The Health Care Blog

Email trouble, UPDATE

Email is back. But if you sent me email between 12 midnight PST and 12 noon PST it didn’t get to me. So please re-send. (and let me know if you got a bounce message)

OFF-TOPIC: It's spring, so paragliding season is back on

Two cool articles about paragliding. This one, Paragliding: It's the Alone Way to Fly, in the NY Times has a picture of exactly the same wing that I fly. The other one in the Boston Globe is about tandemming in...

HEALTH PLANS: Is this the top?

Here’s my FierceHealthcare editorial today. You’ll notice I’m a little more fair and balanced in this one than some of you might expect! Life has been good--very good--for the stockholders and executives of the nation's health insurers in the last...

POLICY: Email from Baghdad

By JOHN IRVINE “Iraqi troops injured in the fighting must pay their own way at civilian hospitals as the Iraqi military has no military hospitals of its own …” Marketplace reports this morning. I’ve seen plenty of TV footage of...

POLITICS/POLICY: Social mobilty, and its impact on health care politics

This is taken direct from Ezra Klein’s piece on “Brave New Economy, With Such Immobility In It” and it goes to the heart of why insecurity over health benefits will be the political issue of the next ten years. The...

OFF-TOPIC: Henry doesn't deserve to be player of the year in England

Those of you who don’t like soccer can skip this! Proving that English football writers know nothing, they’ve voted Thierry Henry FWA player of year for third time in a season when Arsenal have been rubbish and he's been notable...

HEALTH PLANS: It's blood on the streets today; but is the ride over?

Here’s the news from my FierceHealthcare newsletter on insurers’ stock prices today Today's earnings announcements from health plans and insurers don't look too bad. WellPoint reported a 20 percent surge in profits yesterday, a gain that the company attributes to...

POLICY: Fishing and Finding Beneficial Solutions?

I’m up over at Spot-On with an article called Fishing and Finding Beneficial Solutions? I’m trying to be clever and pull several strands into one theme. This reminded my editor of a medical TV show I’ve never heard of called...

TECH/BLOGS/OFF-TOPIC: Sorta happy ending?

Score one for the little guy/gal — Work widow's blog fuels revolt and EA settles for what appears to be a decent amount. $15m more than they wanted to pay anyway! The original posting that started it all is here....

HEALTH PLANS: Blue Cross of California looks like its hand was in cookie jar

There's more from the LA Times about the Blue Cross of California case where benefits were retroactively denied. For some reason, although the case has been sealed, the Times was able to report on testimony of four BC employees. A...

POLICY: Meanwhile, remember love story

Over at The Plank, more confirmation that “being a loony libertarian/conservative in health policy means never having to acknowledge facts that disagree with you”. After all, when you can get Fraser and PRI to send you lies for free, why...

POLICY/PHARMA/TECH/PHYSICIANS: The Industry Veteran thinks Uwe and McLellan are missing the point

It’s been a while since we heard from The Industry Veteran, but the dialogue between Mark McClellan and Uwe Reinhardt I reported on at WHCC last week did raise his hackles. I love Uwe’s analysis and think McLellan is very...

POLICY: Leif Haase on Many Roads to Rome?

I’m on the east coast, and have been pottering around meeting various people learning a little. One of the most interesting was Leif Wellington Haase who is the health policy guru at the Century Foundation. Over a very nice lunch...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds is up

Grand Rounds is up at the Health business blog. Nice job David.

TECH: “Connected Healthcare ” Panel on May 4th

Those of you in or near NYC on May 4 might be interested in this panel, which Stephanie Cion, another overachieving grad student, asked me to publicize. It has the advantage of being short, having a great cast of speakers,...

BLOGS: Comments CAPTCHAs

I’m afraid that a continued and increasing dribble of comment spam has forced me to put on the CAPTCHA (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) task so that a commenter needs to fill it in...

POLICY/PHARMA: Part D--Lying with numbers

The filthy commies at the Wall Street Journal are out doing themselves this week. Not only attacking Bill McGuire for being a(little bit too) successful capitalist, but now attacking our beloved government on the way it counts Medicare Part D...

POLITICS: Yet more on the politicization of the FDA

FDA Rejects Marijuana for Medical Uses. Hmm…didn’t exactly notice many clinical trials on this one, eh. Funny that….

HOSPITAL/PHYSICIANS/POLICY/POLITICS: Hubbard, transparency, clarity, earth & water, mixed

Today, direct your attention over to Spot-on, where I’m up with my summary over Hubbard’s arguments with providers over price transparency—it’s called Clear as Mud. As ever you can come back here to comment. Somehow this topic tends to get...

BLOGS: Health Wonk Review #5

Today, start yourselves off over at Envisioning 2.0 for Health Wonk Review #5

POLICY: Durenberger/Stark

Two veteran healthcare experts…. Stark and Durenberger agree that bipartisanship has gone, because there is an effort to dismantle Medicare. “If god had to make Republicans, he should make them all like Dave Durenberger”. Stark: Hubbard says that well informed...

POLICY: Hubbard, Bush's guy on health care

(Note-I moved this to the correct sequence in the WHCC Conference) Allan Hubbard is Bush’s health care guy. Here’s what he had to say (my comments are in parens) Primary reason for health care costs being so high is third...

POLICY--Treasury Sec Snow

John Snow, Treasury Secretary, never realized that he’d be spending so much time on health care, but it’s the elephant in the room of the fiscal future of the United States. Medicare could end up at 20% of GDP of...

POLICY/PHARMA: WHCC-Medicare Part D with AARP and CMS

Abby Block from CMS and John Rother from AARP Abby says 6.4 million in PDPs…29 million have drug coverage overall (although that counts everyone). What have they learned from Part D? A bunch of stuff about monitoring plans and their...

POLICY/INDUSTRY/TECH: WHCC--GE and leadership

More from the World Health Care Congress. Keynote is from Bill Castell, head of GE healthcare. He says that we need to bring “Care to the individual rather than the patient to the Institution” Ten realities of global health care...

TECH: Employer-based personal health records

Here's my latest at Health IT World focusing on employee-based Personal Health Records. As ever come back here to comment if you please.

POLICY-WHCC on Consumer health care (Bill McGuire/Brennan)

Michael Millenson, moderator—Intro—consumerism is a legacy of the Clinton health plan and the backlash against managed care Bill McGuire, UnitedHealth Group— Health care system doesn’t work well—doesn’t work in any country, so it doesn't matter who pays for it. It...

POLICY: WHCC-McLellan and Reinhardt

Now we’re getting into some meat. Mark McLellan head of CMS is on the same panel as Uwe Reinhardt. Bob Galvin from GE is the moderator. Two main issues are whether price controls work, and how we determine coverage… Mclellan—Price...

BLOGS: Health Wonk Review contributions needed

Get yer contributions to Health Wonk Review in as soon as you can over at Fard’s blog Envisioning 2.0

TECH--WHCC: Personal health records

An interesting session on personal health records…with a Taiwanese and Silicon Valley flavor…….. Taiwan has a single payer system, with some copay. Was 41% uninsured, and then March 1 1995 went to 92% coverage, now it’s universal. Have a standardized...

TECH/INTERNATIONAL: Health care globally (mostly about the NHS)

Quick session notes from one on Global care, amusingly chaired by Humphrey Taylor my old boss from Harris Pfizer thinks that integrated care looking at all the costs and benefits should be counted. Prevention and DM does work. Dr Reddy...

WHCC: Wiring the nation

David Brailer gave an update on standards, government process. No one in charge means no standards….now we’ve got them and that will give the private industry a basis to build from. Robbie Pearl, Permanente Medical Group— We need to change...

POLICY/INDUSTRY: WHCC2006 Employers and plans

I’m at the WHCC as the official blogger! First up is a session with big employers and their vendors from the plan world (although apparently George Halvorson from Kaiser had a minor heart attack and has been replaced by Jay...

TECH/QUALITY/PHARMA: Active Health used by Mariott

Interesting brief presentation — Mariott uses Active Health Mangement to change its formulary Integrates pharmacy, medical and labs data from one place—inluding diagnosis and runs it against the medical literature based algoritms. They then communicate information to both providers and...

TECH: Just another EMR puff piece....on Cerner?

Anyone who's ever read Fast Company won't be surprised at the slightly breathless tones used in one of their typical "business gets new process, struggles a little at first, then succeeds beyond its wildest dreams" plot line. After all this...

POLICY/PHYSICIANS: Another crazy doc in favor of single payer

Yet another crazy doctor decides that the hassle of dealing with 301 separate insurers is just too much and that he, was well as everyone else but the insurance industry, would be better off with a national single payer system....

POLICY/THE INDUSTRY: Ethics 101, we've failed

Fred Goldstein, a health care veteran who believes in the free market, calls a spade a spade in a hard hitting call for ethical improvement in health care over at HealthLeaders. Go read his list of transgressions which we all...

BLOGS/TECH: Blogposium starts today

Over at HealthNex, Jack Mason is organizing the first Blogposium. Participants will be working together to fill out the clinical wiki ClinfoWiki. Go check it out and comment over the next day or two about what you see

PHARMA/POLICY: Libby on the war on Pain Doctors

Ron Libby, a political scientist at University of North Florida, is one of the few academics looking at the war on drugs. He has amassed an array of evidence showing that the incredible and pernicious behavior of the DEA has...

THCB: Light today

I just got in late due to a big storm in the Sierra (but I got some powder in!) and have the joy of a 7 am plane tomorrow. As mentioned I’ll be blogging from the World Health Care Congress...

Happy Easter

See you next week when I'll be the official bloggist at the WHCC Conference Meanwhile, congrats to John who actually runs this blog, and became a Daddy to Lilly on Tuesday!

BLOGS: And on the subject of blog collaboration

Steve Beller, over on his Curing Healthcare blog, has a proposal for linking blogs with a Wiki. He wants to convert all the great stuff being generated in blogs and other sources all over the web into an encyclopedia of...

BLOGS: Report on health care blogs

Fard Johnmar has written a report on health care blogs. It’s available from his site for around $37, rather less than the $3,000 analysis Datamonitor was offering on the same topic a few weeks back. Despite the fact that my...

POLICY/PHYSICIANS: Mother of all comment threads

If you haven’t been reading, there are now some 46 long detailed and excellent comments in the article called Can the real HSA fan, please stand, please stand up?. Speaking as someone who’s been through the academic mill, this comment...

Spot-On: Matthew Holt: A Tale of Two Underwriters

My latest—and hopefully last—explanation of my weird trip through the individual insurance market is up over at Spot-on. I’m channeling a certain boring English 19th century author in a A Tale of Two Underwriters. As ever please come back here...

POLICY/PHARMA/POLITICS: Losing it with the WaPo

It’s interesting tracking intellectual BS. The latest one is all the surveys selecting only people who have signed up with Part D and then reporting their experience, without mentioning that they’re likely to be happy because it’s a self selected...

POLICY/PHYSICIANS: Full disclosure, well not really

There’s been a lot of debate about transparency on THCB. I believe in as full disclosure as possible about all kinds of medical data, including pay rates, utilization rates, quality indicators, etc, etc. But I also count myself among the...

TECH: I'm almost becoming a journalist....

Little did I know three years ago when I started this blog, that I might venture down the path of actually becoming a journalist. Well here I am, with my own by-line on a story at Health-IT World. It’s called...

TECH/BLOGS: One blog collaboration effort coming right up.

Over at HealthNex, the IBM health care blog; Blogposium is a Go: April 18-19. I will not be taking part in this one, because of something I'll tell you about later. But it looks pretty interesting. Lots of different bloggers...

POLICY: Joe Paduda on Sally Pipes

Joe Paduda is falling into the trap of looking for logic from the Canada-bashing crowd. He thinks that Sally Pipes (from the loony fringe Pacific Research Institute based incredibly enough in the people’s republic of San Francisco) is, ahem, not...