflation in that period. "Price increases hurt more than just AARP members," John Rother, AARP director of policy and strategy, said in an interview. "They break state Medicaid budgets and strain employers and health insurers."
Fixing Health Care Is In The Same Leaky Boat As Fixing Social Security	03/29/2005	No, the footdraggers aren't really in favor of reforming Medicare either. They just want an excuse to avoid tackling Social Security. But look at it from Mr. Bush's point of view. He's taken a 25-year-old debate over private retirement accounts and gulled the political class into admitting the problems of Medicare, whose unfunded, present-value liability, at $62 trillion, dwarfs even Social Security's $10 trillion
Government Won't Allow Mergers For Reducing Health Care Costs!	03/29/2005	Federal regulators are targeting what they say is an elusive culprit contributing to the soaring hospital costs of recent years: mergers. Next month, the Federal Trade Commission brings to trial an unusual case in which it is seeking to undo the January 2000 takeover of Highland Park Hospital, in suburban Chicago, by Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Corp. The FTC accuses Evanston Northwestern, which already ran two hospitals in the area, of antitrust violations, saying it used its postmerger "market power" to impose huge price increases -- of 40% to 60%, and in one case 190% -- on insurers and employers.
Handle Health Care With A "Brilliant Deduction!"  WSJ, December, 2004	03/29/2005	The coming tax-reform debate will bring forth discussion of saving and investment and cries for simplification to be sure. This is all to the good. But our politicians and policy makers in Washington and beyond should bear in mind that the tax code lies at the heart of the problems in America's largest market -- accounting for one-seventh of the nation's GDP -- health care.
Health Expenditures During The Last Year Of Life	04/01/2005	On Friday, June 2, research developed by the Hospice Institute in conjunction with the Yale School of Public Health was presented to an annual Yale Alumni and Public Health Meeting and Luncheon. Information concerning the utilization of medical resources was analyzed based on national Medicare data during the last 6 and 12 months of life in a variety of health care settings. Hospice care was shown to be clinically effective and less costly than acute inpatient care and nursing home care.
Health Insurance Increases Corporate Losses	03/29/2005	General Motors Corp. forecast a significant drop in 2005 earnings amid projections of a $1 billion rise in health-care costs, a substantial loss in Europe and lower earnings at its financing arm. In a related announcement, General Motors Acceptance Corp., GM's financing unit, said yesterday that it is considering a restructuring that would group two residential-mortgage businesses in a new holding company in an attempt to lower its borrowing costs. The holding company probably would be able to get a credit rating separate from GM's rating, which slipped in the past year and made it more expensive for the company to issue bonds.
Increasing Costs Of National Health Care	03/29/2005	By 2006 the average family health insurance premium will exceed $14,500; premium costs will have increased by more than $5,000 in just three years. Increasing at a rate that is five times the inflation rate, health care spending in 2003 continues to rise at the fastest rate in our history.
Medicare and Social Security Bankrupt	03/29/2005	The trust fund for Social Security will go broke in 2041, a year earlier than previously estimated, the trustees reported Wednesday. Trustees also said that Medicare, the giant health-care program for the elderly and disabled, faces insolvency in 2020.
Medicare Expenditures During The Last Year Of Life	04/01/2005	The elderly (65 years of age and older) have consumed more than 33 percent of health care spending (Waldo, Sonnefeld, and Arnett 1989). Their medical expenses are substantially higher in the last year of life
MORE Than Half Of All Medical Care Is Now Government	03/29/2005	Government will pay 49% of health costs by 2014, up from 46% currently, according to the agency that runs Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled. The government's portion has been rising steadily, from 43% in 1980 and 38% in 1970.
Private Health Care By Employers?  It Seems To Work!	03/29/2005	Last year Quad/Graphics, one of the nation's biggest printing companies, spent about $6,000 per employee on medical costs, 30% less than the average company in its home state of Wisconsin. Its 12,000 workers spend fewer days in the hospital and take their medicines more regularly.
Promising Drugs Prevented For Greed Reasons	04/07/2005
Supreme Court Deals Blow Against HMOs	03/29/2005	Their appeal rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, six health-maintenance organizations face a class-action lawsuit brought by more than 600,000 doctors who claim the companies systematically underpaid them for medical services. The high court also declined to hear an appeal from California Public Employees' Retirement System, the giant state pension fund that wanted its lawsuits against WorldCom Inc. moved back to state court after a federal bankruptcy court took over the cases.
Surging Costs For Medicaid Ravage Budgets	03/29/2005	Over the past five years state and federal spending in Mississippi on Medicaid -- the health program for the poor and disabled -- has doubled to $3.5 billion. Fully one-quarter of state residents are in the program. "Medicaid is a cancer on our state finances," says Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Committee and a close ally of President Bush.
Useless Drug Sells Billions Because Of Insurance and Fraud	03/29/2005	Lipitor, the world's best-selling drug and a potent pill against cholesterol, continued as the engine of New York-based Pfizer's earnings. Sales of the drug increased 23% to $3.26 billion in the quarter from $2.65 billion a year earlier, fueled in part by new studies showing the benefits of aggressive cholesterol-lowering. Overseas sales rose 29% to $1.24 billion, compared with a 20% domestic increase to $2.02 billion.
Who Is NOW The Enemy Of The Seniors -- AARP Says "Don't Touch Medicare!"	03/29/2005	As the Medicare fight showed, the Republican president can prevail without much support from Congress's Democratic minority. But few think he would have won that battle without AARP. Now, as the former allies stand at odds, the showdown over Social Security and private accounts stands to be less a Republicans-versus-Democrats bout than a Bush-versus-AARP one. The group's opposition "is close to fatal," says just-retired Sen. John Breaux, a conservative Democrat who worked on Social Security and Medicare issues.
WSJ:  November 2004:  Medical Administration Moves Further Into The Digital Age	03/29/2005	In the U.S., a number of politicians, including President Bush, have been calling on health-care providers to deploy information technology to reduce medical errors and improve efficiency. But U.S. health-care providers have been slow to adopt new systems largely because it is expensive and the return on the investment hasn't been evident. Adoption of information technology, however, is inevitable. The various systems look to eliminate hand-written medical orders and prescriptions that contribute to errors and call on physicians and health practitioners to enter their orders into a computer directly.

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