Viewpoints: Examining Obamacare Premium Increases; The Pros And Cons Of Making Patient Surveys Transparent
A selection of opinions from around the country.
The Huffington Post:
Here’s What’s Really Going On With Obamacare Premiums
If you follow the news or listen to the Republican presidential candidates, then you’ve probably heard that premiums for some Affordable Care Act plans went way up last year. But now the Obama administration is saying that, for the vast majority of people buying coverage through healthcare.gov, premiums are only 4 percent higher than they were last year. Can both things be true? (Jonathan Cohn, 4/12)
Fortune:
Obamacare Helped Me Grow My Business – And I’m Sick About It
Republicans say the Affordable Care Act kills jobs. I had a different experience. As a small-business owner, I used Obamacare to hire more people — but for reasons that make me a little bit nauseous. Two years ago I raised a few hundred thousand dollars, mostly from angel investors, and started LifePosts, a web platform that helps people tell their life stories. Despite being “pre-revenue,” I wanted to hire a couple of employees to build the site. (Steven Waldman, 4/12)
The Wall Street Journal:
The Drawbacks Of Rate-Your-Doctor Medical Transparency
Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently announced a big change that most marketers would probably applaud. Vanderbilt plans to publicly share the results of patient surveys—including reviews and ratings of individual physicians and practices—on its website. This initiative follows similar efforts at the University of Utah Health Care, Piedmont Healthcare, Wake Forest Baptist Health and many others. (Mathew S. Isaac, 4/12)
The Wall Street Journal:
It’s Time To Fix How Hospitals Are Rewarded
After the Affordable Care Act was passed six years ago, hospitals were pioneers, becoming the first to be subject to pay-for-quality programs under Medicare. Under this system, payment depends on not just the number and complexity of services, but also the quality of care. This intricate web of policies includes penalties for excess readmissions, hospital-acquired conditions, and the continued use of inefficient paper health records, for example. Admittedly, these programs have improved the transparency of provider performance and incentivized a stronger focus on quality. But they were structured in a hodgepodge fashion, with substantial overlap and contradictory methodologies for calculating performance across payers. (Susan Devore, 4/12)
CBS News:
Donald Trump's Fuzzy Deficit-Cutting Math
Perhaps it's a mistake to take presidential candidates' economic proposals as serious policy rather than signals of tribal affiliation, opening bids in post-election negotiations or pandering for votes by telling various groups what they want to hear, even if the parts don't add up to a feasible whole. Nevertheless, I'm taking [Donald] Trump's proposals for taxes, the government debt, Medicare and Social Security as though they are genuine. (Mark Thoma, 4/12)
Modern Healthcare:
Ted Cruz's Tax Plan Could Make Medicare Funding Discretionary
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz released a tax overhaul plan last fall that drew sharply split reviews for its radical proposal to establish a 10% flat tax on individual income and replace the corporate income tax with a 16% value-added tax. But what almost no one has discussed is the fundamental change Cruz's plan would make in Medicare financing. The Texas senator's proposal would abolish the payroll taxes that fund the Part A hospital trust fund as well as Social Security. The 2.9% payroll tax for Medicare Part A, the 0.9% additional Medicare tax on higher-income workers that helps fund the Affordable Care Act, and the 12.4% tax for Social Security would be history if a President Cruz got his way. (Harris Meyer, 4/12)
The New York Times' Upshot:
The Undeniable Convenience And Reliability Of Retail Health Clinics
My wife and I both work. When one of our children wakes up complaining of a sore throat, we could begin a ritual stare-down to determine which of us is going to have to wait for the doctor’s office to open, make the phone call, wait on hold, schedule an appointment (which will inevitably be in the middle of the day), take off work, pick up the child from school, sit in the waiting room (surrounded by other sick children), get the rapid strep test, find out if the child is infected and then go to the pharmacy or back to school, before returning to work. Or, one of us could just take the child to a retail clinic on the way to work and be done in 30 minutes. (Aaron E. Carroll, 4/12)
Los Angeles Times:
Utah Abortion Bill Is Reckless Meddling Into Women's Health
A new Utah law requiring abortion providers to administer anesthesia to a woman if she is having an abortion at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy is the first of its kind in the nation and it is a reckless intrusion of a state legislature into the practice of medicine. In order to assure the best possible care for patients, decisions about what type of pain medication or anesthesia to administer should be made by medical professionals, not by state legislators. (4/12)
Los Angeles Times:
A Better Family Leave Benefit For Californians
Days after San Francisco mandated a dramatic expansion of family leave benefits in the private sector, Gov. Jerry Brown approved a comparatively modest upgrade in California's pioneering family-leave program that won't take effect until 2018. Yet the statewide measure, AB 908, is still a win for workers, particularly lower-wage workers who can't afford to take advantage of the family leave benefit at its current level. (4/13)
Kansas City Star:
New Effort Puts Needed Focus On Trauma
Resilient KC is more than a catchy new phrase. It is a communitywide effort to identify the trauma that children and adults face and the mental and physical problems that trauma causes and address the concerns with better intervention. Trauma includes abuse, neglect, domestic violence, gun violence, witnessing violence, sexual violence, divorce and having a parent incarcerated. Trauma is cumulative and is particularly troubling for children. Teachers see it in students’ behavioral problems and their inability to learn in school. Research shows that adults who have four or more “adverse childhood experiences” are more likely to smoke, abuse alcohol, be obese, suffer depression and attempt suicide. (4/12)
Lexington Herald Leader:
Unpaid Lawyers Helping Conn’s Disabled Victims Recover Benefit
Social Security based its decision to redetermine all these cases on an inspector general’s report, never made public, that concludes that the benefits were awarded as a result of a fraudulent scheme for which Conn, along with an administrative law judge and a psychologist, have now been indicted by the federal government. These people would need lawyers to represent them at the hearings. There were no provisions for attorney fees so the representation would need to be pro bono. Clearly the staff of the legal services agency serving Eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Ky. Inc. (Appalred), could only handle a small number of these clients in addition to its other work. (John Rosenberg, 4/12)
The Boston Globe:
In Medical Research, Financial Conflicts Of Interest Do Matter
A front-page story by Charles Ornstein in the Globe reports increasing concern about editorial decisions at The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), one of which is to defend the practice of medical researchers having personal financial ties to drug companies whose products they are testing. The NEJM’s national correspondent referred to critics of such conflicts of interest as “pharmascolds.” (Marcia Angell, 4/12)
The Washington Post:
I’m Documenting My Own Alzheimer’s Disease While I Still Can
On a recent flight from San Francisco back to Boston, I found myself seated between my 28-year-old daughter Colleen and the emergency hatch. When the attendant had asked if I could perform the duties, I shrugged and simply said I was afraid of heights. I forgot about the confusion part. I forgot why doctors don’t let me travel alone any more. Alzheimer’s will do that. Somewhere over Chicago, I had to go to the bathroom. My mind told me the bathroom door was immediately to my right — all I had to do was to pull on the lever — so I grabbed for it. It took Colleen screaming for me to realize my hand was on the emergency exit door. The crew later told me never to sit in an exit row again. (Greg O'Brien, 4/13)
STAT:
How One Colombian Family Could Solve Some Of Alzheimer’s Mysteries
For more than 25 years, I have worked with Dr. Francisco Lopera of Medellín’s University of Antioquia in studying the largest known family with inherited Alzheimer’s disease. Its family tree goes back 300 hundred years. Hundreds of individuals in this family are fated to get the disease. (Kenneth S. Kosik, 4/12)
