I’ve received an invite from the folks conducting the Consumer Driven Healthcare Summit to attend the September 13-15 conference as a representative of the blog world, sort of a “press invite”. I applaud their openness in two respects – first, I’ve not exactly kept my skeptical views of consumerism in health care to myself; and second, bloggers are a wierd, strange, new form of media that many don’t yet recognize as important or even worth noting.
So, I’m looking forward to it.
The agenda includes talks by Paul Ginsburg of the Center for the Study of Health System Change (one of the few truly excellent policy/analysis concerns); Jon Gabel on how much consumers are actually contributing to their HSA accounts; Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund, Ron Pollack of Families USA and John Iglehart of Health Affairs on the Downside of Consumer Driven Healthcare; and several sessions on results of studies and research into various aspects of CDHP and its cousins.
This should be fun. And I’ll be doing my best to report live from the scene, in the best tradition of Matthew Holt.

Sen. Bill Frist, the senate majority leader and ex-cardiac surgeon and heir to the Frist family fortune (they started hospital firm HCA), has launched a health care blog. A quick perusal indicates posts on med mal reform, Massachusetts’ health care reform initiative, and bioterrorism. There are also copies of articles by the Senator for those inclined to learn more about his opinions.
As a relatively new entrant to the field, we’d suggest a couple of things to the Senator. First, hotlinks are pretty useful, and help provide support for statements such as “Many states have passed laws that attempt to keep frivolous lawsuits from being filed and keep liability premiums down…”
It’s also helpful to be specific and clear when writing. Parsing out the quote above, it is notable that the dependent clause “that attempt to keep frivolous lawsuits from being filed and keep liability premiums down” relates to the “passed laws”, and does not imply that these laws actually do reduce frivolous lawsuits. Kind of nuanced, but readers appreciate the clarity.
At the risk of being accused of being snarky, I’d also point out that the focus on medical malpractice is somewhat bizarre, given the Doctor/Senator’s propensity for refuting other physicians’ diagnoses without first examining the patient.

Here’s another way health care costs weave their way into our lives – the town of Richland Hills, Texas is increasing property taxes to pay for a 20% rise in health insurance costs. While the increase in the mill rate (the cents per hundred dollars of property value) will only go up 0.6, it’s another example of the growing awareness of the impact of health care costs on a community.
The same is occuring in communities as different as MIssoula Montana, Boxborough Mass, and the state of New Jersey.
This is a national problem. Today’s NYTimes reports that property taxes have gone up two to three times faster than personal income in the tri-state area. As a resident of Connecticut and eight year veteran of my Town’s Board of Tax Assessment Appeals, I have first hand knowledge of taxpayers’ growing concern, and even anger, over rising property taxes. Now, new laws will require municipalities to report their future health care liabilities, a requirement that had a significant impact on public companies’ valuations and financial reporting.
And may well lead to even more taxpayer unrest; public entities typically provide health care benefits that are considerably more generous than those dispensed by the private sector. One of the stated reasons is these benefits are a form of compensation that makes the jobs more attractive given the wages, which tend to be somewhat below the private sector. While the latter may be true, the rationale instantly brings to mind the disaster unfurling at US auto manufacturers, who used the same logic decades ago to provide very generous health benefits in lieu of salary increases.
And look what’s happened to them.

As corporate profits have surged over the last six months, retiree health care benefits have been reduced at many companies. That’s the headline, but the reality is not so simple.
Large, old-line manufacturers with negotiated benefits and lots of retirees (think steel and autos) are facing bigger-than-huge retiree health care costs, driven in large part by benefit plans that don’t even have deductibles or copays. As these firms continue to get hammered by international competitors with much lower labor expenses, they are seeking ways to reduce their costs.
And retiree health care costs are a very big drag on many of these companies, hurting their ability to invest in new products, new employees, new plants and equipment. Sure, GM, Ford, Kaiser Aluminum, US Steel and other companies made lots of decisions, including trading benefits for labor peace, that don’t look so smart in hindsight. And GM and Ford completely missed the boat on fuel economy.
But all that is beside the point. If American manufacturers can’t reduce their cost of health care, they will be increasingly unable to compete.
Here’s one potential solution.