This is something of a repeat of an earlier post, but in light of Health Care Week on the Blogs, it’s timely. This is a brief list of things I’ve been reading about health care in the last year:
- Uninsured in America, by Rushika Fernandopulle and Susan Starr Sered. (Read a review here.)
Just a tough, tough book. The authors meet a number of folks who have been sucked into the "death spiral": hard times (divorce, job loss, etc) + medical problems = more hard times + worse medical problems. Did you hear the one about the guy who uses an electric sander on his bone spurs? Oh, well, it’s not that funny anyway. - The Moral Hazard Myth, Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker.
You feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya? Gladwell shows how we’re distributing risk, and the human cost. - The Best Care Anywhere, Phillip Longman in the Washington Monthly.
"Ten years ago, veterans hospitals were dangerous, dirty, and scandal-ridden. Today, they’re producing the highest quality care in the country. Their turnaround points the way toward solving America’s health-care crisis." - The Quality Cure?
NYT Magazine profile of Harvard prof David Cutler’s ideas about health care reform: Quality, Knowledge, not Price (that’s nice). - Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation’s "Roadmap to Coverage" report, final version to be issued in October. Just read the executive summaries if you don’t have time for the whole thing. Basically they state that the benefits of insuring people far outweigh the costs, when seen as an investment in the economy.
- "Re-creating our health care system":
"It’s ground zero, and citizens must take charge where elected officials have failed." An op-ed by Arne Carlson, former Republican governor of Minnesota, and Booth Gardner, former Democratic governor of Washington. It’s up to us. No one is going to hand us a good health care system — it must be formed from the ground up. - Boston Globe, Sept. 15: "Fewer Companies offering benefits as costs rise".
10-12 percent rises, year after year after year. At that rate it doubles about every six or seven years. (Are you getting twice as good care every seven years?) - Boston Globe, August 31: "US Study finds rise in uninsured":
The number of Massachusetts residents without health insurance jumped about 10 percent last year, surpassing the growth in the uninsured nationally and raising concerns whether climbing private health insurance premiums are shutting out middle-income workers." Gosh, you think? Census Bureau estimates there are 748,000 uninsured people in MA; other estimates put it at about 532,000.
Please share widely!
Now Charley, how do you expect me to read all that, find fault, and then give you shit about it. Not fair.
and to “bring it all home”, so to speak, take 5 and visit our MA Healthcare Activist website to get up to speed on MA homegrown universal coverage reform efforts. Namely, making affordable comprehensive health insurance coverage a permanent right for all. Hey, we’ll be joining the rest of the civilized and wealthy world once we do that! Isn’t that a novel idea?…
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An addition to Charley’s reading list: see Sager & Socolar’s recent report, “Massachusetts Health Spending Soars to $62.1 Billion in 2006″-Spending Is World’s Highest–33% Above U.S.A. Average, An Unprecedented Excess”, 28 June 2006. Report is 86 pages with 40 exhibits posted on their site’s Access and Affordability Monitoring Project (AAMP) page.
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Last thought. Keep 2 themes in mind as you think about and evaluate any public policy option, be it healthcare reform or energy policy or military spending:
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1) Follow the money trail.
and
2) Who wins and who loses with the proposed reform?
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If you dig a little on these 2 fronts you’ll learn a lot and realize that our U.S. “healthcare system” including what we’ve got right here in good ol’ MA is one of the biggest rip-offs to the ordinary person this country has going these days, in addition to the war in Iraq…
Those are great links to health care. Health insurance is a great aspect to many and it would be great to be educated about it.