The Health Care Blog

Two rules by which to judge a health reform bill

By Matthew Holt Right now we have sausage-making going on in DC and lots of uninformed opinions and outright lies being strewn across the front pages and on cable from newly declared experts. I sat in an airport last night...

IDEO and Ix Innovation Design

By ARNA IONESCU Next week Matthew will be in a workshop with the folks from design firm IDEO and our friends from the Ix Center. In preparation we're posting this article from IDEO's Arna Ionescu who was at the recent...

Health Care Reform Coming Out of Senate Finance?

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI We’ve been getting lots of news these past few days leading to optimism that a bipartisan health care bill will soon emerge from discussions between the “Coalition of the Willing.” That term refers to the three Republicans...

Op-Ed: Sustainable Healthcare Reform

By LAWRENCE W. ARRINGTON President Obama made a risky wager when he decided to let Congress take the lead on crafting health care legislation, rather than presenting his own reform package. Congress is not known for taking bold, decisive leadership...

Op-Ed: The Payoff from Preventative Healthcare: How disease screening saves lives and money

By MARK GUMZ To understand and effectively navigate the current healthcare debate, every U.S. CEO must now be a healthcare leader. From the health, well being and productivity of employees and their families to the impact on a company’s bottom...

E-Health - It All Depends on How It's Used

By MERRILL GOOZNER Technology isn’t a quick fix. Just ask General Motors. In the 1980s, the auto giant spent $50 billion to automate and computerize its plants in an effort to compete with Toyota. Today, GM is emerging from bankruptcy...

Sermo, malpractice, and Howard Dean

By Matthew Holt Sermo’s Daniel Palestrant got on TV with Howard Dean. It was an amusing (and short) little debate which you can find here. The best moment was at the start when Dean claimed that Sermo was just a...

Explaining Runaway Costs: The Lobster or the Salad?

By BOB WACHTER Have you found yourself ‘splaining to friends and family why the healthcare system is so damn expensive? I’ve been teaching health policy for a couple of decades, and I’m surprised that my two favorite stories haven’t yet...

Illinois AG: Shady AIDS Charity’s Web Campaign Broke State Law

By CHRISTOPHER WEAVER Four months after we first reported on a sketchy AIDS "charity" with a nationwide fundraising campaign, authorities have begun to crack down. But the move might not have much impact if other officials don't follow suit. The...

Speculators Bet Reform Won’t Hurt Industry

By DON JOHNSON Speculators seem to be betting that a watered down health insurance reform bill won't hurt health insurers, hospitals, drug makers or medical device and supply manufacturers. Stocks for almost all of these health sectors and for exchange...

A Health Insurance Premium Tax Would be a Chicken Tax

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI The Congress has looked at taxing about everyone and everything to pay for half the cost of a health care bill. They’ve considered sugary soft drinks, beer, “millionaires,” and “gold plated” health benefits to name a few....

Live from Aspen: the moderates' view on Obama health reform

By Matthew Holt Paul Krugman’s article today excoriates the Blue Dogs and a former dog Billy Tauzin in particular. He also (as I did a week or so back) wonders where the Dogs were when the Bush tax cuts were...

The Case for Price Ceilings for Health Services

BY DAVID HANSEN Most in the current health reform debate agree on the need to curtail health care costs. Despite this, few discuss directly how health services are priced, though clearly this a central issue. Prices have both immediate impacts...

Health Reform and Obama's Leadership

By RAHUL PARIKH By all accounts this is crunch time for President Obama on health care reform, and things couldn’t be more tenuous. In the past several weeks, we’ve seen unified Republican opposition to his ideas, a revolt against reform...

Return to McAllen: A Father-Son Interview

By IAN ROBERTSON KIBBE By now, Dr. Atul Gawande's article on McAllen's high cost of health care has been widely read. The article spawned a number of responses and catalyzed a national discussion on cost controls and the business of...

Interview with Jonathan Bush, AthenaHealth CEO

By Matthew Holt In this interview Jonathan Bush explains the nation’s major problem: a severe shortage of MUMPS programmers. Well not exactly, but as always the AthenaHealth CEO is well worth watching. And of course he’ll be at Health 2.0...

The Case for Home Health Care

By Dr. George Taler While Congress is debating health reform and struggling to accomplish the apparently competing goals of reducing costs while improving quality, I am part of a program that does both. As co-director of the Washington Hospital Center’s...

Commentology

By ANONYMOUS I'm retired now, but as a former lawyer, I simply must speak out in opposition to the various health care proposals that are being bandied about. It used to be said that what was good for GM was...

Carleen Hawn debuts HealthSpottr and a list

By Matthew Holt Carleen Hawn’s new site HealthSpottr is up and she’s starting with a list of the Top 100 random people in health care. Well it’s supposed to be innovators, but it mashes up a bunch of Health 2.0...

After Nurses Investigation, Scrutiny Turns to Other California Health Boards

By ALEXANDRA ANDREWS Earlier this month, ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times published an investigation detailing the failure of the California Board of Registered Nursing to investigate and discipline nurses accused of misconduct in a timely manner. An examination of...

Costs v Coverage: Krugman gets it--Brooks is almost quite close

By Matthew Holt So Paul Krugman, the NY Times Nobel Prize winning lefty columnist, says this (and echoes what I’ve been saying for a while) So where in America is there serious consideration of moving away from fee-for-service to a...

Can HR 3200 Be Fixed?

By ROGER COLLIER Health care reform looks like it’s stalled. And rightly so, based on the provisions of the House Democrats’ health care reform bill. The grossly misnamed America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (HR 3200) combines the worst of all...

Patient, Heal Thyself

By DON KEMPER If you want a better system, support a smarter patient . For weeks now Congress has been stymied by how to pay for extending coverage to the uninsured. While it may seem stupid to look to the...

Rantology: Sympathy for the blue devils?

By Matthew Holt I do have some vague sympathy for the Blue Dogs, the group of mostly red-state Democrats who have to pretend that they care about fiscal responsibility. They, like me, think that we shouldn't be increasing taxes on...

Op-Ed: Reform- Why have our objectives been abandoned?

By DR. ALBERT WAXMAN In the campaign of 2008 and the first six months of 2009, the call for healthcare reform has been a refreshing and important theme. It has been widely recognized that 1. Healthcare costs are out of...

A Brief History of the R Word

By BOB WACHTER Princeton ethicist Peter Singer’s article in this week’s NY Times Sunday Magazine is creating lots of buzz. It is a classic utilitarian description of the case for rationing – QALYs and all – and a plea for...

Commentology

THCB reader JB wrote us to say: "I guess you guys are probably aware of the huge backlash that is going on with various medical societies around the US, due to the AMA and other physician groups endorsement of HR...

Op-Ed: Healthcare Reform Lessons From Mayo Clinic

By LEONARD L. BERRY and KENT D. SELTMAN Three goals underscore our nation's ongoing healthcare reform debate:1) insurance for the uninsured, 2) improved quality, and 3) reduced cost. Mayo Clinic serves as a model for higher quality healthcare at a...

Health "reform": Lest we forget...

By Matthew Holt There’s been a lot of hand-wringing and b.s. discussed about the comparatively minor health reform that’s snaking its way through Congress. And when I say comparatively minor I mean it. Mostly because there’s lots this legislation doesn’t...

Op-Ed: The Unintended Consequences of “No Pay for Errors”

By BOB WACHTER Medicare’s policy to withhold payment for “never events” – the first effort to use the payment system to promote patient safety – remains intriguing and controversial. To date, most of the discussion has focused on the policy...

We love Paris in the Springtime: Health 2.0 announces Europe 2010

By Matthew Holt We've had great participation in Health 2.0 Conferences from Europe and across the globe, and today we're delighted to announce that we're going to be holding a Health 2.0 Conference in Paris on April 6–7, 2010. It’ll...

A Wild Pitch: HR3200 Brushes Back Health Reform

By JEFF GOLDSMITH On May 12, the flame throwing Chicago White Sox pitcher Bobby Jenks was fined for throwing behind an opposing player, Texas Rangers second baseman, Ian Kinsler. When Jenks, who can throw a 102 MPH fastball, was asked...

An Update to Meaningful Use

By JOHN HALAMKA On June 16, I wrote about the release of the draft definition of meaningful use. Today, at the HIT Policy Committee meeting, the final definition of meaningful use was released and adopted. What was changed? 1. For...

Goldman Sachs, coming under fire but why should they care?

By Matthew Holt Goldman took $13 billion of taxpayers money from AIG bailout—$13 billion which kept it alive. And it’s now back making huge profits gambling on the markets and paying out huge bonuses. This is causing notice. Matt Tabibi...

GOP to Uninsured: Drop Dead

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON “We are now contemplating, Heaven save the mark, a bill that would tax the well for the benefit of the ill.” No, that’s not Senate Minority Leader John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh or any of the other...

House Health Care Reform: Ignoring the Elephant?

By ROGER COLLIER After some frantic last minute political gyrations and a lot of pressure from the President, House Democrats have announced details of their draft health care reform bill. Much as expected, the 852-page bill emerging from three House...

Eliminating Medication Waste in Long-Term Care Can Help the White House Pay for its Health Plan

By CARLA CORKERN The news of an $80 billion White House deal with drug companies to lower Medicare drug costs targets $30 billion in savings for consumers covered by Medicare Part D, but the sources of the remaining $50 billion...

Schwarzenegger replaces most of state nursing board

By TRACY WEBER AND CHARLES ORNSTEIN Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced most members of the California Board of Registered Nursing on Monday, citing the unacceptable time it takes to discipline nurses accused of egregious misconduct. He fired three of six sitting...

Eliza gets a nice write up in BusinessWeek

BY MATTHEW HOLT Indeed, it’s so nice that methinks Lucas & Alex were quite seductive! Speaking as a friend and one who’s been indoctrinated into the cult of Alexandra Drane, its interesting to see the mainstream press picking up the...

Costs Are Not The Same As Rates

By PAUL LEVY Many "old" media outlets do not identify the authors of their editorials. Thus, when an opinion is offered, you have no way of knowing who wrote it or what their qualifications are. Your only recourse when there...

Op-Ed: Forward thinking health plans? Look for the guys with the white hats

By RICHARD NOFFSINGER The public noise about health care reform has painted the parties involved in broad brush strokes that tell consumers which in the fray are the good guys and bad guys. News reports have for so long vilified...

The Case for Comparative Effectiveness Research

By RAHUL PARIKH MD When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, there was this local TV show my dad used to enjoy watching called Fight Back with David Horowitz. Basically, Horowitz, a TV reporter and consumer advocate,...

Nursing Homes Get Old for Many With Disabilities

By JENNIFER LaFLEUR ST. LOUIS -- Melody Ping never thought she would be trying to moveout of a nursing home. She lived in a St. Louis apartment for 19 years and worked as an accountant until two years ago, when...

Musings on Payment Reform

By CHARLIE BAKER Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim, a nonprofit health plan that covers more than 1 million New Englanders. Charlie is a regular contributor to THCB, where he has authored posts on national health...

Behind the Curtain: Wendell Potter on the Industry's Management of Care and Reform

By BRIAN KLEPPER Stop what you're doing and take out a half-hour to watch this week's superb Bill Moyers' 3-part show, especially the extended interview with Wendell Potter, former CIGNA VP Corporate Communications, for a frank, insider's discussion of how...

Announcement: 14,000 People With Diabetes Test Their Blood Sugar at the Same Time

July 14 at 4 pm ET, 14,000 people with diabetes are going to test their blood sugar simultaneously and share their results online to help raise diabetes awareness. People with diabetes have to test their blood sugar as part of...

Fantasy League Baseball -- Beltway Series Edition

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Bob Laszewski’s Health Care Affordability Model has the same connection to the reality of the current battle over health care reform as a Fantasy Baseball League does to the actual outcome of a major league baseball game;...

Has Harry Reid Torpedoed Reform?

By ROGER COLLIER Health care reform ran into new BIG trouble this week with a series of comments from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. On Tuesday, Reid leapt into the middle of reform negotiations, telling Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max...

Op-Ed: Health Care Re-invention and Personal Responsibility More Critical to Reform than Government Intervention

By DR. STEPHEN KARDOS President Obama should be commended for addressing the challenge that’s facing our nation’s health care system. While Democrats and Republicans agree that the health system is broken (since 1975, per person annual health spending has grown...

Why Congress Should Consider Bob Laszewski's Health Care Affordability Model

By BRIAN KLEPPER Over the last few months, I have become increasingly disheartened over the prospects for meaningful health care reform. First, the process is terribly conflicted, and it shows. In the first quarter of 2009, the Center for Responsive...