Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Rounds Up Media Features of Health Issues

Several newspapers featured health issues recently. Summaries of the articles appear below:

• Baltimore Sun, "Concierge Care, But at a Cost": The Baltimore Sun on Dec. 16 profiles the "growing movement" of "boutique" medicine, or "concierge care," in which patients pay high annual fees to receive "more personalized" attention and constant access to their physicians. Patients who opt for such care receive comprehensive exams, are guaranteed a 30-minute same-day or next-day doctor visit and can contact their doctor via pager or cell phone 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Physicians in boutique practices say they were unable to provide the "best care" under the "old, rushed" system, but critics claim that the new system is "elitist" and leaves out the poor and uninsured (Niedowski, Baltimore Sun, 12/16).
  
• Christian Science Monitor, "More States Flirt with Universal Health Care": Universal health care, which became a "dreaded phrase" while President Clinton was in office, now is "beginning to reemerge" as a "serious issue of debate," the Christian Science Monitor reports. Unlike previous pushes for universal health care, however, the "pressure for reform" is coming now "not from the top down, but from the states themselves." Recently, several states -- including Maine, Rhode Island, Oregon and California -- have looked at the issue of universal health care to varying degrees, from releasing a study on the idea to putting a universal health proposal on the ballot. The Monitor reports that the reemergence of the universal health care debate is an "indicator of how dire the situation in American health care has become" (Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor, 12/16).
  
• New York Times, "Treating Disease with a Famous Face": While a celebrity spokesperson can draw attention to disease treatment and encourage research funding, medical experts say the "arrangements are ethically complicated," as many celebrities receive payments from pharmaceutical companies, the New York Times reports. Further, the public often "does not always understand" that many celebrities are "paid players in the marketing strategies" of drug firms. According to Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, the "celebrity-disease" relationship is a "natural, if undesirable, signal of the continuing transformation of health care from a profession run by doctors and scientists to one run by marketers," the Times reports (Kuczynski, New York Times, 12/15).
  
• New York Times, "When Health Coverage Is Decided by the Calendar": While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ensures health coverage for pre-existing medical conditions after a worker joins an employer's group insurance, many people could be left paying for medical bills out-of-pocket for up to one year because of a loophole in the law, the New York Times reports. HIPAA guarantees coverage for pre-existing conditions only if "there has been no significant break in coverage," or any period of more than 62 days. However, a weak economy and high unemployment rates have left many people without health insurance and more susceptible to gaps in coverage. Instead of movement to close the loophole, "political momentum" is moving "in the opposite direction" -- toward "less comprehensive coverage and fewer safeguards and protections," the Times reports (Andrews, New York Times, 12/15).