Preventive Care and Screening – The Moral Healthcare Blog

Report calls for doubling nation’s public health spending – The Hill’s Healthwatch

The United States spends more on healthcare but lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in life expectancy and childhood mortality because the government “chronically” underfunds public health systems, the Institute of Medicine argues in a new report out Tuesday.

The report calls for doubling federal spending on public health from $11.6 billion to $24 billion a year “as a starting point to meet the needs of public health departments.” The report points out that Americans spent $8,086 per person in medical care in 2009 versus $251 in public health spending.

The IOM’s Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health goes on to recommend that government advisers develop a “minimum package of public health services” that every community should receive from its state and local health departments. It suggests creating a new transaction tax on medical care services to help pay for the increased spending, which over time could lower healthcare costs by reducing obesity and tobacco use.

Medicaid’s high marks on preventive care contrary to its stingy image – amednews.com

Medicaid, with its reputation for low payment rates and fiscal instability, is far from perfect, said Stacey Mazer, senior staff associate for the National Assn. of State Budget Officers. Budget officers in particular continue to have concerns about the fact that health care spending is outpacing other services.

Kaiser’s findings highlight all of the positive benefits that Medicaid can provide, Mazer said. “The states did very well in terms of the number of preventive services that they covered, and even the states that didn’t cover as many still covered the majority of them.”

Stunning Healthcare Overture from Bipartisan Group of US Senators – 2007

Healthcare Legislation in This Congress? – Michael Barone (usnews.com)

I followed Ezra Klein’s link to this letter from 10 Senators, 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats, written just two years before President Obama took office! Read it, as it is stunning how far the Republican Choo Choo has gone around the bend. [Courtesy USNews.com and Michael Barone.]

Now Wyden and nine other senators, five Democrats and five Republicans, have sent the following letter to Bush. Very interesting.

In addition to Wyden, the letter was signed by Republicans Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Robert Bennett of Utah, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and John Thune of South Dakota, and Democrats Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Maria Cantwell of Washington, and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.

The text of the letter follows:

February 13, 2007

The Honorable George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:

As U.S. Senators of both political parties we would like to work with you and your Administration to fix the American health care system.
Each of us believes our current health system needs to be fixed now. Further delay is unacceptable as costs continue to skyrocket, our population ages, and chronic illness increases. In addition, our businesses are at a severe disadvantage when their competitors in the global market get health care for “free.”
We would like to work with you and your Administration to pass legislation in this Congress that would:
1)Ensure that all Americans would have affordable, quality, private health coverage, while protecting current government programs. We believe the health care system cannot be fixed without providing solutions for everyone. Otherwise, the costs of those without insurance will continue to be shifted to those who do have coverage.
2)Modernize Federal tax rules for health coverage. Democratic and Republican economists have convinced us that the current rules disproportionately favor the most affluent, while promoting inefficiency.
3)Create more opportunities and incentives for states to design health solutions for their citizens. Many state officials are working in their state legislatures to develop fresh, creative strategies for improving health care, and we believe any legislation passed in this Congress should not stymie that innovation.
4)Take steps to create a culture of wellness through prevention strategies, rather than perpetuating our current emphasis on sick care. For example, Medicare Part A pays thousands of dollars in hospital expenses, while Medicare Part B provides no incentives for seniors to reduce blood pressure or cholesterol. Employers, families, and all our constituents want emphasis on prevention and wellness.
5)Encourage more cost-effective chronic and compassionate end-of-life care. Studies show that an increase in health care spending does not always mean an increase in quality of outcomes. All Americans should be empowered to make decisions about their end of life care, not be forced into hospice care without other options. We hope to work with you on policies that address these issues.
6)Improve access to information on price and quality of health services. Today, consumers have better accessto information about the price and quality of washing machines than on the price and quality of health services.
We disagree with those who say the Senate is too divided and too polarized to pass comprehensive health care legislation. We disagree with those who believe that this issue should not come up until after the next presidential election. We disagree with those who want to wait when the American people are saying, loud and clear, “We want to fix health care now.”
We look forward to working with you in a bipartisan manner in the days ahead.

Skyrocketing costs! Competetive disadvantage! Universal access to health care! Class warfare! Inefficient US health care! Wellness! Prevention! Cost effectiveness! Compassionate end of life care! Expanding palliative care services! Health care in the US is broken!

Who knew Jim DeMint was a socialist before he was a Tea-Partier?

Will emphasis on screening be harmful to your health? – The Boston Globe

Will emphasis on screening be harmful to your health? – The Boston Globe:

“But a former government health researcher is concerned that political considerations are leading the Obama administration to lean too heavily on screening, which can have unexpected downsides. Dr. Kenneth Lin, a Washington, D.C.-based family physician who used to conduct research for the government agency that helped develop screening recommendations, wrote in a recent blog post that the government’s acronym PPIP — for put prevention into practice — should really stand for “prevention politics injures patients.’’

Those are fighting words, but Lin quit his job at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality last November after a meeting of independent experts to vote on recommendations for prostate cancer screening was unexpectedly delayed that month.

Lin blames politics and the maelstrom weathered by the Obama administration when those same experts — used by the government to set screening guidelines — downgraded mammography screening recommendations for women in their 40s, at just the time when the health care bill was being debated in Congress. The experts stop recommending routine screening of women in their 40s, leaving it up to women to decide with their doctors whether to have mammograms.

This touched off angry accusations that the government was trying to ration care to save money, and the furor ultimately led Congress to add specific wording to the bill stating that mammograms would be covered.

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