Health – Page 80 – artdiamondblog.com

Under Health Care ‘Reform’ the Total Cost of Health Care Will “Go through the Roof!”

“Jonathan Bush, nephew of one former president and cousin of another, built a small medical practice into a national enterprise with nearly 1,200 employees.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B10) In the world of health care innovation, the founder and chief executive of Athenahealth has an outsize name. In part, that’s because his name is Jonathan Bush, and he is the nephew of one former president and the cousin of another. But it’s also because his company has mastered the intricacies of the doctor-insurer relationship and become a player in the emerging medical records industry.

Based in Watertown, Mass., Athenahealth offers a suite of administrative services for medical practices. It collects payments from insurers and patients, and it manages electronic health records and patient communication systems. All of this is done remotely through the Internet — or “in the cloud,” as Mr. Bush puts it. Doctors don’t have to install or manage software or pay licensing fees; instead, Athenahealth keeps a percentage of the revenue.
. . .
Q. What’s going on in the health care industry to deliver that kind of growth to you?
A. We are a disruptive technology. We are the only cloud-based service in an industry segment full of sclerotic, enormous, personality-free corporations that have been in business making 90 percent margins doing nothing for decades and decades.
Q. What keeps other companies from building cloud-based systems?
A. For software companies, the biggest barrier to entry is that they give up their business model. Those companies would get hammered on Wall Street if they started selling a service that they have to deliver at a loss for five years. In terms of new entrants, there are two things that we’ve done that would take a good decade to replicate. One, we’ve built out the health care Internet. We’ve been building connections into insurance companies and laboratories and hospital medical records for years and years and years.
And the other barrier to entry is that rules engine. Every time a doctor anywhere in the country gets a claim denied, we have analysts ask the Five Whys. When we get to root cause, we write a new rule into Athenanet and from that day on, no other doctor gets that particular denial from that particular insurance company ever again. We now know of 40 million ways that a doctor can have a claim denied in the United States. The average practice has to rework about 35 percent of their claims, and we only have to rework about 5 percent of ours.
Q. What’s the prognosis for bill collecting under health care reform?
A. Well, there’s going to be new connectors and a whole series of new insurance products that will be managed by the states’ health insurance commissioners. And the law provides for every state to do all of these its own way, so they will have their own rules and regulations, and each state will do it differently. That sounds like springtime in Complexity Land.
Q. What do you think will happen to the total cost of health care under reform?
A. Oh, it’s going to go through the roof! It’s widely accepted that this is not a cost-reform bill — it’s an access bill. It’s in fact a cost-expansion bill.

For the full story, see:

ROBB MANDELBAUM. “Views of Health Care Economics From a C.E.O. Named Bush.” The New York Times (Thurs., September 9, 2010): B10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date September 8, 2010.)

Neurosurgeons Treating Dogs is Mutually Beneficial to Dogs and Humans

(p. D3) An operation commonly performed to remove brain tumors from the pituitary glands of humans is now available to dogs, thanks to a collaboration between a neurosurgeon and some veterinarians in Los Angeles. And that is turning out to be good for humans.

So far, nine dogs and one cat that otherwise would have died have been treated successfully.
. . .
What Dr. Mamelak has gained from teaching the procedure to veterinarians is access to tissue samples from the treated dogs. That’s significant because Cushing’s afflicts only one in a million humans, making it a difficult disease to study. By contrast, it afflicts about 100,000 dogs a year in the United States. The canine tissue samples are enabling him and his colleagues to develop drugs to one day treat Cushing’s disease in both humans and dogs.
“We have a full loop,” he said. “We’re using a human procedure in animals, and using their tissue to study the disease.”

For the full story, see:
SINDYA N. BHANOO. “Observatory; They Fetch, They Roll Over, They Aid Tumor Research.” The New York Times, Science Times Section (Tues., October 26, 2010): D3.
(Note: ellipsIs added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 22 (sic), 2010.)

Feds Chastise Us for Being Fat AND Urge Us to Eat More Cheese Pizzas

“A government-created industry group worked with Domino’s Pizza to bolster sales by increasing the cheese on pies.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.

Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.
Consumers devoured the cheesier pizza, and sales soared by double digits. “This partnership is clearly working,” Brandon Solano, the Domino’s vice president for brand innovation, said in a statement to The New York Times.
But as healthy as this pizza has been for Domino’s, one slice contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and is high in calories.
And Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting.
. . .
When Michelle Obama implored restaurateurs in September to help fight obesity, she cited the proliferation of cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese. “I (p. 23) want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options,” she told the National Restaurant Association’s annual meeting.
But in a series of confidential agreements approved by agriculture secretaries in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products.

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL MOSS. “While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., November 7, 2010): 1 & 23.
(Note: the online version of the story is dated November 6, 2010.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Being Bilingual Increases “Cognitive Reserve”

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

At first glance the graph and the text quoted below seem inconsistent on whether bilingualism delays the onset of dementia. The text says no, the graph says yes. On closer reading, the text is referring to the “physical signs of deterioration” while the graph is referring to “visible symptoms.”

(p. D1) A lifetime of speaking two or more languages appears to pay off in old age, with recent research showing the symptoms of dementia can be delayed by an average of four years in bilingual people.

Multilingualism doesn’t delay the onset of dementia–the brains of people who speak multiple languages still show physical signs of deterioration–but the process of speaking two or more languages appears to enable people to develop skills to better cope with the early symptoms of memory-robbing diseases, including Alzheimer’s.
Scientists for years studied children and found that fluently speaking more than one language takes a lot of mental work. Compared with people who speak only one language, bilingual children and young adults have slightly smaller vocabularies and are slower performing certain verbal tasks, such as naming lists of animals or fruits.
But over time, regularly speaking more than one language appears to strengthen skills that boost the brain’s so-called cognitive reserve, a capacity to work even when stressed or damaged. This build-up of cognitive reserve appears to help bilingual people as they age.

For the full story, see:
SHIRLEY S. WANG. “Building a More Resilient Brain.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., OCTOBER 12, 2010): D1 & D2.

Paleolithic Humans Ate Carbohydrates

(p. D4) LONDON (Reuters) — Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric humans may have dined on an early form of flatbread, contrary to their popular image as primarily meat eaters.

The findings, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on Monday, indicate that Paleolithic Europeans ground down plant roots similar to potatoes to make flour, which was later whisked into dough.
“It’s like a flatbread, like a pancake with just water and flour,” said Laura Longo, a researcher on the team, from the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History.
. . .
The findings may . . . upset fans of the so-called Paleolithic diet, which follows earlier research that assumes early humans ate a meat-centered diet.

For the full story, see:
REUTERS. “Paleolithic Humans Had Bread Along With Their Meat.” The New York Times (Tues., October 19, 2010): D4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 18, 2010.)

Wilderness Act Makes Wilderness Inaccessible and Dangerous

(p. A19) ONE day in early 1970, a cross-country skier got lost along the 46-mile Kekekabic Trail, which winds through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Unable to make his way out, he died of exposure.

In response, the Forest Service installed markers along the trail. But when, years later, it became time to replace them, the agency refused, claiming that the 1964 Wilderness Act banned signage in the nation’s wilderness areas.
. . .
Over the decades an obvious contradiction has emerged between preservation and access. As the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management — each of which claims jurisdiction over different wilderness areas — adopted stricter interpretations of the act, they forbade signs, baby strollers, certain climbing tools and carts that hunters use to carry game.
As a result, the agencies have made these supposedly open recreational areas inaccessible and even dangerous, putting themselves in opposition to healthy and environmentally sound human-powered activities, the very thing Congress intended the Wilderness Act to promote.

For the full commentary, see:

TED STROLL. “Aw, Wilderness!.” The New York Times (Fri., August 27, 2010): A19.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated August 26, 2010.)

Obamacare Is Increasing Health Costs

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) The health-care overhaul enacted last spring won’t significantly change national health spending over the next decade compared with projections before the law was passed, according to government figures released Thursday.

The report by federal number-crunchers casts fresh doubt on Democrats’ argument that the health-care law would curb the sharp increase in costs over the long term, the second setback this week for one of the party’s biggest legislative achievements.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that insurance companies have proposed rate increases ranging from 1% to 9% nationwide that they attribute specifically to new health-law coverage mandates.

For the full story, see:
JANET ADAMY. “Health Outlays Still Seen Rising .” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., SEPTEMBER 9, 2010): A7.
(Note: the online version of the graph has the date SEPTEMBER 8, 2010.)

Cuban Health Care Checkup

(p. A17) . . . it’s a good time to check in on the state of the Cuban health-care system. That’s just what Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, does in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.
. . .
Slightly more than half of all Cuban physicians work overseas; taxed by the Cuban state at a 66% rate, many of them wind up defecting. Doctors who remain in the country earn about $25 a month. As a result, Ms. Garrett writes, they often take “jobs as taxi drivers or in hotels,” where they can make better money. As for the quality of the doctors, she notes that very few of those who manage to reach the U.S. can gain accreditation here, partly because of the language barrier, partly because of the “stark differences” in medical training. Typically, they wind up working as nurses.
As for the quality of medical treatment in Cuba, Ms. Garrett reports that hospital patients must arrive with their own syringes, towels and bed sheets. Women avoid gynecological exams “because they fear infection from unhygienic equipment and practices.” Rates of cervical cancer have doubled in the past 25 years as the use of Pap tests has fallen by 30%.
And while Cuba’s admirers love to advertise the country’s low infant mortality rate (at least according to the Castro regime’s dubious self-reporting) the flip-side has been a high rate of maternal mortality. “Most deaths,” Ms. Garrett writes, “occur during delivery or within the next 48 hours and are caused by uterine hemorrhage or postpartum sepsis.”

For the full commentary, see:
BRET STEPHENS. “Dr. Berwick and That Fabulous Cuban Health Care; The death march of progressive medicine.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JULY 13, 2010): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Reference to the Garrett article:
Garrett, Laurie A. “Castrocare in Crisis; Will Lifting the Embargo Make Things Worse?” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 61-73.

Feds’ Sugar Quotas Lead to More Demand for Obesity-Causing Corn Syrup

Source of graph: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below.

The federal government puts quotas on the amount of sugar that can be imported from abroad, with the result that U.S. consumers pay higher prices for sugar. One result, as taught in economics micro principles courses, is that demand increases for sugar substitutes, such as corn syrup.
Evidence is accumulating (see below) that corn syrup is worse for our health than sugar.
Michelle Obama is leading a drive to reduce obesity. If she is serious, she can begin by asking her husband to ask his congress to remove import quotas on sugar.

(p. 2A) Well-publicized research also has suggested that high fructose corn syrup poses an even greater threat of obesity and other health problems than regular table sugar.
. . .
Researchers at Princeton University made headlines earlier this year when they released the results of a study that found rats drinking a high fructose corn syrup beverage for six months showed abnormal weight gain and other factors indicating obesity. The study concluded that overconsumption of the sweetener “could very well be a major factor in the ‘obesity epidemic,’ which correlates with the upsurge in the use of HFCS.”
A related study found that rats drinking the high fructose corn syrup solution gained more weight than rats drinking a basic sucrose solution.
“The conclusion from that is that high fructose corn syrup and sucrose are not the same after all,” said Bart Hoebel, the professor who worked on the study.

For the full story, see:

Ross Boettcher and Joseph Morton. “Is Corn Syrup Slump Healthy? ConAgra, Farmers Divided.” Omaha World-Herald (Wednesday, July 26, 2010): 1A-2A.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 26, 2010 and has the title “Consumers sour on sugars.)

Reid on Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback: “He Got This for Himself; He Wanted It”

(p. 5A) WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week defended the now-defunct Nebraska Medicaid exemption that was tucked into the Senate health care bill as Reid sought the support of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

Nelson has said that he never asked for the exemption and that his goal all along was to provide relief for all states.
Tagged with the derisive moniker “Cornhusker kickback,” the arrangement quickly proved politically toxic.
. . .
Asked why he didn’t offer the same deal to every state from the start, Reid said, “Because I didn’t have it for everybody at that time. I thought I could get it as we moved along in the legislation, and I did.”
Van Susteren said: “You’re telling me that when Ben Nelson got that, when the two of you sat down together, you said, ‘Ben, we’ll do it this way. … Nebraska’s got it now, but after we get this passed we’re going to go for everybody?’ ” “No, no, no. He got this for himself. He wanted it,” Reid said.

For the full story, see:
JOSEPH MORTON. “Reid thought Nelson should boast of ‘kickback’; The Senate leader says it was a “terrific” Medicaid deal that all states now share.” Omaha World-Herald (Weds., April 7, 2010): 5A.
(Note: first ellipsis added; second ellipsis in original.)

After Health Care Plan, Are There Any Limits to What the Government Can Mandate?

(p. A10) As they constructed the requirement that Americans have health insurance, Democrats in Congress took pains to make their bill as constitutionally impregnable as possible.

But despite the health care law’s elaborate scaffolding, attorneys general and governors from 20 states, all but one of them Republicans, have now joined as confident litigants in a bid to topple its central pillar. In the process, they hope to present the Supreme Court with a landmark opportunity to define the limits of federal authority, perhaps for generations.
In the seven weeks since the legislation passed, at least a dozen lawsuits have been filed in federal courts to challenge it, according to the Justice Department. But the case that could carry the most weight, and may be on the fastest track in the most advantageous venue, is the one filed in Pensacola, Fla., by state officials, just minutes after President Obama signed the bill.
Some legal scholars, including some who normally lean to the left, believe the states have identified the law’s weak spot and devised a credible theory for eviscerating it.
The power of their argument lies in questioning whether Congress can regulate inactivity — in this case by levying a tax penalty on those who do not obtain health insurance. If so, they ask, what would theoretically prevent the government from mandating all manner of acts in the national interest, say regular exercise or buying an American car?
. . .
Jonathan Turley, who teaches at George Washington University Law School, said that if forced to bet, he would predict that the courts would uphold the health care law. But Mr. Turley said that the federal government’s case was far from open-and-shut, and that he found the arguments against the mandate compelling.
“There are few cases in the history of the court system that have a more significant assertion of authority by the government,” said Mr. Turley, a civil libertarian who acknowledged being strange bedfellows with the conservative theorists behind the lawsuit. “This case, more than any other, may give the court sticker shock in terms of its impact on federalism.”

For the full story, see:

KEVIN SACK. “Florida Suit Rated Best As Challenge to Care Law.” The New York Times (Tues., May 11, 2010): A10 & A11.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated May 10, 2010 and has the slightly different title “Florida Suit Poses a Challenge to Health Care Law.”)
(Note: ellipses added.)