Health Crisis: A Move to Private Insurance?

Funding for prescription medication and doctor visits has long been a health care crisis in the United States. This latest article in the NY Times highlights Senator John McCain’s detailed plan to solve this phenomenon by emphasizing a shift in insurance provided by employers to private insurance bought by individuals.

This plan would eliminate tax breaks given to businesses that offer insurance to employees, and would replace that with $5,000 tax credits to families who choose to buy their own insurance. This proposal is completely different from the Democrat’s move towards universal healthcare.

McCain’s plan came about because of the growing concern of affordable healthcare for low-income families and elderly people who are not able to work. There is much criticism for McCain’s plan. Pre-existing medical conditions make it tougher for elderly and sick individuals to be approved for private insurance.

This strategy offered in this plan focuses on easing the burden for individuals and families to purchase private insurance. It’ll be interesting to see what industry insiders think about how this can affectively achieve that result.

Should organ donors choose who their organs go to?

In a recent blog post at the Wall Street Journal Health blog, they brought up a raging topic in the medical world: Should donors get to choose who their organs go to? In the past such a decision was not so easily available to potential donors, but today websites such as www.matchingdonors.com offer a direct access to donors and potential recipients. However doctors are fearful that those chosen will jump ahead on the organ donor list, leaving those at the top of the list waiting for the next available organ.

This is not a new topic in the medical world, the debate has been raging for years. In this article at the New England Journal of Medicine, they address many of the issues that could come with organ donors choosing their recipients. According to the journal, there are three types of donations that can occur:

-- Directed donation to a loved one or friend

-- Nondirected donation, in which the donor gives an organ to the general pool to be transplanted into the recipient at the top of the waiting list

-- Directed donation to a stranger, whereby donors choose to give to a specific person with whom they have no prior emotional connection.

One of the comments left by reader, SavvyDoc, on the WSJ blog post, expressed that if organ donors got to choose who their organs went to; it could in time result in organs going to the highest bidder. Worse still is the potential of discriminatory when donating organs such as the example of a white man only wanting his organs to go to other white people (As found in the New England Journal of Medicine article).

With the current shortage we have on donated organs, should this be allowed to happen? Currently, donations are only from those who are brain dead or those who willingly give up their organs that are not needed. But could donations increase if individuals were allowed to pick who it’s given to? Most likely the debate will continue for some time before an acceptable resolution is proposed.

Can you email the doctor?

A new article at ABC News ponders this question: Should doctors use email to communicate with their patients?

As in many industries, the medical profession has not been very fast to adapt the new practices utilizing the latest technologies of Web 2.0. Many patients believe it would be easier to simply email their doctors with their questions that are not truly life threatening and avoid the time and expense of an office visit. However, less than 1/3 of doctors today use email.

Some doctors’ concerns include the worry that they won’t be reimbursed for their time, while others worry about privacy and the possibility that the emails could be intercepted by hackers, putting patient information at risk. Nevertheless, there are some patients who think emailing may be a useful means to receive help. So, should the health care field begin to look at this as a new way to help patients? For minor questions and or non-severe medical advice, it could save both time and costs for the doctor and the patient in avoiding unnecessary office visits. However, there is still the effort spent as doctors sit and answer emails, when they could be working on other critical tasks. It appears there may not be one easy solution any time in the near future.

New Help for Diabetes Patients: Your cell phone

As reported by ABC News, Diabetes doctors have found a new way to help their patients: cell phones. Since people in every age range are affected by this disease, this new technical development works well for those who are young and affected by the disease.

The system for the most part consists of texting. Patients text their doctors with their blood sugar levels. This way when someone forgets to text in their blood sugar level, the doctor’s office will respond with a text to notify the patient that they need to test their blood.

This new technology will benefit teenagers the most. As most of them today are always connected with their cell phone, they’ll never forget to take their blood sugar.

Lasik Eye Surgeries Are Winding Down

The NY Times reports today that the number of corrective eye surgeries are declining as the US seems to be going through a recession period and patients are becoming more aware of health risks directly associated with Lasik. David Harmon, president of Market Scope, is predicting a 17% drop in Lasik surgeries for 2008.

People are becoming more conservative and cautious in their spending habits. Lasik surgery, which is not typically covered by insurance, ranges from about $800 to $3,000 an eye. The cost plus the increased side effects of surgery are slowly turning potential candidates away from corrective surgery.

While there is a 95% satisfaction rate with Lasik surgery, there are still accounts of unhappy individuals who are now suffering from double vision, seeing halos, and developing cataracts. Even though medical complications are below 1 percent, health researchers will have to do a better job of analyzing which patients are not good candidates for corrective eye surgery.

Declining Life Expectancies Across the U.S.

Today the NY Times released an article that highlights how life expectancy has been dropping in different regions of the United States, and how a new study proves a disparity in deaths depending on income, geography, and race.

According to this information released by National Center for Health Statistics, counties whose life expectancies declined were predominantly in the southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest, and counties along the Missippi River. Counties whose life expectancies actually rose were mainly in the Northeast and the Pacific coast.

The NY Times points out that when 2.5 percent of the counties with the lowest life expectancies were compared with 2.5 percent of counties with the highest expectancies, the difference between years shot up to 11 years for men and 6.7 years for women. Also, the majority of people who resided in counties with lower life expectancies were African American.

Increases in HIV infection, lung cancer, diabetes, and homicide for men also contribute to lower life expectancies we are experiencing across the board.

Higher Cigarette Taxes

As defined in the A Healthy Living blog, In the beginning of April, Massachusetts is once again looking to increase cigarette taxes. Their goal would be to add a $1 tax to every box sold. This would lead to over $150 million revenue for the Massachusetts government.

At the same time, the Boston Globe also published why higher taxes on cigarettes would help the state:

-This would discourage children to smoke (Expensive prices would detour them)
-Lower health risk due to fewer smokers
-Addiction cycles would be broken
-Massachusetts spends over $3.5 billion dollars a year annually taking care of smokers. So, this expenditure would go down and the smokers would in theory be paying for their health care in advance when they buy a pack of cigarettes.

Health and Productivity Management, Disease Management and Wellness all gaining force in the workplace

In a recent article published at the Managed Healthcare Executive, they discuss how the three topics listed above (HPM, DM, and Wellness) are issues that are becoming more managed in the workplace. Employers are starting to see the benefits of incorporating all into employee benefits. While there are still many holes to fill, corporations are beginning to provide more for their employees in these terms in order to save money in the future. Check out the full article here.

Do gifts influence prescriptions?

In a recent blog at A Healthy Blog, they shed light on doctors receiving gifts from biopharma companies. Senator Patty Murray of Massachusetts is trying to pass a law where biopharma companies couldn’t present gifts to doctors in order to alter the doctor’s prescribing behavior.

In some cases, doctors are given luxury trips and expensive sports tickets in order to influence the prescription of drugs. With this new bill, doctors would still be allowed informative sessions about the new drugs, but would instead learn about them in an environment neutral to the prescription process, such as a lunch and learn.

While such legislative steps seeks to ensure that doctors are focused on patients' primary care, minimzing access can also create difficulties in properly educating doctors on new advances in pharmacology. A balance has to be created where doctors have access to the latest information while ensuring they are not unduly influenced.