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HEALTHPLANUSA . NET |
QUARTERLY
NEWSLETTER |
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Community For Affordable Health Care |
Vol VIII, No |
Utilizing the
$1.8 Trillion Information Technology Industry
To
Transform the $2.4 Trillion HealthCare Industry into Affordable HealthCare
In This Issue:
10. Featured Article: Surprising facts about American
Health Care
1. Featured Article: Surprising facts
about American Health Care
2. In the News:
President Obama claimed
that the FDA is underfunded and understaffed
3. International MedicineHealthcare:
St. Patrick's Day
Health-Care News from Ireland
4. MedicareU.S. Government Healthcare:
How Should We Reform
Health Care?
4. Lean HealthCare:
5. Lean
HealthCare: Rethinking the Healthcare Paradigm
6. Misdirection in Healthcare::
JAMA Wants to Restrict
Competition for Pharma Dollars
7. Overheard on London Bridge:
MPs investigating financial systems hit by a
Scandal
8. Innovations in Health Care: Cutting Emergency Stays
in HalfWhat's New in US Health Care:
9. The Health Plan for the USA and the
World:Health Plan USA: Connecting Health Care
Across Locations and Clinicians
HealthPlanUSA is now a
separate Newsletter devoted to the rapidly evolving field of health plans being promoted
throughout the USA. These are dangerous times. Will you have the freedom to have a doctor who will protect you from disease and from
the State
Mandates? Stay tuned to the evaluations of the current issues which we bring quarterly and will
increase as staffing permits. Why not sign up now at www.healthplanusa.net/newsletter.asp?
The Annual World Health Care Congress, a market of ideas, co-sponsored by The Wall
Street Journal, is the most prestigious meeting of chief and senior
executives from all sectors of health care. Renowned authorities and
practitioners assemble to present recent results and to develop innovative
strategies that foster the creation of a cost-effective and accountable U.S.
health-care system. The extraordinary conference agenda includes compelling
keynote panel discussions, authoritative industry speakers, international best
practices, and recently released case-study data. The 3rd annual
conference was held April 17-19, 2006, in Washington, D.C. One of the regular
attendees told me that the first Congress was approximately 90 percent
pro-government medicine. The third year it was about half, indicating open
forums such as these are critically important. The 4th
Annual World Health Congress was held April 22-24, 2007, in
Washington, D.C. That year many of the world leaders in healthcare concluded
that top down reforming of health care, whether by government or insurance
carrier, is not and will not work. We have to get the physicians out of the
trenches because reform will require physician involvement. The
5th Annual World Health Care Congress was held April 21-23, 2008,
in Washington, D.C. Physicians were present on almost all the platforms and
panels. However, it was the industry leaders that gave the most innovated
mechanisms to bring health care spending under control. The
6th Annual World Health Care Congress was held April 14-16, 2009,
in Washington, D.C. The solution to our
health care problems is emerging at this ambitious Congress. The
5th Annual World Health Care Congress – Europe 2009, is meeting in Brussels, May 23-15,
2009. The 7th Annual
World Health Care Congress will be held April 12-14, 2010 in Washington
D.C. For
more information, visit www.worldcongress.com. The future is
occurring NOW. You should become
involved.
The
Annual World Health Care Congress, co-sponsored by The
Wall Street Journal, is the most prestigious
meeting of chief and senior executives from all sectors of health care.
Renowned authorities and practitioners assemble to present recent results and
to develop innovative strategies that foster the creation of a cost-effective
and accountable U.S. health-care system. The extraordinary conference agenda
includes compelling keynote panel discussions, authoritative industry speakers,
international best practices, and recently released case-study data. The 3rd annual
conference was held April 17-19, 2006, in Washington, D.C. One of the regular
attendees told me that the first Congress was approximately 90 percent
pro-government medicine. The third year it was 50 percent, indicating open
forums such as these are critically important. The 4th
Annual World Health Congress was held April 22-24, 2007, , in
Washington, D.C. That year many of the world leaders in healthcare concluded
that top down reforming of health care, whether by government or insurance
carrier, is not and will not work. We have to get the physicians out of the
trenches because reform will require physician involvement. The
5th Annual World Health Care Congress was held April 21-23, 2008, , in
Washington, D.C. Physicians were present on almost all the platforms and
panels. This year it was the industry leaders that gave the most innovated
mechanisms to bring health care spending under control. The solution to our
health care problems is emerging at this ambitious Congress. Plan to
participate: The
6th Annual World Health Care Congress will be held April 14-16, 2009, in
Washington, D.C. The
5th Annual World Health Care Congress -– Europe 2009, will meet in Brussels, May 23-15,
2009. For more information, visit www.worldcongress.com. The
future is occurring NOW.
* * * * *
1. Feature
Article: Americans have better
survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.
Surprising Facts
About American Health Care
Medical care
in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in
the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials,
insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government
role in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound
because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex.
However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts
about America's health care system should be considered, says Scott W. Atlas, a
senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford
University Medical Center.
Americans
have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers:
To read more, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
·
Breast cancer mortality
is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent
higher in the United Kingdom.
·
Prostate cancer mortality
is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway.
·
The mortality rate for
colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
Americans
have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other
developed countries:
·
Some 56 percent of
Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and
protect against heart disease.
·
By comparison, of those
patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29
percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17
percent of Italians receive them.
Lower income
Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians:
·
Twice as many American
seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health
compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent).
·
Conversely, white
Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than
lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."
Americans
spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United
Kingdom:
·
Canadian and British
patients wait about twice as long -- sometimes more than a year -- to see a
specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation
treatment for cancer.
·
All told, 827,429 people
are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.
·
In England, nearly 1.8
million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
Source:
Scott W. Atlas, "10 Surprising Facts About American Health Care,"
National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis No. 649, March 24, 2009.
For text: www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649
For more on
Health Issues: www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
Why would anyone want to
Europeanize American Healthcare by supporting Obamacare?
* * * * *
2. In the News: President Obama claimed that the FDA is underfunded
and understaffed.
FDA
is Overfunded, Overstaffed, and Costs Lives According to New Pacific Research
Institute Report
San Francisco (March 20,
2009) -- A new research report by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) reviews
three decades of the Food and Drug Administration’s performance and concludes
that the agency is overfunded, overstaffed, and denies hundreds of thousands of
Americans timely access to new medicines. Leviathan’s Drug Problem: The
Cost of the Federal Monopoly of Pharmaceutical Regulation and its Deadly Cost
was authored by John R. Graham, Director of Health Care Studies at PRI.
President Barack Obama, in this past week’s radio address, asserted that “there
are certain things
that only government can do, and one of those things is … ensuring that the
medicines we take
are safe, and don’t cause us harm. That’s the mission of our Food and Drug
Administration.”
President Obama also claimed that the FDA is both underfunded and understaffed. To read more, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
Many well-meaning observers
continue to believe that the FDA’s failures are due to a lack of funding and
employees. “This is not the case,” said Mr. Graham. Other developed countries
have similar agencies that approve new medicines with far fewer employees.
Great Britain’s regulator is about one-third more productive than the FDA, and
other European countries are even more productive. This is because the European
Union has implemented a policy of regulatory competition, where a central
regulator and national regulators compete for user fees that they charge
manufacturers to lift their bans on new drugs. When one regulator has lifted
its ban on a new medicine, all countries must generally reciprocate by lifting
their bans.
The Prescription Drug
User Fee Act, first passed in 1992 by Congress, and renewed every five years,
imposes a fee on drug manufacturers to fund the approval process. This
excessive tax has dramatically increased the FDA’s budget, so that half of the
funds for reviewing new prescription drugs now come from this tax burden. Mr.
Graham notes, “While this has sped up the FDA’s bureaucratic processes
somewhat, it has not transformed the harmful incentives facing the agency.
Indeed, it has reinforced them, and entrenched the FDA’s monopoly-power.”
Leviathan’s Drug Problem recommends that Congress amend the Food, Drug, and
Cosmetic Act to allow Americans to use new medicines once a regulator in a
comparable jurisdiction, such as the European Union, has removed its
prohibition. Drug makers would then be permitted, but not compelled, to
distribute their medicines to willing doctors and patients in the U.S.
The report also
recommends that Congress adopt the policy enshrined in the ACCESS Act,
introduced by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) in 2008. This allows seriously
ill patients who have exhausted other treatments to try experimental drugs at
an earlier phase of regulatory approval than is possible now, and encourages
the FDA to use measures other than placebo trials to determine the safety and
efficacy of such new drugs.
To download a copy
of Leviathan’s Drug Problem: The Cost of the Federal Monopoly of
Pharmaceutical Regulation and its Deadly Cost click here.
The Tax and Spend Party’s habit of throwing money
at a problem only worsens it and costs money.
* * * * *
2. International Healthcare
Medicine:
3. International
Healthcare: St. Patrick's Day Health-Care
News from Ireland March 18,
2009
ER charges up 50%, visits
drop 5% By John R. Graham
(OK, so I am
a little late for St. Paddy's Day: It's the thought that counts.)
The Stockholm
Network's weekly bulletin for March 18 is not yet online, but it
came into my e-mail with a fascinating bit of news from Eire:
A new report in the
Republic of Ireland by the Health Service Executive (HSE) has revealed that the
amount of patients attending accident and emergency (A&E) departments has
decreased by almost 5%, in the wake of increased governmental charges for the
service. To read more,
please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
The 2009 Irish budget,
presented by finance minister Brian Lenihan, revealed that charges for A&E
services would rise from €66 to €100, if the patient has not been referred by
their GP, or if they do not hold a medical card.
The revised tariff came into force on 1st January
and there are fears that the HSE’s findings, which saw 4.5% less people attend
A&E in January 2009 than in January 2008, could highlight that the new
charges are frightening people off being treated.
However, the report also claimed that “The drop in
attendances was mainly in the lower triage categories, which would explain why
the lower numbers did not result in a reduced number of admissions to
hospital”.
Meanwhile, here in the Excited States of America,
the government outlaws the use of financial incentives to motivate
patients to go to doctors, or convenient clinics, or urgent-care clinics, as
appropriate, instead of going to ERs. Which, despite what you've read in
the papers are "free"
if you want them to be free, courtesy of EMTALA,
which commands all hospitals with ERs to "stabilize" anyone who
presents there, without charge.
When it comes to incentives to manage overuse of
the ER, at least one single-payer country has it figured out better than the
U.S. has!
Government medicine does not give timely access to
healthcare, it only gives access to a waiting list.
In America, everyone has access to HealthCare at all
times. No one can be refused by any hospital.
* * * * *
4. U. S. Government HealthcareMedicare: How Should We Reform
Health Care?
Should the
United States have a government-run health care system similar to the ones in
Canada and Great Britain? No, says Devon Herrick, a senior fellow with
the National Center for Policy Analysis.
"I am
in favor of everyone having access to health care," Herrick told an
audience at Susquehanna University last night. "I am opposed to
the current view on how they plan to achieve universal health care."
Access to health care is
problematic, explained Herrick. The quality is inconsistent and the cost
is high:
·
Last year, Americans
spent $2.3 trillion on health care costs.
·
The reason is because of
increased longevity, the overuse of third-party payment, low cost control and
less out-of-pocket payments.
President
Obama's proposal for mandated health insurance will not be achieved for several
reasons, says Herrick: To
read more, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
·
Mandated insurance is
difficult to enforce and will drive up the cost of coverage and encourage
special-interest groups while reducing consumer choice.
·
Mandated acceptance by
health insurance providers would encourage Americans to wait to obtain
insurance until it is needed, and mandated benefits would increase the cost for
each person, even though the person may not need specific coverage.
Source:
Tricia Pursell "Speakers debate need for health-care reform," The
Daily Item, March 27, 2009.
For text: www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/local_story_086000045.html?keyword=topstory
For more on
Health Issues: www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
Government is not the solution
to our problems, government is the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5. Lean HealthCare:
Lean HealthCare: Rethinking the Healthcare
Paradigm
By David J. Gibson, MD & Jennifer Shaw Gibson
The difference between
the interventional and public health organizing paradigms is the allocation of
funding. Public health invests in a
population’s well being; the interventional invests in treating the individual
Will Rogers once said,
“When you find yourself in a hole, stop
digging.” California finds itself in a
monumental health care financing black hole that is destabilizing government.
The good news - this gives us the rare opportunity to rethink how we structure
and finance health care. We need to
stop trying to make the current system work better and rethink the mission and
role of government in health care. We
need to stop digging and think about the future.
There is now an uncontested consensus that the
current system is unsustainable. It ill
serves Americans and there exists the political support to reform the
system. Unfortunately, the only option
now presented requires more public spending, which we do not have. We are all prisoners within the present
paradigm. Without fresh ideas, we are
left with continued digging as the only option. To read more, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
So, let’s look at a fresh idea that is now almost
two-hundred years old. Few policy
makers appreciate that there are two ways to organize the healthcare delivery
system in that they have only been exposed to our current interventional
system. This system focuses resources
on expensive diagnostic and therapeutic technology delivered by specialists to
treat individuals during their last three months of life. You can visit almost any intensive care unit
in the country and find them overwhelming populated with septuagenarians and
octogenarians who have just undergone massively invasive procedures. The Dartmouth studies on Medicare have
definitively shown that there is no credible evidence that all of this effort
improves the lives of these desperately ill patients and there is no value
delivered to society as a whole, which pays for all of this invasive
technology.
A second way of organizing health care is within a
public health paradigm. The great
advances in medicine during the late 19th and early 20th
century were within this paradigm. The
public health paradigm delivered objective value in the form of quality of life
and increased longevity to society.
Before the ascendency of the invasive system,
public health applied the practical use of science to treat populations of
patients. Within this system the priority
was to vaccinate against and virtually eradicate various viral diseases that
ravaged the population; deliver potable water; install sewage treatment;
control mosquitoes; tame devastating tropical infectious diseases; combat the
transmission of syphilis and gonorrhea; isolate and treat tuberculosis; and
provide compassionate care for the dying during flu pandemics. This is the legacy of the public health
paradigm.
The big difference between the interventional and
public health organizing paradigms is the allocation of funding. Public health invests in a population’s well
being; the interventional invests in treating the individual.
Public health and interventional medicine have
co-existed in an uncomfortable accommodation for the past century and a half. With the introduction of anesthesia into
surgery and the discovery of antibiotics to treat infections, the
interventionists have increasingly dominated the health care delivery paradigm. This domination has produced the
circumstances in which we now find ourselves.
Healthcare now consumes more resources to maintain its insatiable need
than any other industry in America’s economy.
As we are now witnessing in Massachusetts, we could allocate America’s
entire gross national product and still be unable to finance the universally
applied interventional system.
Conversely, public health systems are designed to
work within a prescribed budget. For a
given amount of funding, the system will allocate resources away from the end
of life and focus upon pre-natal and obstetrical care, child health care with
an emphasis on preventive universal vaccination programs, effective educational
programs for smoking prevention, weight control, early detection of diabetes
performance based mental health and social service support programs aimed at
abuse of the vulnerable.
Public policy is by its nature a broad brush. It is best suited for setting macro goals
and priorities for society. It is ill
suited for dictating decisions at the micro level. Involving government in “fairness” judgments or dictating
mandates for insurance coverage have inevitably led to our current unworkable
and un-financeable system.
Implementing a public health paradigm for
government entitlement health care programs will not be easy. The issues should be forthrightly
articulated, addressed and debated before implementation. The most contentious will be how do we
address populist egalitarianism?
Closely related, how do we as individuals confront our own
mortality? How do we allow both the
interventional and the public health paradigms to co-exist in that crushing the
interventionists will simply drive them off-shore? How do we address the fraud that is now endemic within government
healthcare entitlement programs (Erick Holder, the current Attorney General,
just pegged the magnitude of funding diverted to fraud within the Medicare and
the Medicaid programs at over $60-billion annually) so that these programs will
have legitimacy before the tax payers in the future? How do we make cost and performance transparent within the
interventional system? How do we restructure medical education, hospitals and
supporting diagnostic and therapeutic modality manufacturers to serve a
population based paradigm? What do we
do with the excess of medical specialists that a public health system would
produce when implemented?
Beyond the above, how do we lead society through
this difficult paradigm change without retrogressing into a “Harry and Louise”
like political polarization debate fostered by the current healthcare-industrial
complex that is now extracting tremendous profits from the current system?
None of these issues will be easily addressed. However, if we do not do so proactively,
then we will witness the wholesale throwing of widows and children under the
bus as is being contemplated here in California.
Jennifer
Gibson traded energy commodities on the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange. She is also
an economist who trained at the London School of Economics and now specializes
in evolving health care markets. David
Gibson is the C.E.O. of Reflective Medical Information Systems, a software
development and healthcare data mining firm.
The Future of Health Care Has to Be
Lean, Efficient and Personal.
* * * * *
5. Misdirection in Healthcare:
6. Misdirection
in Healthcare: JAMA Wants to Restrict Competition for Pharma Dollars
Editor-in-Chief
wants all payments laundered through medical journals
By John R. Graham , Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Many elite, academic
doctors would like to believe that they can create a world where human beings
do not influence other human beings. This makes them ashamed of their
profession's relationship with research-based drug companies. They
believe that any item or communication from a pharmaceutical
representative, be it a branded pen or an all-expenses-paid
conference in the Caribbean, corrupts. If such contacts were forbidden,
only scientific evidence would influence doctors' behavior.
But this dream-like state has a more down-to-earth
element to it as well, especially from the elite medical journals, which profit
from advertising. The Editor-in-Chief of JAMA, the Journal of the American
Medical Association, has collaborated with academic medical colleagues to
pen an opinion in
the journal which states that professional medical associations
(PMAs): To read more,
please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
".....should work toward a complete ban on
pharmaceutical and medical device industry funding ($0), except for income from
journal advertising and exhibit hall fees."
Well, I guess that will make JAMA's advertising sales staff happy!
But I should be more courteous: the writers did not
demand government action to restrict PMA's financing, but have simply
encouraged their profession to accept these restrictions voluntarily.
Nevertheless, artificially limiting contact between
inventors and doctors will reduce investors' willingness to put their capital
at risk in pharmaceutical and medical-device enterprises, as I have previously
described.
Well-Meaning
Regulations Worsen Quality of Care.
* * * * *
7. Overheard on London Bridge: Capital Hill:MPs investigating banks
and financial systems hit by a Scandal.
The scandal in the U.K.
over expenses claimed by members of Parliament widened this past week to a
powerful committee that has been scrutinizing pay and behavior in the country's
financial system. . . Peter Viggers, a
Conservative MP who has sat on the committee since 2005, claimed £1,600 for,
among other things, a floating duck island -- a miniaturized
replica of a Swedish house that can serve as shelter for ducks. Both have gained a high
public profile from their positions on the committee, by investigating banks,
hedge funds, ratings companies and other parts of the financial system as part
of a probe into the financial crisis in the U.K. . . Sir Peter said he will
step down at the next election.
Looks
like What is Congress
Parliament
Really is as Crime infested as our Congress.Saying?
Feed back . . . Feedback . . .
* * * * *
8. Innovations in Health CareWhat's
New in US Health Care: Cutting Emergency Stays in Half
Meadows Regional Medical
Center has cut in half the length of time a patient stays in its emergency room
by embracing the lean manufacturing practices first implemented in the
automotive industry. But the hospital, unwilling to rest on that achievement,
put in place in April a system to reduce ER wait times even further.
The 122-bed facility in
Vildaltia, Ga., has reduced ER stays from 247 minutes to 125 minutes, which is
making it possible for the department to treat more patients. Where, two years
ago, the unit saw 60 patients a day, it now treats 100 or more people daily.
"It's been an
incredible success," says Matt Haynes, a health care efficiency specialist
who works with a group at Georgia Tech that consulted with Meadows on how it
could improve its operations. To read more, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
A key piece of Meadow's
"lean hospital" effort is its emergency department information system
from T-System Inc., Dallas. The system automates and coordinates critical ER
tasks such as triage, patient tracking, and documentation, among others. The
EDIS was installed in the second half of 2005.
But, as in the case of
lean manufacturing, which is designed to drive out waste and inefficiencies
while also instilling a sense of continuous process improvement, the hospital
is looking to do even more. In April, Meadows upgraded its EDIS with a
computerized physician order entry system, which it hopes will lead to an
additional 30-minute reduction in ER patient stays.
The hospital's search for
ER efficiencies started in 2004. By then, the average length of ER stays had
grown to 200-plus minutes and, on some days, reached an intolerable 300
minutes. The hospital's managers decided something had to be done.
The hospital turned to
Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute, a consulting arm of the
university. The institute was looking to bring the benefits of the lean
manufacturing principles first developed at Toyota to other industries.
Georgia Tech thought that
if lean manufacturing worked in other businesses, it ought to work in
healthcare, says Peggy Fountain, the director of Meadow's emergency department.
And, she adds, "I was ready to do anything to improve our wait
times."
In June 2005, Georgia
Tech specialists came in, studied the organization, and made a list of more
than 40 recommendations to improve the hospital's processes. Among the changes
that were subsequently made, according to a paper put out by Georgia Tech, were
standardizing mobile supply stations; labeling racks, trays and drawers; and
adding a holding area for patients who could be treated without putting them in
a room. . .
The EDIS implementation
presented a few change-management issues. At first the doctors and nurses were
apprehensive about using the system, thinking it would add extra steps, and
time, to their day. But once the system was installed and they started to see
the benefits of having real-time information, "they just grabbed it and
ran with it," says Fountain.
The system was integrated
to the core hospital information system from Medical Information Technology
Inc. of Westwood, Mass. The integration task turned out smoother than
envisioned. "We thought there would be lots of issues," Fountain
says. But the hospital spent considerable time planning the integration and
extensively testing the systems, and those investments paid off. . .
--John McCormick
Read
the entire article at www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/efficiency-28183-1.html.
* * * * *
9. Health Plan USA: Connecting
Health Care Across Locations and Clinicians
The Federal Government is funding the Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) so that every doctor’s patient and every hospital patient’s record can be
accessed from Washington, DC. This, of course, has nothing to do with improved
quality of care. It is necessary only for the purpose of government snooping
into every American’s personal medical history.
Medical histories are a
storehouse of personal information with widespread politically important
information. As the government is getting more involved with regulating
personal habits,
having the information on every American will wield vast powers. With taxes
exceeding ability to pay, what could be more salivating to a Congressman than
knowing and
fining those who
still smoke, have sexually transmitted
diseases or even high- costs
illnesses such as diabetes with complications? Already the
administration is eyeing futile care that can be eliminated from the cost of
health care. To begin a system of fines
for everyone that smokes, or drinks, or are obese, or have STD, especially the rich data from STD or from MSWM (men having sex with men), could become more
lucrative than confiscatory taxes now planned.
What are the
alternatives? To read more, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/archives/April09.htm.
Kaiser Permanente has one
of the finest EMR systems anywhere. It is also secure. It is secure across
their vast system. In Sacramento, the doctors in twenty or
so different medical office buildings can access medical records of their patients as they change locations
or are admitted to one of their three hospitals. Permanente doctors can work
from their medical offices or even from their homes on patient records, access laboratory and x-ray reports,
actually view the x-rays, call or email their patient the reports, and order new tests based on
the results of recently
reported tests
without ever leaving their office or home computer. Kaiser hospitals and Permanente physicians are
secure from Government surveillance.
In Sacramento, all five hospital systems
have EMR.
These are secure from Government Snoops. Most hospitals have given access to
their medical staff so they can access their patient’s records while in the hospital, in their
offices, or at their home computer. In these situations, the EMR optimizes
patient care. Having these records interface with the government computers does
nothing to improve quality of care and hinders doctors from making medical decisions, all of which involve
some risk that
attorneys love
to exploit. Thus, medical practice becomes
a legal maze with appropriate risks
to save lives too dangerous or treacherous to consider.
Medicine always has risks, which the lawmaking Congress and lawyers can’t comprehend with
dispassion. In the early days of heart transplants, a patient with a life
expectance of three months would accept a 50% risk of death from a cardiac
transplant in exchange for a 50% chance of living a few extra years. Recently, a Multiple Sclerosis drug was removed from the
market because it had a high
risk of adverse effect. It was a business journal, the Wall Street Journal, that pointed out the
inappropriateness of the decision to remove the
drug from the market: there could likely be an MS patient who is suffering to an extent that even a 50%
chance of improvement would be acceptable, considering the misery with which they are living.
The Business Community has always understood the Medical Community better than the Legal or
Government Community has understood healthcare.
The HPUSA Research Group
continues to work on models of innovative solutions extending from the above. To keep up with these
studies, be sure to subscribe to this newsletter, HealthPlanUSA.net by entering
your email address at www.healthplanusa.net/newsletter.asp.
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Current Issues Being Studied.
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* * * * *
10. Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice by
Non-Participation in Government Programs and Understanding the Devastating
Force of Government
Medicine and Liberty - Network of Liberty Oriented
Doctors,
www.MedLib.ch/ Alphonse Crespo, MD, Executive Director and Founder
·
We support professional autonomy for doctors and
liberty of choice for patients
We uphold the Hippocratic covenant that forbids
action harmful to the patient
We defend responsible medical practice and access
to therapeutic innovation free from bureaucratic obstruction
We work towards a deeper understanding of the role
and importance of liberty & market in medical services
MedLib is
part of a wide movement of ideas that defends
the self-ownership principle & the property
rights of individuals on the products of their physical and intellectual work
free markets, free enterprise and strict limits to
the role of the State
·
Medicine and
Liberty - Network of Liberty Oriented Doctors, www.MedLib.ch/, Alphonse Crespo, MD,
Executive Director and Founder
Medicine & Liberty
(MedLib) is an independent physician network founded in 2007, dedicated to the
study and advocacy of liberty, ethics & market in medical services.
- We
support professional autonomy for doctors and liberty of choice for patients
- We uphold the Hippocratic
covenant that forbids action harmful to the patient
- We defend responsible
medical practice and access to therapeutic innovation free from
bureaucratic
obstruction
- We work towards a deeper
understanding of the role and importance of liberty & market in
medical services
MedLib is part of a wide movement of ideas that
defends
- the self-ownership principle & the
property rights of individuals on the products of their
physical and intellectual work
- free markets, free enterprise and
strict limits to the role of the State
·
Americans for
Tax Reform, www.atr.org/,
Grover Norquist, President, ke of Americans
for Tax Reform, www.atr.org/, keeps
us apprised of the Cost of Government Day® Report, Calendar Year 2008. Cost of
Government Day (COGD) is the date of the calendar year on which the average
American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of
spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government on the federal, state and
local levels. The average American will
have to work 111 days just to pay for the cost of federal spending, which will
consume 30.36 percent of national income this year. This is a jump of over 31
days compared to 1999 and almost 21 days compared to 2008. This increase was
caused by the rapid growth in federal spending relative to the growth of
national income. Federal spending relative to the economy has increased by 39
percent since 1999. The average American will have to work 111 days just to pay
for the cost of federal spending, which will consume 30.36 percent of national
income this year. This is a jump of over 31 days compared to 1999 and almost 21
days compared to 2008. This increase was caused by the rapid growth in federal
spending relative to the growth of national income. Federal spending relative
to the economy has increased by 39 percent since 1999. Read more
. . .
·
Cost of Government Day for 2008 was July 16th, a
four-day increase above last year’'s revised date of July 10th. With
July 16th as the COGD, working
people must toil on average 197 days out of the year just to meet all the costs
imposed by government. In other words, the cost of government consumes 53.9
percent of national income. If we were to put health care into the public
trough, the additional 18 percent would allow the government to control 70
percent or nearly three-fourths of our productivity and destroy our health care
in the process. We would have almost no discretionary income.
·
National Taxpayer's Union, www.ntu.org/main/,
Duane Parde, President of the
National Taxpayer’s Union, www.ntu.org/main/, keeps us
apprised of all the taxation challenges our elected officials are trying to
foist on us throughout the United States. To find the organization in your
state that'’s trying to keep
sanity in our taxation system, click on your state at www.ntu.org/main/groups.php.
·
National
Taxpayer's Union, www.ntu.org/main/, Duane Parde, President,
keeps us apprised of all the taxation challenges our elected officials are
trying to foist on us throughout the United States. To find the organization in
your state that's trying to keep sanity in our taxation system, click on your
state at www.ntu.org/main/groups.php.
NTUF is the research arm of the 362,000-member
National Taxpayers Union, a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen group founded in
1969 to work for lower taxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all
levels. Note: Tables containing the word counts are below. Read more
. . .
·
FIRM: Freedom
and Individual Rights in Medicine, www.westandfirm.org, Lin Zinser, JD,
Founder, www.westandfirm.org, researches and
studies the work of scholars and policy experts in the areas of health care,
law, philosophy, and economics to inform and to foster public debate on the
causes and potential solutions of rising costs of health care and health
insurance.
·
FIRM: Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine, www.westandfirm.org, Lin Zinser, JD,
Founder, researches and studies the work of scholars and policy experts in the
areas of health care, law, philosophy, and economics to inform and to foster
public debate on the causes and potential solutions of rising costs of health
care and health insurance. Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
promotes the philosophy of individual rights, personal responsibility, and free
market economics in health care. FIRM holds that the only moral and practical
way to obtain medical care is that of individuals choosing and paying for their
own medical care in a capitalist free market. Federal and state regulations and
entitlements, we maintain, are the two most important factors in driving up
medical costs. They have created the crisis we face today. Read more . . .
·
Ayn Rand, The Creator of a Philosophy for
Living on Earth, www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer, is a veritable
storehouse of common sense economics to help us live on earth. Review the
current series of Op-Ed
articles, some of which you and I may disagree on. Read
·
Ayn Rand, a
Philosophy for Living on Earth, www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer,
is a veritable storehouse of common sense economics to help us live on earth.
Review the current series of Op-Ed
articles, some of which you and I may disagree on. Read Atlas Shrugged—America's Second Declaration of
Independence By Onkar Ghate.
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Articles that
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entirely attributable quotes in the interest of the health care debate. We trust our valuable and faithful readers understand the
need to open the debate to alternate points of view to give perspective to
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have given us standing permission to quote extensively from their sites and
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Editorial comments
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Del
Meyer
Del Meyer, MD, CEO & Founder
DelMeyer@HealthPlanUSA.net
Satyam A Patel, MBA, CFO, & Co-Founder
SatyamPatel@HealthPlanUSA.net
HealthPlanUSA,
LLC
www.HealthPlanUSA.net
6945 Fair Oaks Blvd, Ste A-2, Carmichael, CA 95608
Words
of Wisdom
"Observation is like a muscle. It grows stronger
with use and atrophies without use. Exercise your observation muscle and you
will become a more powerful decoder of the world around you."
— Joe Navarro: Former FBI
agent and expert on nonverbal language
"The fruits of a fulfilling life—happiness,
confidence, enthusiasm, purpose, and money—are mainly by-products of doing
something we enjoy, with excellence, rather than things we can seek
directly." — Dan Miller: Inspirational speaker and author
“Wise men speak because they have something to say;
Fools because they have to say something.” Plato quotes (Ancient Greek Philosopher He was the world's most
influential philosopher. 428 BC-348 BC)
Some Recenlevant Postings
It’s
Time for Fundamental Health Care Reform by David Gibson, MD. . .
Why Are The
Uninsured, Uninsured? By David
Gibson, MD . . .
HealthPlanUSA
January 2009 issue . . .
This
Month in History – April
April
Fool’s Day is a day that it is difficult to be taken seriously. However, some
very serious things happened on April Fool’s Day.
April
1, 1789, is the Day that the U. S. House of Representatives finally achieved a
quorum and went to work. Today they have an approval rating of just under twenty
percent. They couldn’t be taken seriously except that they have power over our
lives and the ability to take away our freedom. Do we wish we could wake up
tomorrow and it was April Fool’s Day again?
April,
1863, marks the first U.S. conscription law which went into effect during our
Civil War. The previous three wars were fought on a volunteer basis. After
massive drafts for the two World Wars, we are again fighting the current wars
on a volunteer basis.