Posts Tagged ‘healthcare costs’
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
At present, seven of every 10 deaths among Americans are due to chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. These diseases also eat up 75 percent of the nation’s annual healthcare spending.
New wellness programs are getting a boost from the Affordable Care Act in the form of $31 million to help communities cut obesity, increase physical activity and improve nutrition. The funding is contained in the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program, a prevention and wellness program that is overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“As I’ve seen throughout the year in my work with Let’s Move!, prevention works when it comes to improving the health of our families,” said First Lady Michelle Obama. “These critical investments will help more communities across America tackle serious challenges like childhood obesity, while promoting physical activity and healthy eating.” The funding is being awarded to communities that have resources in place to increase the availability of healthy food and beverages; enhance access to safe places to encourage physical activity; discourage smoking; and promote environments that are smoke free. Of the 11 awards announced, 10 are dedicated to anti-obesity programs and one to smoking cessation.
“To realize our goals of improving the health of Americans and lowering our nation’s healthcare costs, we must address the underlying factors that influence our families’ health – factors like the foods we eat and the conditions that exist in our homes, neighborhoods and workplaces,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “With Communities Putting Prevention to Work, we’re creating evidence-based models that we can replicate on a large scale to permanently reduce the chronic diseases plaguing so many of our communities.” Already this year, CPPW has given nearly $492 million to support community and statewide hotlines and media campaigns that promote healthy living.
Tags: Affordable Care Act, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, diabetes, First Lady, healthcare costs, Kathleen Sebelius, Michelle Obama, obesity, physical activity, Wellness Centers
Posted in General, Healthcare, Healthcare Village, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
Americans are aging and living longer than ever, according to a report entitled “Older Americans 2010: Key Indicators of Well-Being” compiled by 15 federal agencies.
The full report, which details demographics, economics, health status, health risks and healthcare can be found at a dedicated website. According to the report, Americans who live to 65 can expected to survive approximately 18.5 additional years, four more years than in 1960. Women who live to 85 can expect to live 6.8 more years and men 5.7 years. As impressive as those life expectancies are, people living in most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Costa Rica – and even Cuba — can expect to live longer.
An estimated 39 million Americans were 65 or older in 2008 – approximately 13 percent of the population. In 2030 – when the entire baby boomer generation will be 65 or older – there will be 72 million senior citizens or approximately 20 percent of the population. By 2050, the over-85 population is expected to grow from 5.8 million to 19 million. Healthcare costs for the average senior, adjusted for inflation, rose from $9,224 in 1992 to $15,081 in 2006. Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for people 65 and older, though at half the rate recorded in 1981 – just 1,297 per 100,000. Strokes, cancer, respiratory diseases and Alzheimer’s are the next leading causes of death. Healthcare ate up 28 percent of out-of-pocket spending among the poor and nearly poor in 2006; that compares to 12 percent in 1977.
Tags: Alzheimer's Disease, baby boomers, federal government, healthcare costs, life expectancy, senior citizens
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Village | No Comments »
Monday, December 28th, 2009
The current healthcare fight is very much like efforts in the early 20th-century efforts to make food affordable to the common people. In an important article in The New Yorker, Boston-based surgeon Atul Gawande talks about a time when more than 40 percent of an American family’s income was dedicated to paying for food; farming was a labor-intensive enterprise that employed nearly half the workforce; yet bringing the nation’s bounty to the table was a costly process. The agricultural crisis – which prevented resources from flowing to other economic sectors – led to the United States Department of Agriculture appointing extension agents to teach modern farming methods to increase food production. The strategies adopted by these agricultural extension agencies succeeded in lowering food cost to eight percent of income because the government proceeded by trial and error, continually adjusting their policies to respond to results. Gawande suggests that similar local grass-roots strategies applied to healthcare reform legislation could help rein in costs.
The Senate healthcare reform bill does many good things – establishes insurance exchanges, mandates and tax credits to assure that at least 94 percent of Americans will have coverage. What the legislation does not address is crucial – it has no mechanism to control spiraling healthcare costs. Consider that healthcare accounts for 18 percent of every dollar Americans earn. Between 1999 and 2009, the average yearly premium for employer-sponsored family insurance coverage soared from $5,800 to $13,400. Medicare beneficiary rose from $5,500 to $11,900.
Gawande notes that “Where we crave sweeping transformation, however, all the current bill offers is those pilot programs, a battery of small-scale experiments. The strategy seems hopelessly inadequate to solve a problem of this magnitude. And yet – here’s the interesting thing – history suggests otherwise.”
“Getting our medical communities, town by town, to improve care and control costs isn’t a task that we’ve asked government to take on before,” Gawande writes. “But we have no choice. At this point, we can’t afford any illusions: the situation won’t fix itself, and there’s no piece of legislation that will have all the answers, either. The task will require dedicated and talented people in government agencies and in communities who recognize that the country’s future depends on their sidestepping the ideological battles, encouraging local change, and following the results. But if we’re willing to accept an arduous, messy and continuous process we can come to grips with a problem even of this immensity. We’ve done it before.”
Tags: American healthcare system, Congressional Budget Office, Dr Atul Gawande, farm policy, healthcare costs, healthcare insurance, healthcare reform, United States Department of Agriculture, USDA Cooperative Extension Service
Posted in Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Illinois medical providers rank among the nation’s most ineffectual when it comes to providing cost-effective treatment and avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations.
According to the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund’s report, Illinois ranks 49th among 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of “avoidable hospital use and costs.” The study measures how often Medicare patients with chronic conditions such as heart disease are admitted to the hospital or how frequently nursing home patients shuttle in and out of hospitals. New York came in 50th, with Louisiana occupying the last place.
Illinois also placed 44th in terms of how effectively hospitals deliver basic care that avoids complications. Healthcare costs and volumes of tests and treatments were found to be unusually high, especially in metropolitan Chicago.
There was some good news for Illinois in the Commonwealth Fund’s study. The state ranked 20th in access to care, quality in terms of income, race and ethnic background; 29th in quality-of-life measures such as infant mortality; and 32nd in death rates for colon and breast cancer. The study places Illinois in 42nd place in terms of the quality of overall healthcare delivery.
Cathy Schoen, Senior Vice President of the Commonwealth Fund and a co-author of the study, noted that the findings underscore the need for wide-ranging healthcare reform. “We need payment reforms with incentives to do well on outcomes and efficiency of care,” she said.
Tags: cost effective, healthcare costs, healthcare reform, Illinois, medical provider, Medicare, patients
Posted in General, Healthcare, Healthcare Village, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
President Barack Obama’s prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress made a strong case for including a public option, along with a combination of choices designed to keep the insurance industry in check. Recalling Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts to reform healthcare during the 1912 election, Obama said “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. Well, the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed,” Obama said. “Now is the season for action.”
That action includes a provision that protects uninsurable individuals from catastrophic healthcare expenses. Another proposal is a series of pilot programs that will study how to reform the medical tort process.
Following is a brief summary of the Obama healthcare plan, which has a projected price tag of just under $1 trillion over 10 years (as a point of comparison, the U.S. spends half this in a single year on military spending):
- Healthcare reform will provide more security and stability to Americans who currently have insurance, and it will provide coverage to those who don’t. It will slow the growth of healthcare costs.
- Americans who already have health insurance through their employers, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, will see their coverage improve. The plan will make it illegal to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. Insurers will no longer be able to place a cap on the amount of coverage a patient receives. Additionally, insurance companies will be required to cover routine checkups and preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies.
- Coverage will be portable (if a person changes jobs or starts a small business) through the creation of an insurance exchange – a marketplace that will provide access to health insurance at competitive prices. The benefit to insurance companies is that the exchange lets them compete for millions of new customers.
- For Americans who currently lack health insurance, Obama proposed a public option where government-subsidies would be available to make premiums affordable. Individuals would be required to obtain coverage, and their employers would have to contribute. Most Senate Republicans and some Blue Dog Democrats oppose this proposal, while Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has said that the House’s version of the healthcare bill will include a public option.
Obama’s flexibility may not please the more liberal members of Congress, but reflects the political reality that exists on Capitol Hill.
Tags: Blue Dog Democrats, colonoscopy, Edward Kennedy, health insurance, healthcare bill, healthcare costs, healthcare expenses, healthcare reform, mammogram, Medicaid, medical, Medicare, Nancy Pelosi, patient, pilot program, President Barack Obama, President Theodore Roosevelt, public option, Republican, security, uninsurable
Posted in Healthcare | No Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
Supermarket giant Safeway, Inc., takes a proactive approach to its healthcare coverage and is in the forefront of the movement toward reform, according to Steven A. Burd, CEO.
Safeway’s voluntary Healthy Measures program, in which 74 percent of the non-union workforce participates, lets employees receive premium discounts for every behavior test they pass. Employees who pass all four tests have their annual premiums reduced $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families.
Burd, who also founded the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform, believes that well thought-out healthcare reform, using market-based solutions, will reduce the nation’s cost of coverage by 40 percent. That is more than enough to provide coverage for the 47 million Americans who currently lack insurance.
According to Burd, “At Safeway, we are building a culture of health and fitness. The key to achieving these savings is healthcare plans that reward healthy behavior. As a self-insured employer, Safeway designed a plan in 2005 and has made improvements every year. During this four-year period, we have kept our per capita healthcare costs flat (this includes both the employee and the employer portion), while most American companies’ costs have increased 38 percent.”
Safeway’s plan focuses on the fact that 70 percent of healthcare costs are the result of behavior, and that 74 percent of all costs are due to four chronic conditions – cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. The firm also learned that 80 percent of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, 60 percent of cancers and 90 percent of obesity are all preventable.
“As much as we would like to take credit for being a healthcare innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well-tested automobile insurance model,” Burd said. “For decades, driving behavior has been correlated with accident risk and has therefore translated into premium differences among drivers. Stated somewhat differently, the auto insurance industry has long recognized the role of personal responsibility. As a result, bad behaviors (like speeding, tickets for failure to follow the rules of the road, and frequency of accidents) are considered when establishing insurance premiums. Bad driver premiums are not subsidized by the good driver premiums.”
Tags: behavior test, fitness, health, healthcare costs, healthcare coverage, healthcare reform, Healthy Measures program, insurance premiums, Safeway, Senate
Posted in Healthcare, Wellness Centers | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
A new report — “F” as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2009 – gives America a failing grade on its efforts to control obesity among children and adults.
The report, released by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that 
obesity rates rose in 23 states during 2008, with no states showing decreases. The number of overweight children is at or above 30 percent in 30 states.
Mississippi came in dead last for the fifth year in a row, with an adult obesity rate of 32.5 percent. Three states were close runners up: West Virginia reported a 31.2 percent obesity rate; Alabama had 31.1 percent; and Tennessee had 30.2 percent. On the opposite side, the states reporting the lowest obesity rates were Colorado with 18.9 percent; Massachusetts with 21.2 percent; Connecticut with 21.3 percent; Rhode Island with 21.7 percent and Hawaii with 21.9 percent.
“Our healthcare costs have grown along with our waistlines,” according to Jeff Levi, PhD, TFAH’s executive director. “The obesity epidemic is a big contributor to the skyrocketing healthcare costs in the United States. How are we going to compete with the rest of the world if our economy and workforce are weighed down by bad health?”
Fully two thirds of American adults are now overweight or obese. Adult obesity rates are higher than 25 percent in 31 states, and above 20 percent in 49 states and Washington, D.C. Compare this with 1991, when no state reported an obesity rate higher than 20 percent.
Tags: adult obesity, Alabama, America, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, healthcare costs, Massachusetts, Mississippi, obese, obesity, obesity epidemic, obesity policy, overweight, overweight children, Rhode Island, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Tennessee, TFAH, Trust for America Health, United States, Washinton DC, West Virginia
Posted in Healthcare Village, Wellness Centers | No Comments »
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
In an era when healthcare costs are projected to rise to $4 trillion by 2016, it’s heartening to know that one of the nation’s highest-rated hospitals has some of the lowest costs. The Cleveland Clinic is regularly consulted by lawmakers and officials from the Obama Administration in their efforts at achieving healthcare reform – yet it operates more efficiently than most of its competitors.
“Everything we do is done with the patient at the center, not the doctor at the center,” said Dr. Steven Nissen. One way the Clinic provides exceptional care at reasonable cost is by using a model in which medical professionals practice side-by-side rather than in separate and — frequently — competitive departments.
President Barack Obama gave kudos to the Cleveland Clinic for its success. “Without a serious, sustained effort to reduce the growth rate of health care costs, affordable healthcare coverage will remain out of reach. So we must attack the root causes of the inflation in healthcare. That means promoting the best practices, not simply the most expensive. We should ask why places like the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and other institutions can offer the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm. We need to learn from their successes and replicate those best practices. That’s how we can achieve reform that preserves and strengthens what’s best about our healthcare system, while fixing what is broken.”
As part of its road to excellence, the Clinic also promotes employee wellness. It doesn’t hire smokers; it sponsors a farmers’ market at its main campus, stocks its cafeterias with healthy foods and conducts yoga classes for patients and employees.
Tags: Healthcare, healthcare costs, healthcare coverage, healthcare reform, lawmakers, Mayo Clinic, medical professionals, Obama administration, President Bar, The Cleveland Clinic
Posted in Economics, Healthcare, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Congress is drafting historic legislation intended to restructure the American healthcare system. At a time when healthcare costs total $2.4 trillion annually (an average of $7,868 per person), are projected to rise to $4 trillion by 2016 and 46 million Americans lack any insurance coverage, the legislation is badly needed. According to a draft outline, the legislation might call for mandatory insurance requirements, which could conceivably be sold either through a national or state-based exchange. The bill is also likely to include a government-backed plan to control 
costs.
The Joint Committee on Taxation opined that the size of the savings might fall under several taxation arrangements, which could be essential in determining how to pay for the reform bill. The legislation includes an opportunity to drop the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, which is perceived by many as fatally flawed.
The legislation also will bring provider payments into line with recommendations from the Medicare Advisory Payment Commission, and allow payment alternatives for healthcare systems that offer coordinated care and focus on preventative health. Medicaid would be expanded, with subsidies available to pay for coverage.
A quick analysis concludes that the House draft will cost more than legislation currently under consideration in the Senate. So far, neither Democrats nor Republicans have been able to decide how to pay for the bill, which could total more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
Tags: American, Congress, cost control, Democrats, government-backed plan, Healthcare, healthcare costs, healthcare system, historic legislation, insurance coverage, insurance requirements, Joint Committee on Taxation, Medicaid, Medicare Advisory Payment Commission, national, reform bill, Republicans, state-based exchange, Sustainable Growth Rate formula, taxation
Posted in Economics, Healthcare | No Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
Barack Obama may get his way on healthcare reform with the full cooperation of those who vocally lobbied against it during the 1990s. The timing couldn’t be better — healthcare costs total $2.4 trillion annually (an average of $7,868 per person) and are projected to rise to $4 trillion by 2016.
In a reversal, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, physicians and other industry leaders presented a plan to the White House proposing to save $2 trillion in healthcare delivery costs over the next 10 years. Participants included the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Service Employees International Union — which master-minded the bold move. Although healthcare costs will continue to rise, this plan will slow the pace.
“We cannot continue down the same dangerous road we’ve been traveling for so many years, with costs that are out of control, because reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait,” Obama said.
Obama’s proposed plan is based on the existing system, where employers, the government and individuals share responsibility for paying for privately delivered healthcare. The government will subsidize coverage for additional people and mandate stricter consumer protection.
It’s evident that the healthcare industry has seen the writing on the wall. Their willingness to work with the Obama Administration and Congress – compared with the fierce opposition to Bill Clinton’s healthcare reform efforts 15 years ago – is a turnaround that should translate to real change.
Tags: Advanced Medical Technology Association, American Hospital Association, American Medical Association, American's Health Insurance Plans, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, healthcare costs, healthcare reform, Obama administration, pharmaceutical companies, physicians, President Barack Obama, private healthcare, Service Employees International Union, White House
Posted in Economics, Healthcare, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
