By Evan Falchuk
There’s a country with an unusual health care system.
In it, you often spend about as much time with your lawyer as you do your doctor. There are special courts set up to decide what kinds of treatment you are allowed to have. And doctors have to be careful that they don’t say or do the wrong thing, or else they risk being blackballed by insurance companies.
The country: the United States of America.
By Evan Falchuk
Here are some interesting things you may have missed this week:
1. Can CAT Scans Prevent Lung Cancer? Smoke and Mirrors. The always-interesting Michael Kirsch, MD calls BS on the news that CT scans can prevent lung cancer. Read the whole thing.
2. Paging Dr. Luddite. Megan McCardle at The Atlantic is a terrific economics writer – but falls for some very strange ideas about why health care is so far behind in adoption of information technology:
Fighting disease is relatively simple. Fighting patients, doctors, and all the other stakeholders in the current system may be beyond the powers of even the most advanced computing system.
Really? There’s persistent magical thinking around health care IT. Yes, more technology will make things better, but it’s not the fundamental issue in health care. The problem is a continuing failure to recognize that fighting disease is incredibly hard. The most powerful tools available to do that are doctors’ insights, judgment and time, and patients’ engagement in that process. Ever-more clever ways of failing to take this into account are the real culprits here, not doctors and patients.
3. Businesses Not Going to Drop Health Plans Because of Reform. At the New Health Dialogue, they report on a study by the benefits consulting giant Mercer. They found that few, if any, employers plan on dropping their coverage in order to push their employees onto government-run exchanges in 2014. If the government’s success in attracting people to its new plan for people with pre-existing conditions is any preview of how well that will go, this shouldn’t be a surprise.
4. MetLife Stopping New Sales of LTC Coverage. Earlier this week I advised that buying long-term care coverage was a cornerstone of being a health care survivalist. This news underscores two points. First, that the coverage is too cheap right now so you should buy it before rates go up. Second, as the linked NYT blog post points out, not enough people understand how important it is to own this kind of coverage. Medicare isn’t going to cover you for long term care.
5. Knights of the Executive Roundtable. More on this later, but I had the privilege on being a member of this terrific panel in Las Vegas on Thursday. Risk and Insurance said it brought some “well-received frankness” into one of my favorite topics – how to produce good medical outcomes and how to measure them. If you know me, you know my answer: did the person get the right care?
By Evan Falchuk
Did you know there actually is a “public option” in the health care reform law? It’s true – it’s called the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, and it’s designed to cover people who who have been unable to get insurance because of a pre-existing condition. To hear the stories about how big of a problem this is in America, you’d think a product like this would be a big hit.
Except, it’s been a big flop.
By Evan Falchuk
You want to see a doctor?
You’re going to have to wait. And I don’t mean like an hour in the office.
I mean like 53 days.
By Evan Falchuk
I gave a speech yesterday at the Midwest Business Group on Health’s 30th Annual Conference. The MBGH is one of the country’s leading organizations on health care, and its members include the leading innovators and thought leaders on health care in America. It was a privilege to present to them.
I spoke about why health care just isn’t a consumer business, in spite of all of the efforts to turn people into health care “consumers.”
Read the text of my remarks below the fold, it was a very interesting day.
By Evan Falchuk
The American Cancer Society says that men over 50 need to seriously consider whether they really ought to get screened for prostate cancer. According to them, the risks of getting tested may outweigh the benefits of detecting the cancer, especially for younger men. They say it’s a “complex issue,” but they understate how complicated it really is.
Like the recent controversy over breast cancer screening, the new recommendations add to the swirling morass of conflicting messages and priorities around health care in America.
By Evan Falchuk
Today the Commonwealth Fund came out with a chart that it says is a “grim reminder” of what happens when health care doesn’t get reformed.
If only we had listened to Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter. We would have saved tens of trillions of dollars in health care spending.
Click to enlarge
By Evan Falchuk
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced this week he has had enough of rising health care costs.
So he is proposing a novel solution: make them illegal.
By Evan Falchuk
“I’m from Massachusetts,” I told the audience. “So depending on how you feel about reform, I will say either ‘sorry,’ or ‘you’re welcome.”
The audience, made up of large employers and benefits professionals seemed to like this. But it was clear that they were pleased that the health care reform legislation is Congress is pretty well dead now.
Now, if it’s true that health care costs are rising (they are) and this heavily impacts employers (it does) why would the death of a bill meant to address this problem make those people happy?
By Evan Falchuk
How different are Canada and the United States?
Depending on who you ask, they’re neighbours, or neighbors. So they’re pretty similar. But if you ask your Canadian neighbour to bring over a case of beer so you can watch a hockey game together, he’ll be very happy to bring over a two-four. So they’re pretty different.
Still, this is all superficial. What Americans don’t realize is how different our countries really are (I know Canadians don’t like it when Americans co-opt the word “American” like that. I’m sorry, I just can’t help it).
You can see this difference most clearly when it comes to health care. Today’s news supplies a good example.
