I got to meet Group Insurance Commission chief Dolores Mitchell at the MA-05 health care forum on Saturday, which she moderated, and I’m definitely a fan. She’s very sharp, concise, no BS, and her heart’s in the right place.
She sees MA health reform hitting an iceberg if we don’t deal with costs — and more information in the hands of consumers isn’t going to cut it, in and of itself:
A lot of people are pinning their hopes on the Quality and Cost Council to shed light on the variability of prices for a list of procedures in Massachusetts hospitals and clinics. The hope is that patients will be motivated to shop for the best prices when they choose a facility to deliver a baby or have an MRI or a colonoscopy. Well, maybe. This writer thinks that shopper sensitivity is necessary, but not sufficient to bring down prices, especially at the high end of the scale. Unless purchasers as well as patients stiffen their resolve and insist on better rates, even to the point of dropping some providers or charging higher co-pays for selecting them, inertia will rule the day and prices will continue to spiral upward.
In the Boston area, we’re dealing with big expansions of the expensive teaching hospitals (eg. MGH), who basically can name their price when negotiating with payers. Harvard Pilgrim boss Charlie Baker really doesn’t like that — but what can he do? Patients want the expensive hospitals.
Unfortunately, it stands to reason that dealing with costs means that we may well have to go away from the name brand institutions. The good news is that quality-wise, that may not be so bad.
Re “She sees MA health reform hitting an iceberg if we don’t deal with costs”
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We hit the iceberg a long time ago.
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Look at the Mass. state budget deficit. Then look at what percent of our budget is HC spending. Look at the premature deaths that occur EVERY year due to uninsurance. The Alliance to Defend Healthcare formed 10 years ago to help sound the Call to Action on this issue and has argued that only when interrealted components of Access, Cost, and Quality are reformed together in a system-wide manner will we achieve the improvements that are so urgently needed. Duh.
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I can’t believe that intelligent people continue to get suckered in to this ongoing exercise in intellectual masturbation while thousands of Americans continue to die from not having health insurance coverage and thousands more are bankrupted by the obscene highway robbery costs of our market-driven U.S. healthcare system.
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This while ALL OF US are ripped off royally by increasing amounts of our tax dollars being consumed by the market-driven corporate controlled healthcare beast.
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We have known the facts and had the knowledge about how to correct this state-level and national disgrace for years. But knowledge is power only if you use it and it looks as though many “progressives” are all too content to keep talking and talking and talking… “Having your heart in the right place” doesn’t add up to a hill of beans if you won’t speak truth to power and take action to do what is right.
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P.S. Michael Moore will be on Oprah today 6/5/07 at 4pm EDT Channel 5 showing clips of his new film “Sicko”.
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blockquote>One candidate has right prescription
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Letter to the Editor, The Boston Globe, June 5, 2007
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IN YOUR May 30 editorial (“Obama’s incomplete health plan”), you criticize Barack Obama’s plan for health insurance and prefer the scheme put forward by John Edwards . In the last paragraph, you recognize that the truly “grand vision” belongs to Dennis Kucinich, who favors single-payer, tax-based healthcare such as that provided in virtually every other advanced nation. However, you despair of achieving this vision over the entrenched opposition of the insurance industry, and therefore promote Edwards’s promise of universal coverage as more viable.
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It is a sad commentary on American presidential politics that only the marginal candidate Kucinich dares propose what any dispassionate observer must conclude is the only sane approach to the present chaos. That none of the other Democratic candidates can speak openly of single-payer is a tribute to the stranglehold that corporate money has on our political system.
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For newspapers like the Globe likewise to pander to the insurance industry by backing stopgap measures is a shame.
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Throughout our history, we have relied upon the press not to follow office holders, but to lead them. If the Globe does not dare advocate what it knows is right, what hope is there for mere politicians?
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SUMNER Z. KAPLAN
Jamaica Plain
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The writer is a former member of the Massachusetts House.
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and this:
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The insured are sickened by healthcare bills
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Letter to the Editor, The Boston Globe, June 5, 2007
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RE: “YOUNG adult health plans limit coverage” (Page A1, May 29 article on Mass. reform plan): Our daughter bought her insurance through her master of social work program, naively assuming that a shoddy product would not be offered.
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Now she is a new graduate with medical bills amounting to more than a third of her anticipated gross annual income, and that’s for a job that has not even started yet. (And that’s in addition to her huge student loans.)
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Young adults do not need to be “seriously ill” under these health plans in order to incur serious debt. Our daughter was simply one of many in Boston to suffer from the norovirus that went around this past winter, requiring several emergency room visits for rehydration, followed by a workup for lactose intolerance.
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It’s outrageous for these policies to be sold, as our daughter’s was to her, without someone pointing out that they only cover healthcare costs for the healthy.
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NANCY BENT
Sherborn
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© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Right on!! If I didn’t have a 2yo, a 7yo and very ill in-laws I’d be leading the charge to do the same here up on Beacon Hill to protest the Mass. Mandate Mess and to call for a real solution for universal healthcare, such as the Mass. Health Care Trust single payer financing bill, to be enacted. Maybe I’ll do it anyway and take the kids with me. Anybody else interested in participating in civil disobedience for healthcare justice?
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Activists Shake Up Capitol With Sit-Ins For Health Care; 22 Arrested After Health Care Sit-Ins
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By CHRISTOPHER KEATING
Hartford Courant Capitol Bureau Chief
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June 2 2007
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On one of the busiest days of the year at the state Capitol, 22 demonstrators were arrested Friday as they called for universal health care and a single-payer health system.
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The activists were taken into custody at various locations throughout the building, prompting the heaviest police presence at the Capitol this year. Officers were stationed in the House and Senate galleries and outside the doors of the chambers to ensure order.
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Nine protesters were arrested outside Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s office, after they staged a sit-in and refused to leave. Sixteen uniformed police officers moved in to make the arrests….
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The activists noted that Rell has not embraced universal health care as a way to provide coverage for an estimated 400,000 uninsured. Rell says the state has been making steady progress in signing up thousands of children in the popular HUSKY health insurance program in an effort to ensure that all children are covered.
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Brian Petronella, president of Local 317 of the 11,000-member United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said he was fighting to get universal health care because many low-wage workers are forced to have their children on the state-operated HUSKY program. Petronella, a 51-year-old Norwalk resident, noted that he lost an election against Robert Genuario, a former Norwalk senator who is now Rell’s budget director. Despite that connection, Petronella said, he could not get a meeting with Rell and so he was sitting on the floor outside the office.
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“We have to get universal health care,” said Petronella, who was among those arrested.
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Contact Christopher Keating at ckeating@courant.com.
Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant
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Read full article at Activists Shake Up Capitol With Sit-Ins For Health Care; 22 Arrested After Health Care Sit-Ins
Our teaching hospitals employ tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, support staff and other professional employess and conduct world-class medical research that has lead to breakthrough medical treatments and cures for a myriad of illnesses and diseases. People come from all over the world to receive treatment and pay mucho dinero for medical care at our teaching hospitals. They are a vital economic engine that has prevented Massachusetts from experiencing an economic collapse during recessionary years.
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Moreover, in the last fifteen years, the teaching hospitals have had their reimbursement rates cut substantially from Medicare and Medicaid and have endured consolidations and mergers of their hospitals. They also contribute to the millions of dollars of free care provided to indigent patients through the state Free Care Pool.
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Of course, Charlie Baker doesn’t appreciate the vital role our, yes, expensive teaching hospitals play in the community. He has to bargain with them everyday over rates these hospitals charge medical services to subscribers of Mr. Baker’s profit-driven racket, err…health insurance company. If Mr. Baker truly wants to help reduce medical costs, he can start by lobbying his friends in the Republican party in Congress to permit Medicare to bargain collectively with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce exorbitant prescription drug costs. Finally, next time you run to Dolores Mitchell, Charlie, please ask her if she would agree to allow low- and moderate income Massachusetts residents to buy into the state employee GIC plan as an alternative to purchasing one of the larcenous Commonwealth Care insurance programs being promoted by the Connector and their allies in the insurance industry. Why should our state employees be entitled to the gold-plated health insurance plans bargained for by Ms. Mitchell and the GIC when low and moderate-income working residents of Massachusetts are now legally required to purchase one of the tin-plated Connector-approved private health insurance plans that resemble a pricey, rusted out, incomplete erector set?
I agree, Charlie. She is tough, no nonsense, no BS and really knows all the players and how it works. I sure wish I could buy into GIC. There is nothing phony about this woman, no matter how much hype was built into the so-called universal plan that is still being put together in Massachusetts with staples, tape, and used chewing gum.