Medicaid

Permalink:

Canada Has Big Single Party Healthcare System Problems

February 20, 2020

inMedicaid, Medicare, Medicine: Healthcare System, Stakeholder Mistrust

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

There are big problems in Canada that have been undisclosed by Democrats to the public in the United States.

There were two articles in American newspapers in 2011 that applaud the Canadian system.

Article 1. Debunking Canadian health care myths – The Denver Post .

Article 2. Everything you ever wanted to know about Canadian health care in one post. Washington Post.

Both articles are opinion articles and lack concrete evidence. The articles contain both misinformation and disinformation. The articles are in essence fake news designed to mislead the American public into believing that a single party payer system is the answer to America’s healthcare systems problem.

The articles are precisely why the American public should not and does not trust politicians and the traditional mass media.

The Fraser Institute is a well-respected Canadian think tank. Its research is considered accurate, with a libertarian slant.

Its 2011 report contradicts the statistics in both the Washington Post’s and the Denver Post’s articles about the Canadian government healthcare costs.

Article 1. “Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada’s.”

Article 2. “In 2009, Canada spent 11.4 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on health care, which puts it on the slightly higher end of OECD countries.”

This is not true according to the Fraser report. Six of ten Canadian provinces are on track to spend half of their revenues on health care, according to the Frazer Institute. To be specific, in 2011, health care spending consumed 50% GDP in Canada’s two largest provinces, Ontario and Quebec.

“Total federal, provincial and territorial government health spending has grown by 8.1 percent annually, while the national GDP in Canada rose by only 6.7 percent during the same period.”

The provincial governments have raised taxes and rationed care, while increasing patient wait times.

“Provincial drug plans have also more often refused to pay for most of the drugs that are certified as “safe and effective” by Health Canada.”

“Unsustainable rates of growth in health care spending crowd out the resources available for other purposes including education, public safety, and economic growth-enhancing tax relief.”

One has only to think about the Obama administration’s initial propaganda and the stunning reality we are facing presently.

The VA is now asking for additional funding to clear up its disaster.

The problem is entitlements are too expensive for governments. Entitlements do not work because governments cannot legislate behavior by directives. Individuals must be responsible for their health and healthcare dollars.

The other problem is government entitlement programs generate a large bureaucracy. The bureaucracy stimulates the development of inefficiencies and corruption. The new bureaucracy practically guarantees the failure of the entitlement.

The government never gets to the core problems that must be repaired when they try to construct a healthcare system that is efficient, cost effective and will benefit consumers.

The primary stakeholders are consumers of healthcare. Physicians are a close second. Secondary stakeholders are hospital systems, healthcare insurance companies, drug companies, malpractice insurance companies, and the government.

In order to Repair America’s Healthcare System, the government must focus on the primary stakeholders’ (patients’) needs and ways to satisfy those needs. The key is to set up a system that provides the primary stakeholders (consumers of healthcare) with incentives to maintain their health and conserve their healthcare dollars. This applies to healthy consumers as well as patients with chronic diseases.

Patients with chronic diseases must become professors of their disease. They must understand the latest techniques and use the latest tools to prevent the progression of their disease.

The healthcare system must help consumers be prosumers (productive consumers) of their own healthcare.

The Canadian system is not the answer to our healthcare system’s problems. The United States has a much larger population than Canada. The Canadian government cannot support its universal healthcare system.

How will we? Bernie Sander’s state of Vermont has abandoned its “Medicare for All” program.

The only way the portion of our population in favor of Medicare for All is going to believe it is unsustainable and destined for failure is going to experience its failure. It seems Bernie and his followers have little interest in learning from previous experience.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Please Read Between the Lines

May 9, 2019

inDisinformation and the healthcare system, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicine: Healthcare System

• Leave a comment

Please Read Between the Lines

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

Most of us have trained ourselves to speed read the daily newspaper. I have asked my readers to read between the lines of the New York Times’ healthcare articles. Most articles are not factual or half-truths. The articles are an opinion and express a confirmation bias.

“Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it.^[32] The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias#Confirmation_bias

Often, the application of confirmation bias is subtle. During speed reading, one’s opinion can be influenced by the presentation of confirmation bias. The bias is interpreted as fact because the “media is the message.”

The traditional media is losing its influence on our culture because peoples are realizing it is feeding us a confirmation bias that does not comport with reality.

The development of ideological manipulation is a science unto its own. The print media and television media are its masters. The traditional mainstream media leans towards the progressive left.

Conclusions should be backed by facts and not by opinion. All sides of an opinion should be presented. A huge problem is social science is imperfect. It does not use scientific principles utilizing reproducible double-blind studies.

Much of the traditional media sound like an echo chamber. It repeats the same soundbites over and over again rather than studying all the facts and reaching a logical conclusion.

In Carl Sandberg’s book, “The Prairie Years’ he said, If you tell a lie it over and over again it eventually becomes the truth.” If the confirmation bias is wrong, the public pays the price to correct it down the line.

Charles Blahous, a former Social Security and Medicare public trustee, has estimated that under Bernie Sanders’ plan of “Medicare for All”, the government could pay about 40 percent less than what private insurers now pay for medical care.

There are large discrepancies in these payments among experts. It has been estimated that there will be a 32.2 trillion-dollar deficit in a “Medicare for All” program over a ten-year period.

I would not believe the saving predicted by Chares Blahous. He was involved in creating a large deficit in our seniors’ Medicare program with the implication that Medicare would be financially viable.

It is predicted by a pro “Medicare for All” advocates, if this version of “Medicare for All” worked as planned, everybody would be insured, health care usage would rise sharply because it would be free without even a co-payment, and America would spend less overall on health care.

The math does not prove this theory. It does appeal to the notion that free is good.

This is a Democratic party pipedream to get more votes. I hope Americans do not fall for this false promise. The Democratic party has done this to taxpaying citizens of all ethnic groups over and over again in the past.

The New York Times has become a propaganda machine for progressives.

On March 3, 2019, David Brooks’ article headline washttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/medicare-for-all.html?searchResultPosition=1

David Brooks really didn’t mean it. He is just setting the reader up in order to express his confirmation bias.

“The Brits and Canadians I know certainly love their single-payer health care systems. If one of their politicians suggested they should switch to the American health care model, they’d throw him out the window.”

The reality is 80% of Brits and Canadian are not sick and do not interact with their healthcare system.

However, they have a false sense of security that they have good healthcare insurance. When they get sick or need emergency specialty care they realize the system is less than they thought it was. Both Canada and Britain have provider shortages, lack of access to care, long appointment waiting times and large financial deficits.

The defects in their healthcare systems can be followed in the local newspaper and not in the government’s press releases.

David Brooks goes on trying to convince us that “Medicare for All” is a good idea. Progressives have been telling us this since 1935 when Wilber Mills tried to ram a single party payer system down America’s throat in the midst of the great depression.

It didn’t work then, and I hope Americans do not fall for it now.

David Brooks says; “So single-payer health care, or in our case “Medicare for all,” is worth taking seriously.”

” I’ve just never understood how we get from here to there, how we transition from our current system to the one Bernie Sanders has proposed and Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and others have endorsed.”

He implies he doesn’t understand how it could work but says a lot of top-flight politicians have endorsed it. Therefore, they know more than he does.

“Despite differences between individual proposals, the broad outlines of Medicare for All are easy to grasp.”

“We’d take the money we’re spending on private health insurance and private health care, and we’d shift it over to the federal government through higher taxes in some form.”

I cannot think of a government-run agency that runs efficiently, without a large bureaucracy, red tape, or corruption. Inefficiency and corruption mean waste and higher cost.

“Since health care would be a public monopoly, the government could set prices and force health care providers to accept current Medicare payment rates.”

Price fixing has never worked. It leads to corruption

Medicare reimburses hospitals at 87 percent of costs while private insurance reimburses at 145 percent of costs.

The important question should be, why would the insurance companies pay a 58% premium when the healthcare insurance industry knows exactly what Medicare pays? The healthcare insurance industry knows exactly what the government pays because it does the administrative services for the government.

The answer is the healthcare insurance companies are competing with each other for providers, hospitals and patients.

On April 21, 2019, a New York Times headline read: “Hospitals Stand to Lose Billions Under ‘Medicare for All’

A reaction by a reader is who cares if hospitals lose billions. They have been ripping off consumers forever.

The headline immediately established the enemy. The first two paragraphs of the article confirm the enemy. It also sets up the liberal or independent reader to develop the same confirmation bias the New York Times has.

“For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance.”

“Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone’s gallbladder. The same hospital would get $7,400 from commercial insurers.

Yes, this pricing is too high in my opinion for both Medicare and private insurance. However, it is the result of insurance companies lobbying and financial reporting that permits the rise in premiums.

As hospital systems become less efficient, they hire more administrators and increase executive salaries.

Many hospitals say they spend their last penny on excessive overhead. If they cannot raise prices, they claim they would go out of business.

The progressives like Bernie Sanders then chime in with their talking points that the New York Times keeps repeating.

“If Medicare for all abolished private insurance and reduced rates to Medicare levels — at least 40 percent lower, by one estimate — there would most likely be significant changes throughout the health care industry, which makes up 18 percent of the nation’s economy and is one of the nation’s largest employers.”

The propaganda worked. The confirmation bias of “Medicare for All” is solid.

The only problem is, it will not reduce the cost of healthcare. This has been proven over and over again in many countries and in many of our government run agencies.

“The Sanders plan would increase federal spending by about $32.6 trillion over its first 10 years, according to a Mercatus Center study that Charles Blahous led.

This is the same Charles Blahous that said the cost would be 40% less. What does that study do to the confirmation bias the New York Times tried to promote? Which one is fake propaganda?

“Compare that with the Congressional Budget Office’s projection for the entire 2019 fiscal year budget, $4.4 trillion.”

The 32 trillion-dollar deficit over ten years is a fair estimate. The estimate could be correct if one simply examines the Medicare and Medicaid deficits. All we have to recall is Obamacare’s website. It was riddled with inefficiency and was a financial disaster.

Usually, as a result of cost overruns, there is a decrease in access to care. The glaring example is the VA Healthcare System.

“That kind of sticker shock is why a plan for single-payer in Vermont collapsed in 2014 and why Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected one in 2016.”

“It’s why legislators in California killed a single party payer system In the California plan, the taxes are upfront, the purported savings are down the line.”

All it takes is a little reading between the lines to realize that we are subjected to ideological manipulation. “The media is the message.”

The New York Times is supposed to be “the nation’s newspaper of record with all the news that is fit to print.” With the advent of the internet and social media, Americans have more information to decide on what is the truth. People now have the ability to examine multiple sides of an issue.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.  

Copywrite 2006-2019

Please have a friend subscribe

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

How Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Diamond Can Disrupt The Healthcare System

February 19, 2018

inConsumer Driven Health Care, Health Savings Accounts vs Medical Savings Accounts, Medicaid, Medicare

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Diamond should try this disruptive approach in their venture into healthcare reform.

All the other approaches that have been tried have not worked or have become unsustainable. Most of the approaches have been unfair to consumers and the majority of taxpaying Americans.

The only way to empower all the consumers in a healthcare system is to encourage them to become responsible for their health and healthcare dollars.

I believe it can only be accomplished by providing easily understandable financial incentives for consumers to save money for themselves.

Providing financial incentives to consumers to save money for themselves can be disruptive to the present models used to pay for medical services just as Amazon has been disruptive to retail sales.

The delivery of medical and surgical care has advanced tremendously in the last sixty years.

At the same time medical care has become unaffordable and the cost of healthcare has become unsustainable.

The incidence of obesity has risen every year. Over fifty percent of Americans are obese.

Obesity begets many chronic diseases and subsequently the complications of these diseases.

Physicians can treat these complications fairly well. However the treatment of chronic disease complications are costly.

How do you decrease the incidence of obesity in America?

Physicians must attack the core causes of obesity.

Among those causes are excess food intake, lack of daily exercise, mental depression, cultural milieu and/or a combination of all of the above.

The cure of obesity depends on the ability to eliminate these core drivers. Financial incentives can get patients involved in eliminating the core drivers of obesity.

The responsibility for obese patients’ healthcare depends on patients’ lifestyle, popular cultural milieu, and patient education.

In America, it is almost impossible to buy a meal in any level restaurant without excess calories.

How do you get people to be responsible for their health and healthcare dollars?

The one key element ignored by policy makers to decrease obesity is to give obese consumers of healthcare financial incentives to concentrate on trying to lose weight.

“Obamacare went in the wrong direction. It limits personal liability for their obesity. It does not promote personal responsibility

The only incentive Obamacare provided was the incentive to overuse the healthcare system.

This was especially true for patients on Medicaid. They had zero premiums and deductibles. The only deterrent to accessing medical care was physician availability.

Physicians refused to participate in Medicaid because of low professional reimbursement. Low reimbursement by the government was necessary because of the decreases in funding and participant overuse of the system.

Obamacare planned to cure the shortage of “medical providers” by increasing the number of “valid medical providers” who could bill on their own, such as nurse practitioners and certified physician assistants.

However, the defect there is that patients were not under the supervision of physicians engaged in their care. It ignores the patient physician relationship that is so important to effective medical care.

If Jeff Bezo, Warren Buffet and Jamie Diamond (BBD group) are serious about Repairing the Healthcare System for their employees as a nonprofit organization, they should consider my Ideal Medical Savings Account.

http://stanfeld.com/?s=My+Ideal+Medical+Savings+Account

The Ideal Medical Savings Accounts (MSA) are tax-sheltered accounts used to pay for non-catastrophic medical expenses. These non catastrophic medical expenses account for the bulk of the cost of medical care.

Money left from the Medical Savings Account at the end of the year is put into a consumer’s retirement account.

The MSA provides the financial incentive to not overuse the healthcare system.

Warren Buffet understands the money making potential of re-insurance. He is heavily invested in re-insurance companies.

If one of the BBD Groups employee’s gets sick and spends of all of his MSA money, reinsurance provides first dollar coverage for the illness.

The BBD Group could teach employees how to shop for price and value. Insurance companies are supposed to shop for value. However the shopping is never to the patient’s advantage. It is to the advantage of the insurance company.

“ Critics always claim this is unrealistic:

The claim is that patients are not smart enough to shop for price and value. 2. Are you supposed to shop around from the back of the ambulance?

The critics’ use the ambulance argument to eliminate the possibility of consumers using their own judgment to make price decisions.

Patients are smart enough to figure out which hospital they want to go to before they get into the ambulance.

Emergency care represents only 6% of health care expenditures.

“But emergency care represents only 6% of health expenditures.”

“For privately insured adults under 65, almost 60% of spending is on elective outpatient care. “

ttps://www.wsj.com/articles/the-health-reform-that-hasnt-been-tried-1507071808

The critics argument is that consumers do not know how to shop prices. Consumers are smarter than the critics think. It would be easy to teach consumers to shop prices.”

ttp://stanfeld.com/the-failure-of-the-republican-establishment-to-repeal-and-replace-obamacare/

“My Ideal Medical Saving Account provides that financial incentive to not overuse the healthcare system. All the articles about my ideal medical saving accounts are attached to this link.

http://stanfeld.com/?s=My+ideal+Medical+Savings+Accounts

“ Likewise, nearly 60% of Medicaid money goes to outpatient care.”

Medicaid patients also overuse the healthcare system.

Most Medicaid patients can understand the MSA’s financial incentive.

“ For the top 1% of spenders—a group responsible for more than a quarter of all health expenditures—a full 45% is outpatient.”

These patients can be identified as outliers and educational vehicles can be created to decrease this overuse of the system. It would save the re-insurance company a great deal of money.

In my opinion Medical Savings Account are better than Health Savings Accounts. Medical Savings Accounts take the money out of the healthcare insurance company’s hands and deliver it to consumers retirement accounts.

Both HSA’s and MSAs have the unique advantage of providing the financial incentive to for consumers to save money for themselves.

When people have savings to protect in HSAs, the cost of care drops without harmful effects on health.

The financial incentives decrease the overuse of the healthcare system.

“ According to a 2012 study in Health Affairs if even half of Americans with employer-sponsored insurance enrolled in this kind of coverage, U.S. health expenditures would fall by an estimated $57 billion a year.”

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20160204.950878/full/

My ideal Medical Savings Accounts provide an even a greater financial incentive and should decrease costs even further.

“ MSAs should be available to all Americans, including seniors on Medicare. Given that seniors use the most health care, motivating them to seek value is crucial to driving prices lower.”

MSAs should also apply to Medicaid recipients. The details for Medicaid recipients can be found in my article “My Ideal Medical Savings Accounts Is Democratic. “

The maximum contribution to MSAs should be raised to $6000 or $7000 dollars. If a consumer gets sick and experiences a cost of more that $6000 he should receive 100% (first dollar) coverage through the BBD group’s provided reinsurance policy. A reinsurance policy would cost the BBD Group less than $6000 a year.

The total insurance package to BBG Group employees should cost the BBD Group $12,000 rather than the present cost of $18,000.

BBD is a self insured association. The association has elimated the multiple middlemen in the present healthcare system.

When a person with an MSA dies, the funds should be allowed to roll over tax-free to surviving family members.

This financial incentive should be included in My Ideal Medical Savings Account.

“The information that patients require to assess value must be made more transparent.

2014 study on magnetic resonance imaging showed that price-transparency programs reduced costs by 18.7%.”

A consumer driven system would force providers to compete for patients. Information on price could easily be provided to consumers by the government and the healthcare insurance industry.

At present healthcare prices are not transparent. Consumers are not motivated to shop prices. The BBD Groups leverage with its employees would force transparency.

“The most compelling motivation for doctors and hospitals to post rates would be knowing that they are competing for price-conscious patients empowered with control of their own money.”

In this age of technology and rapid communication telemedicine should be promoted and paid for. One way to do it is to permit physicians to practice telemedicine across state lines. It would supply instant access to expertize at an affordable cost.

Everything possible should be done to encourage consumer responsibility and provider competition.

The present tax code does the opposite. Consumers in-group plans provided by large and small corporations receive their healthcare insurance from the corporation with tax-free dollars.

The larger the corporation the more leverage the corporation has for negotiating the premiums with the healthcare insurance companies.

The BBD Groups volume of consumers would have tremendous leverage with providers.

The younger and healthier the corporate employees are the lower the premiums.

The formation of associations with large memberships of all ages would lower the cost of healthcare. Large associations would have great leverage in negotiating price with providers. They would also spread the risk.

Self- insured associations such as the BBD Group would also spread the risk and lower the cost.

Tax deductibility must be given to these “individual” insurance policy holders and association policy holders so they are, in reality, paying for healthcare insurance with pre-tax dollars the same as the corporate group plan policy holders.

These simple changes in the law would result in an affordable healthcare system that was market driven by consumers. The changes would force providers and the healthcare insurance industry to become competitive.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

The Republican Establishment’s Failure

July 20, 2017

inChronic Disese Management, Consumer Driven Health Care, Medicaid, Medicine: Healthcare System

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

I am coming to the conclusion that the Republican establishment does not want to Repair the Healthcare System.

The Republican establishment has the same goal as the Democratic establishment.

Recently the mainstream media is saying that a single party payer system is looking good.

Neither party has any interest is having consumers control their healthcare dollars. It looks as if both parties want the government to control the consumer’s healthcare dollars.

All the politicians ignore the fact that government control is unaffordable. It also ends up not working.

The best example is the bureaucratic VA Hospital System and its system wide corruption.

A reader wrote:

“I have read your last blog post carefully and agree with many of the points put forward but there is a glaring omission.”

“How are patients supposed to be responsible for their healthcare dollars when there is absolutely no transparency and no consistency in pricing.”

The lack of transparency is a major defect in our present healthcare system.

Only 20% of consumers use the healthcare system at any one time. Eighty percent of the consumers have not run into the lack of transparency problem in the healthcare system.

Most consumers do not care about transparency because they have first dollar coverage provided by their employer. They think their medical care is free. They believe they have excellent healthcare insurance.

President Obama took care of that notion with Obamacare. The defective structure of Obamacare caused healthcare insurance premiums and deductibles to skyrocket. First dollar healthcare insurance became too expensive for most employers.

Employers stopped providing first dollar coverage. Middle class employees are now noticing that out of pocket expenses have made their healthcare insurance unaffordable. Consumers have tried to compare prices of competitive providers. They have discovered that it is impossible!

Consumers are becoming aware of the lack of transparency. They have been astonished by this lack of transparency.

There is nothing in the new Republican bill that addresses Republican politicians’ awareness that the lack of transparency is a major defect in the healthcare system.

The lack of transparency is only one of the major defects in our healthcare system.

There is nothing in the Republican bill that speaks to the consumers’ responsibility for their health and healthcare dollars. Consumer driven healthcare is completely ignored.

There is nothing in the bill that addresses effective tort reform. The Massachusetts Medical Society survey showed that defensive testing to avoid lawsuits costs the healthcare system between $250 billion to $700 billion dollars a year.

The lack of the development of systems of care for chronic diseases cost another $700 billion dollars a year that our healthcare system does not address. There is nothing in the bill that emphasizes this very important defect in the healthcare system.

The Republican establishment thinks consumers are too stupid to take care of themselves.

The mainstream media likes to tell us that people love entitlements. The public does not want to give up these entitlements.

My question is how come less than 9 million people signed up for Obamacare’s individual healthcare plans last year if they love entitlements?

It is because they cannot afford to buy the health exchange insurance even though 85% of the premiums of those 9 million consumers are subsided by the government. Their high deductibles are not subsidized.

The Republicans are going claim they are promoting health savings accounts. The public is not told the amount of money they can put into a health savings account or whether it will provide first dollar coverage over that amount if they get sick.

There is no financial incentive for consumers to be responsible for their healthcare or their healthcare dollars.

My Ideal Medical Saving Account is a much better idea.

These are only a few of the major defects in the Republican establishment’s concept to fix the healthcare system.

President Obama did some of the awful things to Obamacare through rules and regulations after certain vested interests complained about the law. Obamacare’s rules and regulations have to be eliminated

There were crony waivers that would make one’s blood boil. In fact, elected congressional members got the best exemptions.

It is becoming apparent that congress doesn’t want to fix the healthcare system for the majority of Americans. The congressional establishment wants to control consumers.

Socialism does not work!

Our political establishment does not tell us about the economic result in other countrys’ single party payer universal healthcare systems.

We don’t have to go to other countries. We only have to go to the indigent areas in California were everyone is covered by Medicaid.

The Republican establishment needs to get off the stick before all of them are kicked out of congress.

Just imagine the healthcare systems savings if every consumer were empowered to shop for the best healthcare at the best price.

The result would be a free market healthcare system in which competition would cleanse the system and make it affordable to everyone.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.

Please have a friend subscribe

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

When Its Not Your Money

October 25, 2016

inMedicaid, Medicine: Healthcare System

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

No one should be surprised at the money wasted by federal government programs. President Obama has been the biggest offender of wasting taxpayers’ money in my lifetime.

He increased the national debt from 10 trillion to 20 trillion dollars.

The volume of regulations, the creation of bureaucratic agencies, bureaucratic czars and the lack of enforcement of existing laws have served to create much of this waste.

However the public is unaware of the amount of taxpayers’ dollars spent because of the lack of government transparency. Congress ought to be standing on every mountain screaming about the waste.

I have observed the opposite. All we have to do is remember how congress marginalized Tom Coburn’s efforts to eliminate waste by eliminating duplication.

Obamacare is no exception to immeasurable waste while it destroys the healthcare system.

Improper payments for Obamacare are soaring because of a defective law and government inefficiency and incompetence.

A study by HHS shows that the improper payment rate for Medicaid will be 11.5% for 2016. It means that more than one out of every 10 dollars spent is wasted on either fraud, errors in payment or accounting inaccuracy.

The pre-Obamacare improper payment rate was 5.8% or one in 20 dollars spent. In 2015 it was reported that the improper payment rate was 9.7%.

This is the waste rate for only 10 million people added to the Medicaid roles.

I would suspect all three reports are an underestimate of the real improper payment rates.

The actual dollar amounts of improper payment rates are increasing because Obamacare has expanded Medicaid enrollment.

As the number of Medicaid recipients increase the wasted dollars will increase.

With President Obama’s new executive order to expand the eligibility of illegal immigrants for Medicaid coverage, the rate and amount of dollars improperly deployed will skyrocket.

To my amazement a lot of intelligent people are ignoring this simple arithmetic.

Medicaid eligibility is increasing rapidly. In 2015 Medicaid enrollment increased by 13.8%. One in five Americans as well as all illegal immigrants are entitled to Medicaid coverage.

I guessed that HHS would blame physicians for the waste. I was correct.

Medicaid reimbursement is so low that physicians have figured out ways to see more patients per day. They are using physician extenders extensively.

These physicians are accused of running Medicaid mills. They are accused of Medicaid fraud.

Then these physicians are put through a costly audit and are penalized. Many get fined for fraud and abuse due to overbilling.

There are many other reasons for this waste. Most important is HHS’ lack of proper diligence in administering the program. It smacks of reasons similar to the VA Healthcare System scandals.

“There’s no particular reason the error rate should be spiraling upward other than overwhelming incompetence.”

On closer look, home health agencies are probably the biggest abuser along with an ineffective bureaucracy that becomes more ineffective as the program grows.

“In recent audits of Medicaid in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and New Jersey, the GAO uncovered 50 dead people who recouped at least $9.6 million in benefits after they died; 47 providers who registered foreign addresses as their location of service in places such as Saudi Arabia; and $448 million bestowed on 199,000 beneficiaries with fake Social Security numbers—12,500 of which had never been issued by the Social Security Administration.”

The problem is not discussed by the traditional mass media. The public has no idea this is occurring.

Medicaid is a single party payer system completely controlled by the government. Patients have no control over which doctors they will see for an illness.

Medicaid is another clear example of the lack of concern or incompetence by government agencies for spending other peoples’ money.

Even worse, the system does not work for patients or physicians. Patients are the most important stakeholders in the healthcare system. They are treated like a commodity.

Medicaid is inefficient and costly.

Twenty percent of our population is now in this system. There is limited access to care and rationing of care.

There is a better way. It is a consumer driven healthcare system using my ideal medical saving account.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

Please have a friend subscribe

Pre-Election Obama Administration Lies | Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE
Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

If You Tell A Lie

October 20, 2016

inMedicaid, Medicare, Medicine: Healthcare System, Politicians,Healthcare and Vested Interests, Stakeholder Mistrust

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

If you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth. President Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton keep telling the American public that there are 20 million new Obamacare enrollees.

Obamacare advocates believe that Obamacare provided healthcare insurance for 20 million people who did not have healthcare insurance before Obamacare.

These Obamacare advocates have little understanding of the details of this lie. They usually react negatively when I tell them the 20 million new enrollee figure is a lie.

Republicans do not pick this up and call Democrats out about this lie. Perhaps they have no understanding of what is going on.

The lie then becomes the truth.

I follow Charles Gabbe at http://acasignups.net. Charles Gabbe is pro Obamacare. He publishes daily and weekly statistics as well as news in general about Obamacare’s progress and enrollment.

His numbers come from government sources. His numbers are very different than the numbers President Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton are announcing.

The Obama administration continually manipulates the enrollment figures in order to give the impression that Obamacare has been successful.

President Obama continuously lies about the enrollment figures.

Obamacare has been a total failure because of its structure.

On December 9, 2015 ACAsignups.net published these enrollment numbers for 2016.

“ACAsignups.net publishes government release enrollment numbers weekly. These are the December 9th numbers.

Confirmed 2016 Exchange QHPs: 3,260,356 as of 12/09/15 

Estimated 2016 Exchange QHPs: 4.73M as of 12/09/15 (3.60M via HCgov)

Projected Exchange QHPs: 5.76M by 12/12/15 (4.34M via HC.Gov)

Projected #OE3 QHP Selections: 14.70M nationally (11.23M via HC.gov)

Projected #OE3 QHP Selections by State

http://acasignups.net

Maybe 9 million signed up for Obamacare last year. (2015)

What were the 12/09/14 enrollee numbers with 3 weeks to go until January 1, 2015?

Christmas to New Years consumes one week of enrollment. Holiday shopping will consume the other two weeks.

Why did the government reduce the expected enrollment to 5 million when enrollment was 9 million last year (2016)?

Does the Obama administration expect 4 million people to drop out of Obamacare because it is too expensive?

How did the Obama administration’s data given to the CBO cause the CBO to predict an enrollment of 21 million enrollees for 2016?

The 2016 Obamacare enrollment figures barely touch 10 million, not 20 million.

What is enrollment going to be when most of the major insurance companies have dropped out of the health insurance exchanges?

What is enrollment going to be when 18 of the 22 Obama administration created State Co-Ops have gone bankrupt?

President Obama and his administration have mislead Americans about the exact number of enrollees since the very beginning of the first enrollment period starting October 1, 2013. The first enrollment was delayed until November 1, 2013 and extended 6 months.

The American public has been mislead about:

The disastrous website development, reason for website crashes and cost of website development.
The exact number of enrollees the first year. (9.5 million corrected to 8 million and then re-corrected to 6.8 million)
An additional correction that resulted in another decrease of an additional 800,000 enrollees losing Obamacare insurance. The government belatedly discovered these 800,000 were ineligible for subsidies.
Decreasing the original predicted enrollees for 2015 from 13.5 million to 9.5 million.
The change in the start of enrollment from October 1, 2014 to November 15th to avoid discussion of enrollment around the time of the November 2014 elections.
Extending the 2014 enrollment 6 months.
Extending enrollment for 2015 for one to three months.
Finally, in 2015 announcing the back end of the website’s ability to send information to the IRS was still not complete.
Rehiring CGI, the same Canadian company that built the disastrous healthcare.gov, to fix the back end of the website. A company’s employee is a friend of Michelle Obama.
Discovering that 1.2 million enrollees were counted that should not have been because they got dental insurance instead of healthcare insurance bringing the number of enrollees down from a recalculated 8 million to 6.8 million enrollees for 2014.
Announcing that 11.5 million people have enrolled for 2015 (these numbers seemed shaking at the time of enrollment. It seemed to be closer to 9.5 million or less.)
Announcing that the group market Obamacare insurance enrollment is being delayed a year or two while the mandate penalty for employers was to start January 1,2015.

Along the way I got the feeling that none of the enrollment numbers could be trusted. HHS and CMS kept modifying and lowering them.

The Obama administration keeps telling American how great the enrollment is and that Obamacare is a success.

However, we are told only ten million enrollees had Obamacare insurance in 2016.

Eighty five percent of those on Obamacare are receiving subsidies so the premiums are affordable. These subsidized recipients still cannot afford the deductibles.

The remaining 15% enrollees have a pre-existing illness. They cannot find private insurance to buy.

What about the 330 million people who might have subpar healthcare insurance? How many employers might discontinue employee insurance?

After five years with all the new Obamacare taxes, I would not call Obamacare a successful healthcare reform program.

All of these enrollees are in the individual insurance market. These numbers do not include the group insurance market.

14 million people in the individual market lost their healthcare insurance pre Obamacare.

10 million gained insurance on the healthcare insurance exchanges in 2016. There is a net decrease of 4 million individuals that is not discussed by the Obama administration or the traditional mass media.

Many of the state healthcare insurance exchanges have failed.

Eighteen of the 22 state insurance co-ops have failed so far.

An unknown number of enrollees in 2014 did not re-enroll in 2015 because of the loss of the subsidy.

Other enrollees did not sign up again because they could not afford the high deductible.

At the end of 2015 enrollment the Obama administration announced that 11.5 million people were enrolled.

On March 16, 2015 the administration said about 16.4 million people have gained health insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act became law nearly five years ago.

Please notice the tricky wording. The Obama administration is counting children under 26 that now can be included in their parents’ group insurance plans and the additional Medicaid recipients added by some states.

The count is not only the people who enrolled in Obamacare through the healthcare insurance exchanges.

The discussion should be about the success of the healthcare insurance exchanges not the increase in Medicaid coverage.

The 2014 enrollment figures as of March 18, 2015 were also inflated. It is noteworthy than the Medicaid/CHIP estimate was 14.1 M. It is down to 10 million in 2016.

Confirmed Exchange QHPs: 11,699,473 as of 3/18/15

Estimated: 11.95M (9.06M via HCgov) as of 3/18/15

Estimated ACA Policy Enrollment: 33.1M (10.46M Exchange QHPs, 8.20M OFF-Exchange QHPs, 330K SHOP, 14.1M Medicaid/CHIP)

http://acasignups.net

Written into the law is that only state healthcare exchanges can provide subsidies not the federal health exchanges.

President Obama has not asked congress to rewrite the law’s provision.

This was another example of executive overreach of power by President Obama.

It looks as if President Obama cannot help himself from trying to manipulate the American public.

Republicans have not pointed out all this manipulation to the voting public.

I believe the public has figured out the manipulation.

Hillary Clinton has promised she will expand Obamacare. Why expand a failed program?

Her unspoken goal is to institute a single party payer system. A single party payer system will also be unsustainable.

There is a better way!

It is a consumer driven healthcare system with my ideal medical saving account.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.

Please have a friend subscribe

Smithf821 • October 25, 2016

You are my inspiration , I have few web logs and very sporadically run out from to brand. efkedgkaeaeecagd
Smithf912 • October 25, 2016

Great, thanks for sharing this article. Really Cool. fcagbdcdgcedkkkd
Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

The New Medicaid

June 29, 2015

inMedicaid, Medicine: Healthcare System, Politicians,Healthcare and Vested Interests, Stakeholder Abuse of the Healthcare System

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

President Obama let the regulation to increase Medicaid reimbursements to the level of Medicare reimbursement expire because it failed to accomplish its goal. The goal was to get more physicians to accept Medicaid.

The Obama administration has proposed new federal regulations for Medicaid managed-care plans.

These regulations pledge the program's beneficiaries will have adequate access to a doctor. The pilot programs for these new regulations have been completed.

Two years ago six states made a deal with the Obama administration. Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania were willing to cover families earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level as long as it was on the states' terms.

Each state relies on private insurers, which are required to come up with qualified health plansthat meet the standards of Obamacare.

While Medicaid plan “purchasers” are almost totally subsidized, five of six states require some of these very low-income beneficiaries to make financial contributions that range as high as 2% of their income.

The idea is that everyone has some skin in the game. The plans also focus on setting up health savings accounts for beneficiaries and establishing wellness programs.

“While these are common features in many of today's corporate-sponsored plans (with only limited evidence to support claims that “more skin in the game” and wellness incentives hold down costs), these elements discourage enrollment by people who are scrambling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.”

I think the Obama administration is making another complicated mistake. There is not enough incentive in the program for Medicaid patients to try to save money for the government.

There is not enough incentive for physicians to sign up to accept Medicaid.

The Obama administration is using surveys of Medicaid beneficiaries.

“Their response is not much different from the perceptions of Medicare beneficiaries and the privately insured.”

“But closer examination, experts say, reveals that beneficiaries' satisfaction is boosted by the additional access that comes from visiting hospital emergency departments and government-subsidized community health centers.”

The Obama administration now proposes to hold Medicaid managed-care plans to the network adequacy of Medicare Advantage and Exchange Plans.

The six states, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, have been doing this along with offering higher-than-Medicaid rates to primary-care physicians to attract more of them to their networks.

A reduction in cost starts by managing patients in ways that encourage them to visit the doctor's office instead of the Emergency Department.

It does not have an element of encouraging patient responsibility or providing indigent patients with financial incentives to be financially responsible for their health or health care.

The same mistake is made over and over again. It is focused on providing patients healthcare coverage. The Medicaid Advantage healthcare coverage plans make Medicaid patients dependent on the government. It does not provide incentives for Medicaid patients to be responsible for themselves.

The healthcare insurance companies are planning to have a field day at the expense of the Obama administration. It seems like the Obama administration does not care how much the new plan costs.

The Obama administration is overlooking the important point. Healthcare coverage cannot work as long as patients are dependent on the government. Patients must be given financial incentives to be responsible for themselves.

All of the healthcare insurance companies that participate in the government supported medical insurance plans are aware of the impending changes in Medicaid.

These insurance companies bid for the administrative services contracts in each state.

The government makes the rules for engagement but the individual healthcare insurance companies bid for the contract.

It is totally logical for all the healthcare insurance companies attempted to merge. If these insurance companies were permitted to merge it would make Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance unaffordable to all.

The healthcare insurance industry sets the prices for administrative services.

The price increases would lead to citizen protest. It would lead to total government takeover of the healthcare system and a single party payer system.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/22/investing/health-insurers-mergers-cigna-anthem/

The CMS has released a sweeping proposed rule (PDF) intended to modernize the regulation of Medicaid managed-care plans.

CMS plans call for health plans to dedicate a minimum portion of the rates they receive toward medical services, a threshold known as a medical loss ratio.

At the very last minute the Obama administration is proposing an 85% threshold for Medicaid managed-care plans, the same as the government’s regulations for large group plans in the private market.

The formula is MLR= incurred expenses /premiums earned.

Private insurance and Medicare are subject to an 85% MLR. It means that 85% of the premiums earned must go to direct medical care. Seventy five percent means only 75% must go to direct medical care and 25% can go to expenses as opposed to 15%.

The healthcare insurance industry also defines direct medial care expenses such as network formation, insurance salesmen’s commissions and other into the direct medical care column.

As of 2015, plans doing business with Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program are the only health plans that aren't subject to an MLR.

The Medical/Loss ratio is one large source of profit to the healthcare insurance industry for two reasons.

Each expense allowed goes into the incurred claims column. The insurance industry builds a cost plus profit into each expense.

The more required services (Obamacare requirements) rendered by that insurance company the more fee for those services which include profit goes into the incurred claims column.
Each expense allowed goes into the incurred claims column. The insurance industry builds a cost plus profit into each expense.
The more premiums collected the more goes into expenses in the incurred claims column.
The lower the percentage (85% to 75%) of the Medical/ Loss Ratio profit to the healthcare insurance company.

“An arbitrary cap on health plans' administrative costs could undermine many of the critical services—beyond medical care—that make a difference in improving health outcomes for beneficiaries, such as transportation to and from appointments, social services, and more,” interim AHIP CEO Dan Durham said in a statement."

The MLR that the CMS has proposed for Medicaid plans is a suggestion rather than an enforceable mandate.

Medicaid managed-care enrollment has soared by 48% to 46 million beneficiaries over the past four years, according to consulting firm Avalere Health. By the end of this year, Avalere estimates that 73% of Medicaid beneficiaries will receive services through managed-care plans.

"This proposal will better align regulations and best practices to other health insurance programs, including the private market and Medicare Advantage plans, to strengthen federal and state efforts at providing quality, coordinated care to millions of Americans with Medicaid or CHIP insurance coverage.”

America's Health Insurance Plans immediately said applying an MLR to Medicaid managed care fails to reflect much of what these managed care plans do to hold down costs.

In essence the new Medicaid proposal will also fail if the healthcare insurance industry merges and the impending fight over the MLR continues.

The cost of healthcare insurance will increase for the private sector, Medicare and Medicaid.

The fault lies in President Obama's lack of understanding in who should drive the healthcare system. Consumers should drive the healthcare system not the government.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

Please have a friend subscribe

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Medicaid Extortion

May 17, 2015

inDisinformation and the healthcare system, Medicaid, Medicine: Healthcare System, Politicians,Healthcare and Vested Interests

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

This topic is obscure. It is important because it is a defense of states rights opposed to federal control. The Obama administration wants to control states decisions through the use of subsidies

I will try to make the issue as clear as possible.

The Obama administration has threatened to decrease funding of Medicaid in states (Florida, Texas and other states) that have declined to expand their Medicaid program.

The reason these states have declined to expand Medicaid is because at the end of two years these states would be stuck with increased costs they cannot afford to pay.

The Obama administration volunteered to pay all expenses for the first two years. When states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare are forced to raise taxes and increase their budget deficit, the people in those states will scream. The state will be hurt economically.

Obamacare and the state health insurance exchanges were designed to shift the financial responsibility for Medicaid from the federal government to the states. This action will drive the state budget deficits higher while slightly decreasing the federal deficit.

The federal government can print money. State governments cannot. State governments are required to have a balanced budget or an excess. A budget excess would result in lower state income taxes.

In June of 2012 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act by changing the “individual mandate” penalty for non-compliance to an individual tax.

I thought the court decision was wrong.

Americans must abide by the Supreme Court’s decision. This part of the decision captured the most media attention.

At the same time the Supreme Court struck down the Obamacare provision that let the federal government withhold Medicaid funding from any state that did not expand its Medicaid program or form a state insurance exchange as prescribed in the law.

“This coercion of state governments—a “gun to the head,” as Chief Justice John Roberts put it—was a blatant violation of the constitutional principle of federalism.”

The traditional mainstream media did not advertise this ruling widely. Many do not fully appreciate the significance of the ruling.

It is a decision in favor of states rights.

The traditional media has criticized the governors of Texas, Florida an eight other state governors that did not set up state health insurance exchanges. The criticism was that those states were wasting billions in federal funding.

In reality the ruling was a major blow to Obamacare. These governors know that Medicaid is a failed entitlement. All Obamacare did was expand Medicaid coverage to cover everyone earning less than 138% of the federal poverty level.

They knew they will be stuck with the cost overruns from a failed entitlement that did not fix the healthcare system. The ultimate result would raise taxes. These state were looking for a healthcare coverage program that would work and be budget neutral. Medicaid has not been budget neutral.

Everyone above 138% of the federal poverty level income threshold would get a subsidy to buy private coverage through the state health insurance exchanges.

The Supreme Court’s ruling has not bothered President Obama. He has a plan to get around that ruling. He has threatened to withhold more than $1 billion in Medicaid funds due the state of Florida under a waiver program first approved in 2005.

President Obama is threatening to cancel a five-year $29 billion dollar Medicaid waiver approved in 2011 for Texas.

Florida’s governor Rick Scott is suing the federal government for threatening to withhold that $1 billion. Greg Abbott Texas’ present governor will probably sue the federal government next. It will once more go to the Supreme Court.

The Obama administration is trying to get around the Supreme Court’s ruling .The scheme is called “cooperative federalism”. Congress taxes a particular state’s residents. Congress then offers to give some of the revenue back to the state in exchange for that state adopting federal policies that the state had heretofore declined to adopt on its own.

President Obama is going to have a few problems. He needs a Democratic controlled Congress to pass the law to tax some states.

Medicaid payments are complex and vary from state to state. In Florida and Texas, Medicaid waivers allow these states to experiment with new forms of Medicaid coverage.

It is a smart move because Medicaid is a failed entitlement that needs a paradigm shift or a new system. States are supposed to be able to experiment with new ideas using these waivers..

“States must get federal approval for their waivers, and although technically most are limited to five years, in practice they can be renewed or extended indefinitely. Some state waivers are decades old.”

Florida and Texas have waivers and get federal funding to pay for uncompensated care payment to hospitals treating Medicaid patients and the uninsured.

The Obama administration informed Florida and Texas that expansion of Medicaid “would reduce the need for uncompensated care in the state and therefore he would link the waiver to expansion of Medicaid. If a state did not accept Medicaid expansion it might endanger the renewal of its waiver.

This sounds like extortion to me. I think Governors Scott and Abbott believe it sounds like too.

Chief Justice Roberts noted in the court’s ruling that Medicaid expansion under Obamacare “accomplishes a shift in kind, not merely degree.

“ Medicaid “is no longer a program to care for the neediest among us, but rather an element of a comprehensive national plan to provide universal health insurance coverage run by the federal government. ”

The Supreme Court found the conditions on federal funding of Medicaid to be coercive .

When federal funds with conditions attached comprise such a large portion of a state’s budget, states do not really have any choice but to comply to the federal government’s wishes.

States will find themselves unprotected from coercion by the federal government once they enter into the “cooperative federalism” scheme that President Obama and his administration concocted to bypass the Supreme Court’s ruling.

This example represents another trick play by President Obama and his administration in order to control and limit states’ rights.

I believe Chief Justice John Roberts understands this and the court will rule against the Obama administration.

However, the Obama administration’s threat will result in a huge waste of taxpayers’ dollars at both the state and federal level.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone

Please have a friend subscribe

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Simple, Viable Republican Alternatives To Obamacare

April 12, 2015

inChronic Disese Management, Consumer Driven Health Care, Disinformation and the healthcare system, Health Savings Accounts vs Medical Savings Accounts, Healthcare Insurance Industry, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicine: Healthcare System, Politicians,Healthcare and Vested Interests, Stakeholder Mistrust, Universal Healthcare

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

There are many simple and viable alternatives to Obamacare which Republicans should start considering.

Republicans should seriously consider My Ideal Medical Savings Account as an alterative to Obamacare. It is logical, simple, does not require a large complicated infrastructure and aligns all the stakeholders’ incentives.

It is easy for consumers to understand.

Consumers want to have choices. The dysfunction of our healthcare system has gotten to the point where most consumers don’t have a choice. Consumers simply do not know they lost their freedom of choice and access to care until they get sick.

Consumers think they have adequate healthcare coverage until they get sick. Only 20% of the population gets sick.

The other 80% of the population refuses to think about the problem.

When they do experience illness, the dysfunction in the healthcare system makes them furious. They want to blame someone. Physicians are usually the targets of their frustration.

Most physicians are trapped in a situation that causes them to fight for their own survival for all the reasons I have previously enumerated. This creates a more dysfunctional healthcare system.

All the stakeholders fight for their own vested interests. These vested interests have become misaligned. The vested interest of the government is to control of the system and decrease its costs.

Costs cannot be controlled by regulations without consumer involvement. Consumers of healthcare must understand the effectiveness of their care is dependent on their involvement in their own medical care.

Consumers’ adherence to treatment is a key component in the effectiveness of medical care.

Medical costs cannot be controlled by government price fixing.

Medical costs cannot be controlled by government restrictions to access of care. Consumers will become sicker resulting in a higher cost illness.

Consumers must be empowered to be intelligent, motivated and responsible consumers of medical care. Only then can healthcare costs be controlled.

A functional healthcare system must provide financial incentives to consumers in order for them to want to be empowered to control costs. Consumers should not be dependent on the government to control costs.

The government must repair the actuary and accounting rules of the healthcare insurance industry. Insurance reserves should not be scored as a loss to justify premium increases.

The healthcare insurance industry takes 40 cents off the top of every insurance dollar that is spent. Consumers with both private insurance and government insurance are only getting 60 cents value for every healthcare dollar spent. The healthcare industry is allowed to do some strange accounting with their required reserves.

If this accounting method were repaired, premium costs would decrease.

Effective malpractice reform would result in a significant decrease in healthcare costs. The Obama administration refuses to believe tort reform is needed.

Many of the rules written into Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid are so screwy they defy common sense and penalize consumers. One glaring rule is Medicare permitting hospitals to admit Medicare patients to the hospital for observation for 48 hours.

Medicare does not pay for Observation admissions. Patients have to pay out of pocket for these admissions.

Consumers must become aware of these screwy rules and protest them. These rules have been written by the Obama administration to save the government money. These rules penalize patients the government professes to help.

Consumers are the only stakeholders that can motivate President Obama and congress to fix the significant points of waste in the healthcare system. Consumers have the power to vote.

I do not believe that President Obama has an interest in repairing the healthcare system. All of his actions signify that he wants the healthcare system to fail. After it fails people will beg the government to completely take over and have a single party payer.

Does anyone trust the government to take over our most valuable asset, our healthcare?

The government take over will also fail because dependent consumers will figure out how to game the system just as food stamp recipient have figured out how to game that inefficient system.

The goal of a sincere administration and congress is to figure out how to motivate consumers to be “PROSUMERS” (productive consumer) with an economic interest in the healthcare system.

Airlines, banks, bookstores, entertainment venues have all figured it out. Why can’t the government help consumers figure it out?

My blog entitled “My Ideal Medical Saving Account Is Democratic” presents a consumer driven healthcare formula. It gives every socioeconomic group the opportunity to be an effective “Prosumer”.

It gives all Prosumers the incentive to be responsible for their health and healthcare dollars.

Below is the blog My Ideal Medical Savings Account Is Democratic!

My Ideal Medical Savings Account Is Democratic!

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

A reader sent this comment; “My Ideal Medical Savings Account (MSA) “was not democratic and leads to restriction of medical care for the less fortunate.'

This comment is totally incorrect. I suspect the comment came from a person who has “an entitlements are good mentality.”

I believe that incentives are good. They lead to innovation. Innovation leads to better ideas.

Healthcare entitlement leads to ever increasing costs, stagnation, restrict freedom of choice and decrease in access to care.

The excellent example of increasing costs, decreasing choice, and decreasing access to care is Medicaid.

The fact that someone is covered by healthcare coverage does not mean they have access to medical care.

I have written extensively about the virtues of My Ideal Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs). They are different than Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

HSAs put money not spent in a trust for future healthcare expenses. MSAs take the money out of play for healthcare expenses. MSAs provide a trust fund for the consumer’s retirement.

MSAs provide added incentives over HSAs to obtain and maintain good health. Obesity is a major factor in the onset of chronic diseases. Consumers must be motivated to avoid obesity to maintain good health. MSAs can provide that incentive.

The MSA’s can replace every form of health insurance at a reduced cost. It limits the risk to the healthcare insurance industry while providing consumers with choice.

This would result in competition among healthcare providers. Competition would bring down the cost of healthcare.

Some people might not like MSA’s because they are liberating. They provide consumers of healthcare with freedom of choice. They also give consumers the opportunity to be responsible for their healthcare dollars while providing them with incentives to take care of their health.

MSAs could be used for private insurance purchasers, group insurance plans, employer self- insurance plans, State Funded self-insurance plans and Medicare and Medicaid.

In each case the funding source is different. The cost of the high deductible insurance is low because the risk is low.

If it were a $6,000 deductible MSA, the first $6,000 would be placed in a trust for the consumer. Whatever they did not spend would go into a retirement trust. If they spent over $6,000 they would receive first dollar healthcare insurance coverage. Their trust would obviously receive no money that year.

The incentive would be for consumers to take care of their health so they do not get sick and end up in an expensive emergency room.

If a person had a chronic illness such as asthma, Diabetes Mellitus, or heart disease with a tendency to congestive heart failure and ended up in the emergency room they would use up their $6,000.

If they took care of themselves by spending $3,000 of their $6,000 trust their funding source could afford to give their trust a $1500 reward. The benefit to the funding source is it saved money by the consumer not being admitted to the hospital. The patient stayed healthy and was more productive.

President Obama does not want to try this out. He wants consumers and businesses to be dependent of the central government for everything.

MSAs would lead to consumer independence from central government control of our healthcare. MSAs would put all consumers at whatever socioeconomic level in charge of their own destiny.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone

Please have a friend subscribe

Republicans who really want to repair the healthcare system should take notice of these suggestions. They should stop proposing complicated alternatives to Obamacare that will not work.

Republicans should start trying to understand the real problems in the healthcare system.

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone

Please have a friend subscribe

Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.