Health Wonks – the SuperHero Edition!!!

The deficit battle is on and politicians are in full voice – both in Washington and out on the hustings, where GOP candidates are loudly denouncing health reform as unAmerican and a job killer. Hipsters and greying hippies are occupying Wall Street and Main Street, while Tea Partiers are claiming they hold the title of most outraged. The one percent is wondering what the 99 percenters are so upset about, while the 99 percenters are after their well-coiffed scalps.
Into the bloody fray, with nary a fear for life or health, reputation or career, plummet our worthies, those denizens of the blog-o-sphere that specialize in separating the non- from the -sense, the BS from the fertilizer, the ill-formed opinion from the logically-based interpretation!
Join us as we follow their heroic deeds, gasp as you read their trenchant and timely missives, awed by their grasp of the incredibly-esoteric and yet critically important.
Let’s get it started (cue Fergie…)
First out of the box are Shannon Brownlee and Joe Colucci of the New Health Dialogue. These erudite authors show no trepidation as they take on the opponents of the US Preventive Services Task Force, marshalling cogent, clear language to confront the fallacies of those who would condemn the USPSTF’s stance on prostate screening. Watch out, Newtster!
Closely on their heels comes Maggie Mahar, who is very concerned the USPSTF will get defunded by some knuckleheads in Congress just because some physicians, device manufacturers, and others don’t like hearing their stuff doesn’t work like they say it does. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Where is your faith in the goodness of mankind??
Jaan Sidorov wants to make sure we don’t get all amazed by Siri and her techno-friends; we do need people involved in the care process, even if it is telemonitoring.
At the extreme other end of the political spectrum is John Goodman, who’s ‘penned’ an intriguing treatise on what we should be doing about long term care. He has five main points, several of which I – dare I say it – actually concur with. Wonder of wonders!
Chris Langston reports from his first meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission – that rationer of care also known as MedPAC. No, it’s not a medical device company’s PAC, it’s the group that heavily influences Medicare’s payment and coverage policies. For all those who decry them durn gubmint byoorowkrats, read Chris’ post.
Big news is coming soon, with the Medicare Shared Savings Final Rule amongst the biggest (at least among us kids). Health Affairs has a multi-post entry that you can best find at their blog; discussing the key aspects of the Shared Savings program in detail. If this is your thing, click on!
Tinker Ready’s flavoring her post with a hefty dash of outrage from Boston’s Occupiers – who don’t like the private company – health insurance linkage one little bit.
From deep within the world of insurance, David Wlliams emerges with an explanation of the “Explanation of Benefits” he got from his insurance company, as explained by his provider. It’s pretty entertaining, and surprisingly well-written. Of course, anything that’s remotely readable that comes from an insurer or provider is deemed “well-written”…
On a macro scale, one topic that deserves much more consideration is population health. From that part of the wonking world comes a great post on disparities between – and some of the reasons for – health status in rural and urban areas. Thanks to Kristen Siemering for her entry!
Louise – a very experienced and highly knowledgeable insurance broker in Colorado, thinks the folks predicting the demise of the insurance broker are misguided, misinformed, and just plain wrong. There is value there, value that can’t be replaced easily or cheaply.
Another view comes from Bob Vineyard, who’s commenting on one exchange that seems to be struggling.
Trudy Lieberman’s thinking that those employer policies that don’t provide much coverage and have massive deductibles and copays are not serving employees – or their families – well.
The Insurance Exchanges are slated to play an important role in reform – and California is well on the way with their’s. After multiple meetings and much dialogue with lots of stakeholders, Linda Leu is seeing good progress.
Another perspective comes from Jason Shafrin, who thinks the exchanges may not do much to help competition as many markets are already consolidated.
Gary Schwitzer takes the mass/statistically illiterate/medically ignorant media to task in his post on media’s common mistakes – well, that’s not exactly what it’s about, but pretty close. Gary points out that what you read may well be, well, wrong.
One area that cries out for clear, cogent explanation is the whole hospital readmissions uproar. Fortunately, Bradley Flansbaum’s here to clear things up!
Your faithful author’s contribution is a treatise on what’s REALLY going on in Massachusetts post-reform. Hint – it’s been five years, and things are starting to change – a lot.
Roy Poses continues to shine his very bright light on inappropriate or concerning links between research and commercial entities – as he’s ben doing for as long as I can remember. This week he takes the NYTimes to task for not asking the tough questions about an academic institution’s desire to work more closely with private industry. Roy is great, but I hope he checks under his car before he starts it every morning.
While all the attention is on the health insurance market, Jon Coppelman hasn’t missed a big story in workers comp – the market for insurance looks to be getting harder, with pricing ticking up. That big gust of wind that just went by? Nope, not a hurricane remnant, but a sigh of relief coming from Liberty Mutual, Chartis, Hartford, and the Travelers…
Now that this is put to rest, we can all hit the sack, secure in the knowledge that here, in (YOUR HOME TOWN), we are safe and sound, protected by misinformation by these diligent pursuers of the truth. Or at least their version of it.
cheers!