Stakeholder Mistrust

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Medicaid’s Reimbursement Problems Increase As It Expands

June 21, 2015

inMedicine: Healthcare System, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

In order to attract more physician participation in Medicaid the Obama administration increased the level of Medicaid reimbursement to Medicare levels in 2013.

The Obama administration anticipated an increase in Medicaid recipients once Obamacare started in 2014.

In 2012 there was not enough physician participation in Medicaid to service the number of patients enrolled at that time. Appointment wait time was long. Access to care was rationed.

“To prepare the primary care workforce for the influx of new Medicaid eligible patients established through the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Obamacare), this provision increases payment rates for certain primary care services to at least the level of Medicare in 2013 and 2014.

At that time CMS (2012) promised states it would pay 100% of Medicaid reimbursement. Therefore the increase did not threaten individual state budgets because the federal government was paying 100% of the bill until 2015.

Many but not all Primary Care Physicians fell for this Obamacare ploy. Many physicians still did not sign up to accept Medicaid patients.

“According to a survey conducted by The Physician’s Foundation in 2012, declining reimbursement rates are the most “significant impediment to patient care delivery in today’s practice environment by a large margin.”

In 2012 a major administrative service provider for Medicaid said,

“Enhanced payment rates may induce more physicians to participate in Medicaid. According to a survey conducted by United Healthcare, half of primary care physicians would increase their Medicaid case load if Medicaid payment rates were increased to the level of Medicare pay rates.”

There were long waiting times for appointments and decreased access to care in 2012. The Obama administration figured these issues would be cured with the change in reimbursement.

The new increase Medicaid enrollment figures have been an intentional mystery to the public.

The Obama administration has provided convoluted enrollment figures to the public. These figures have confused everyone including those who are interested in them. I believe it has even confused the Obama administration itself. The non-transparency has prevented everyone from facing the reality of the Obamacare mess.

This analysis of the numbers must be read carefully. Physicians have been faked out once more.

“In the third quarter 2014 health insurance enrollment data show continuation of two trends during the first and second quarters—increasing Medicaid enrollment and declining enrollment in employer plans.

" However, while individual-market enrollment increased substantially in both the first and second quarters, it declined by 357,000 during the third quarter. The net result was 160,000 fewer Americans with health insurance."

These numbers are nowhere near the numbers the Obama administration reported to the traditional media and in turn to the public.

All the traditional media did was celebrate President Obama’s victory lap. The public was deceived by the victory lap.

“For the first nine months of 2014, individual-market enrollment grew by 5.83 million, but 4.93 million individuals lost employer coverage—offsetting 85 percent of the individual-market gain.”

This was not been made clear by the Obama administration. The uninsured number still remains unclear. This analysis points to Obamacare being a total failure.

Thus, the net increase in private health insurance for 2014 is so far 893,000 individuals. During the same period, Medicaid enrollment grew by almost 7.49 million. Taken together, the number of Americans with health insurance increased by 8.38 million during the first nine months of 2014, but growth in Medicaid accounted for 89 percent of that gain.

The situation has not gotten better now that the Affordable Care Act's bump in Medicaid pay to Medicare levels has expired.

Just seven states kept the higher rates in place for 2015, while the rest reverted to the previous low rates.

Medicaid rates in virtually every state are a fraction of what will be paid by Medicare and private insurance companies.

There are only so many hours in a day. How many physician practices could afford to devote their time to serving its lowest-paying patients?

A 2013 physician survey found 33% of physicians refused to see new Medicaid patients while 17% refused to see new Medicare patients. The obvious reason is Medicare pays better than Medicaid.

With the expiration of higher primary care physician reimbursement it can be expected there will be less physician participation and decreased access to care for the expanding Medicaid enrollment.

The Obama administration anticipates this problem. It has introduced new regulations that it thinks will solve the problem.

It might, or at least help a little, except for the fact that it is going to cost the government more and help make healthcare insurance companies richer.

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

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The Defects In Obamacare

June 14, 2015

inMedicine: Healthcare System, Patients Problems, Physician's Problems, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D., FACP, MACE

We live in an era of sound bites driving opinions rather than details driving opinions. The devil is always in the details.

The defects in Obamacare are too numerous to count. President Obama provides the traditional mass media with sounds bites leading to false conclusions.

The sound bites are misleading. Many of the sound bites are lies. One such sound bite is Obamacare is working and therefore does not need changing.

He and the Democrats keep the discussion on the sound bites level and do not dig into the real issue. President Obama even keeps the details away from congress the very people he is dependent on to pass the bill.

President Obama kept the facts and details about Obamacare away from the congress and the people. He is now doing it with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed regional regulatory and investment pact. Just as with Obamacare, President Obama expects congress to vote in favor of a pact they have not debated and have not had an opportunity to read the details in the final bill.

It is another one of those bills where the administration is telling the congress and the American people you have to pass the bill in order to see what is in it.

Americans are tired of his lack of transparency and lies. They do not trust President Obama anymore.

Congress should never make the same mistake they made with Obamacare. If they do all Americans should rally to throw all the bums out.

The devil is always in the details.

United States Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said,

“Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement. […]

" More than two months after receiving the proper security credentials, my staff is still barred from viewing the details of the proposals that USTR is advancing. We hear that the process by which TPP is being negotiated has been a model of transparency. I disagree with that statement.^[98]”

President Obama and the speaker have told us it is good pact for the country’s economy. Senator Cruz is right. “Don’t vote for something whose details you do not know.”

There are many defects in Obamacare. One major defect is that it is not affordable to consumers, the federal government or state governments. When fully implemented the cost of healthcare to the federal government will be at least 50% of our GNP not the 23% of GNP predicted. Twenty three percent is bad enough.

Federal and State taxes will have to be increased to cover all medical care entitlement costs.

President Obama keeps telling us that Obamacare is working. He says it is here to stay.

The reality is Obamacare is an unworkable and costly failure in multiple areas including the health insurance exchanges, healthcare.gov, insurance premiums and deductible costs, the development of Accountable Care Organizations, maintenance of employer insurance and more.

Americans deserve a better system than Obamacare.

It is impossible to cover all of the harmful details of every category in one blog.

It is disingenuous for President Obama to claim, in his repeated sound bites, that there is no need to change anything in Obamacare because Obamacare is working fine.

The real cost of Obamacare to consumers (especially taxpayers), the federal and state governments and the economy have not been disclosed nor are they transparent.

The real costs start to leak out with stories about how the costs affect consumers and their lifestyle.

This usually leads to the sound bites that it will be better to have a government single party payer system.

The underlying defect is that this system leads to consumers being dependent on government and not responsible for themselves. Government changes rules on a whim. Consumers do not have options. This is a road to serfdom.

“After the Affordable Care Act kicked in, a 52-year-old sales and marketing entrepreneur reported his monthly health-insurance premium to cover himself and his family grew to $848 from $513. Like others, he wasn’t happy about it. “It’s taking a lot out of pocket,” he said.”

He is one of millions of Americans who earn too much to qualify for government subsidies on policies purchased through the federal insurance exchange. He was in favor of Obamacare before he realized Obamacare’s effect on reality.

Obamacare requires insurance companies to offer insurance policies with broad coverage and greater protection against catastrophic medical costs. It also requires coverage on illnesses and conditions such as pregnancy and birth control coverage for people who do not need this coverage.

Obamacare was supposed to save every family $2,500 a year. It costs families more than $2,500 dollars a year. It was not supposed to affect anyone making less than $250,000 per year.

It is true that many of the above a not taxes. However it is a cost burden on consumers making less than $250,000 a year.

Others, making less than $50,000 a year, receive complete or partial government subsidies. This is what is meant by redistribution of wealth. It is a significant cost burden on consumers making $50,000 to $250,000 dollars a year.

Everyone remembers President Obama promising that Obamacare will not cost families making less that $250,000 one dime.

Obamacare premiums have become unaffordable to people earning less than $50,000 per year as well.

Obamacare’s goal was to cover everyone with broad insurance coverage and greater protection against catastrophic medical costs.

Yet, only 10 million out of 330 million are covered by the exchanges. Each enrollee in the exchanges also has high deductibles. These deductibles can be as high as $6,000 a year.

Many of the insurance companies claim they will be losing money after the government’s health insurance industry subsidies disappear in 2016.

These companies will leave the Obamacare federal health exchanges reducing competition. This in turn will increase premiums further and make premiums more unaffordable.

Another detail overlooked is enrollees are poorer, sicker and older. The pool is not diluted by younger, healthier and richer. The result is more expensive insurance rates.

“ HHS was saying that it needed about 40 percent of the exchange policies to be purchased by people age 18-35 to keep the exchanges financially stable. It was 28 percent in both 2014 and 2015, according to HHS data. The CBO had projected about 85 percent of exchange enrollees to be subsidized, falling toward 80 percent as enrollment grew; instead, that number is 87 percent and actually rose slightly from 2014.”

According to a study last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research, people who bought silver and bronze plans on the federal and state health insurance exchanges saw total premiums and out-of-pocket payments rise an estimated 14% to 28% higher than pre- Obamacare premiums and out of pocket expenses.

Obamacare is not fulfilling any of President Obama’s sound-bite promises.

His claim that Obamacare is working well and does not have to change makes absolutely no sense.

If one tells a lie enough times it becomes eventually becomes the truth.

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

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President Obama Tries To Bully The Supreme Court

June 10, 2015

inDisinformation and the healthcare system, Medicine: Healthcare System, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

President Obama attacks his opponents, marginalizes them, throws them under a bus, lies, ignores reality, or bullies them.

The reality about Obamacare is that none of the stakeholders like it.

It is causing states with State Health Insurance Exchanges to go deeper in debt.

The government has been forced to create 37 Federal Health Insurance Exchanges. Premiums are skyrocketing because of poor enrollment and demographic distribution. Only people with pre-existing illnesses or those receiving subsidies are joining.

Premiums are now unaffordable even applicants receiving subsidies.

Obamacare is driving corporations providing healthcare insurance for their employees to figure out how to avoid providing healthcare insurance and penalties.

The government has provided waivers for companies such as McDonalds, Burger King and 1300 other companies to not participate in Obamacare.

Obamacare has tried to take away Medicaid subsidies from states that did not start a State Health Insurance Exchange and would not expand Medicaid. The Supreme Court stopped that two years ago.

Obamacare has driven physicians into hospital employment. Many physicians are unhappy and less productive working for hospitals themselves.

Many physicians have retired early because of Obamacare. This is a bad sign in light of our present physician shortage.

Obamacare has created incentives for hospitals to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).

Logically ACOs cannot work because they shift financial risk for patients on to physicians and hospitals and away rom the healthcare insurance industry.

Hospitals and physicians are finally starting to realize the risk and are dropping out of the ACO programs.

Obamacare has spent over one billion dollars for a web site that is still not fully functional.

The promise of universal healthcare coverage has resulted in more people being uninsured than before Obamacare was passed. Only 9 million people are signed up and 6.4 million receive subsidies.

The original prediction in 2009 for 2015 was 17 million participants.

The expanded Medicaid program in 14 states is experiencing severe physician shortages and financial problems.

Obamacare patients and Medicaid and Medicare patients are starting to experience limitations on access to care and rationing of care.

I am only naming a few of the many problems Obamacare has created.

Yet with all these defects and failures President Obama has the gall to say,

“There's something deeply cynical about the ceaseless partisan attempts to roll back progress.”

"I understand people being skeptical or worried before the law was passed and there was no reality to examine. But now that we can see millions of people having health care—and all the bad things that were predicted didn't happen—you'd think it was time to move on."

Obamacare is not working despite President Obama’s claims.

I think it is time to move away from Obamacare and in another direction.

This week President Obama did another astonishing thing. It reveals his consistent disrespect for the constitution and the separation of powers.

He has tried to intimidate the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Obamacare with his personal attack on the court and its upcoming decision in King vs. Burwell.

“The law provides for subsidies only for policies purchased on exchanges "established by the state", inserted in the law as an inducement to states to set up exchanges.”

Congress limited the subsidies to State Health Insurance Exchanges to encourage the states to set up their own exchanges. Thirty-seven states saw the trap that President Obama was setting for them and refused to cooperate.

The IRS, operating under the direction of President Obama, tried to “fix” the law by permitting federal exchange to provide subsidies.

The infamous Dr. Jonathan Gruber, a principle framer of Obamacare, who was paid by the Obama administration $375,000 for his consultations with the White House staff, said the exclusivity of state exchanges rewarding subsidies was put into the law to induce states to set up exchanges.

Dr. Gruber, a healthcare economist, also said the law would have not passed if the public was not so stupid and could recognize the lack of transparency of the law.

President Obama said at the time of the scandal that he did not know Dr. Gruber. President Obama said Jonathan Gruber played a minor role in the construction of Obamacare.

During the last month President Obama has used the traditional media to try to convince the Supreme Court and the American people that congress really meant to give the State Exchanges and the Federal Exchanges to ability to provide insurance subsidies.

Article after article was published confirming that what the law meant to say was both State and Federal Exchanges had the ability to provide subsidies. This was morally the right thing to do.

President Obama said this week. “That we have an obligation to put ourselves in our neighbor’s shoes, and to see the common humanity in each other.”

First of all congress didn’t write the law. It should have and it should have been bipartisan. Most Democratic congressmen who voted for Obamacare didn’t even read the law.

The IRS has no authority to change the letter of the law with a regulation.

The law as written should be the law. The Obama administration overstepped its constitutional limits. If the law is wrong, congress should amend the words to include subsidies for federal exchanges also.

Obamacare is a terrible law. It is distorting and destroying our already dysfunctional healthcare system. The Republican dominated House and Senate are not going to change a law that is self destructing, if the Supreme Court favors King and the letter of the law.

Since President Obama’s traditional media campaign has been a flop, he has personally gone after the Supreme Court. He tried to intimate it by challenging its integrity.

President Obama said, “Frankly, the Supreme Court should not have taken up the lawsuit challenging Obamacare subsidies.”

Who is he to decide which cases the Supreme Court should take up?

President Obama continued,“There is no reason why the existing Federal Health Insurance Exchanges should be overturned through a Supreme Court case,”

President Obama is preparing the country to be angry at the Supreme Court if the Supreme Court rules in favor of King.

President Obama is disregarding the notion that the Supreme Court is interpreting and upholding the constitution, a concept he frequently ignores.

“I think it’s important for us to go ahead and assume that the Supreme Court is going to do what most legal scholars who've looked at this would expect them to do.”

This statement is both a lie and a veiled threat to the court.

“Elena Kagan recently wrote in another case that, "This Court has no roving license, in even ordinary cases of statutory interpretation, to disregard clear language simply on the view that (in [the IRS’s] words) Congress 'must have intended' something broader."

During oral arguments in March, Justice Antonin Scalia suggested Congress could step in and fix the problem.

“Congress just adjusts, enacts a statute. It would take care of the problem. It happens all the time,” he said. “Why is that not going to happen here?”

President Obama did say there was one way to resolve the dispute over the law: “Congress could fix this whole thing with a one-sentence provision.”

President Obama said, “He is puzzled by the legal challenges against his signature healthcare law, arguing there is ample evidence that the system is working.

“Fortunately, there's no reason to have to do it. It doesn't need fixing,”

President Obama keeps harping on the same lies. He believes if you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth.

President Obama said, “Part of what's bizarre about this whole thing is, we haven't had a lot of conversation about the horrors of ObamaCare because none of them have come to pass.”

There has been limited conversation about the horrors of Obamacare in the media because President Obama and the traditional media have limited the conversation

President Obama cannot bully the Supreme Court into not of upholding the constitution and it obligation to interpret the constitution accurately.

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

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Double Digits Increases In Obamacare Insurance Rates Proposed

May 31, 2015

inHealthcare Insurance Industry, Medicine: Healthcare System, Politicians,Healthcare and Vested Interests, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Thirty-seven states refused to setup Obamacare State Health Insurance Exchanges. Thirty-seven states refused because of the expected cost burden to those states and citizens. States are required to balance their state budgets. Most states have deficits and do not have balanced budgets. Obamacare’s requirements would simply add to their budget deficits. States would be forced increase state taxes.

The 37 states felt that the Obamacare State Health Insurance Exchanges were an attempt, by President Obama, to decrease the federal cost burden and shift it to the states.

It was also a states’ rights issue.

None of those states felt that Obamacare State Health Insurance Exchanges could work and not become an increased cost burden.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states have the right under the constitution to refuse to create a State Health Insurance Exchange.

In June 2015 the Supreme Court will rule on King vs. Burwell.

Can the Federal Health Insurance Exchanges subsidize applicants the same way State Health Insurance Exchanges can subsidize applicants.

The law’s language is specific. The Obamacare law specifically states that only the State Insurance Exchanges can subsidies applicants.

The Obama administration media manipulation machine is already spinning the truth in case the Supreme Court rules against the federal government.

Eight million people will lose their subsidy. There are 330 million people in America. There are as many people uninsured in 2015 as there were before the law was enacted. In five years we are no closer to the promise that Obamacare would provide universal care.

Obamacare is failing because it is a bad law in many respects.

The essence of the Obama administration’s spin is that if the Supreme Court rules against the government the cost of insurance will escalate to unaffordable levels for Federal Health Insurance Exchange purchasers.

Subsidies that made insurance plans affordable face a crucial test with decision expected in June.

The truth is the cost of healthcare premiums are going to skyrocket for Obamacare applicants because the only people who signed up have pre-existing illnesses and had to buy insurance or the very poor because their insurance was fully subsidized.

The adverse selection and the financial accounting rules for the healthcare insurance industry allow them to raise the premiums.

President Obama’s subsidies for Obamacare premiums expire in 2016.

Megan McCardle writing in Bloomberg says;

“Insurance companies have been bullied by the Obama administration into keeping rates as low as they are, even though they can't make any money.

For sheer survival, most companies will begin to charge enough so they at least don't lose any money, or leave the exchanges altogether.

For those of you who have followed my blog carefully, you know President Obama has provided the healthcare insurance industry a subsidy in order to get them to participate. It guarantees that it cannot lose more than 2% of its expected profit.

The insurance industry determines its expected profit.

The insurance company subsidy is about to expire. The guarantee in Obamacare, of not losing any money, is going to evaporate. In addition, only the sickest and poorest people have obtained insurance from the federal and state health insurance exchanges. The federal and state exchanges have lost a great deal of money.

These losses are slowly being revealed.

The State Health Insurance Exchanges are starting to publish their losses at the same time the healthcare insurance industry is reporting their potential losses for next year. Those potential losses are reflected in the proposed premium increases.

Moda of Oregon says that its claims were 139 percent of revenue.

CareFirst of Maryland says claims were 120 percent of revenue.

Tennessee told the Wall Street Journal it lost $141 million on exchange plans last year.

State of New Mexico says it lost $23 million on revenue of $121 million.

The states that signed up for the State Health Insurance Exchanges are losing money. Maybe the states that did not sign up were right. It would be a financial burden on those states.

The clause in the law permits only those states having a health insurance exchange to provide subsidies to their applicants. It excludes all others, including the federal government.

The only question the Supreme Court has to consider is, can the federal health insurance exchanges provide subsidies to applicants according to the law as written?

The law was written to encourage states to create health insurance exchanges. It did not include the provision of subsidy to applicants for federal health insurance exchanges.

If the federal exchange would be permitted to provide subsidies, the law should be amended by congress.

A Republican congress would have to amend the law.

Obamacare is an apparent disaster to consumers, insurance providers, hospitals and physicians.

The majority of Republican are calling for Obamacare’s repeal.

It is unlikely that a Republican congress will change that provision in the law.

The “States only provision” in the law has backfired on President Obama and those states creating health insurance exchanges.

The cost of setting up and administering this new bureaucracy was enormous. The healthcare insurance offered by Federal and State Health Insurance Exchanges were either too expensive for healthy or young consumers or had too many unnecessary benefits for those consumers.

The only consumers who signed up were people who were too sick to be able to buy private insurance or too poor to be able to buy insurance without being subsidized.

Those consumers comprise 85% of the applicants. The result has been an adverse selection pool.

If the Supreme Court rules against President Obama he is going to say that private insurance does not work. The federal government must create an entitlement to everyone.

The result will be socialized medicine with the federal government being the single party payer controlling rationing of care, access to care and the cost of care to consumers.

I believe it will make healthcare coverage even worse than it is now.

Why no one is considering my concept of consumer driven healthcare with my ideal medical saving account is beyond me.

Rather than making consumers actively responsible for their health, healthcare dollars and healthcare, we are on the road to making them passive recipients of their healthcare.

America is going to be further down the Road to Serfdom.

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

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Trust Is An Important Word

May 11, 2015

inChronic Disese Management, Medicine: Healthcare System, Politicians,Healthcare and Vested Interests, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

Trust is confidence in the honesty or integrity of a person or thing. An example of trust is the belief that someone is being truthful.

The world is complex. As individuals we cannot know and do everything. We must assign surrogates to express and carry out our will.

We must trust those surrogates. When those surrogate seem to deceive us we distrust them.

In the past six years Americans’ trust in their leaders has been eroded.

It seems that our government surrogates have tried to deceive us over and over again. I have discussed almost all the instances the Obama administration has deceived the American people with respect to Obamacare i.e “If you like your doctor you can keep you doctor” to name one.

The State Department has deceived us about Benghasi and with the outlines of the nuclear agreement. The Clintons have deceived us with their Clinton Foundation donations and the perception of undu pedaling of influence.

The result is public distrust of our institutions and each other. They have promoted distrust and media is the message.

Atul Gawande M.D., a surgeon and public-health researcher, became a New Yorker staff writer in 1998. He contributed greatly in the public healthcare arena in 2007 making surgery safer by creating a pre-op, inter-op and post-op surgical checklist.

He has also created a checklist for delivery of babies in under-developed countries. These checklists have decreased morbidity and mortality.

I am a Gawande fan. He is a good thinker. However, in my view, he has a few blind spots. These blind spots showed up in his most recent article “Overkill.”

Dr. Gawande’s problem is that even if his observations are somewhat correct they are not universally valid. He proves that his observations are not totally correct as he describes his approach to clinical practice.

His approach to clinical practice is to do less, not more. However, he does not consider the potential unintended consequences of doing less.

Most of his writings in the New Yorker criticize physicians and their practice of medicine.

The articles could be interpreted as an attack of practicing physicians’ care. It could erode consumers’ confidence in their physicians causing them to mistrust all physicians and their clinical judgment and advice.

Dr. Gawande should reexamine some of his premises. He should focus on educating both consumers and physicians as he did with his surgical checklist.

Yellow journalism does not solve the healthcare system’s problems. It creates greater problems.

In this New Yorker article his blind spot is well illustrated. He initially quotes Kenneth Arrow an economist who in 1963 won a Noble Prize in Economics for describing a vital problem economic call “information asymmetry.”

“There is a severe disadvantages that buyers have when they know less about a good than the seller does.”

Kenneth Arrow pointed out that the prime example was health care. Doctors generally know more about the value of a given medical treatment than patients, who have little ability to determine the quality of the advice they are getting.”

Kenneth Arrow is absolutely right. Since 1963 many industries have worked to solve this problem of information asymmetry using the Internet to make consumers Prosumers.

Physician leaders knew Arrow was absolutely correct. Some have tried to correct the situation through patient education and the developed System of Care through the use of Chronic Disease Treatment Teams.

To me this represents a constructive approach to information asymmetry in the healthcare system rather than the approach of stimulating consumers to mistrust their physicians.

There is a simple solution. Patients must be empowered to understand their disease and the options they have for treatment. They must also take responsibility for their care.

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists initiated the team approach for the treatment of Diabetes Mellitus in the 1990’s. It was called “A System of Intensive Self-Management of Type II Diabetes Mellitus.”

Teaching patients to intensively control their own blood sugars and helping patients become the “professor of their disease” can decrease the complication rate by at least 50%.

The complications of diabetes result in 80% of the cost of diabetes to the healthcare system. Managing Diabetes Mellitus correctly also decreases the pain and suffering resulting from this devastating disease.

It took twenty years for the government and the healthcare insurance industry to support this notion of chronic disease management.

AACE wrote guidelines outlining the development of Diabetes Education Centers wherein patients with diabetes were the center of the Diabetes team with physicians being the coach of the team and nurse educators, dieticians, exercise therapists, psychiatrists or psychologists being the assistant coaches and an extension of the physician’s care.

“A System of Intensive Self-Management of Type II Diabetes Mellitus.”

It is critical patients take responsibility for their diabetes care. They must not be passive about their treatment. They must judge the quality of their treatment. If it is not excellent they need to move on. The problem might be that the patients’ healthcare plan will not permit the patient to choose those physicians and care provders in Obamacare.

Consumers have abrogated their responsibility for their treatment and the cost of their treatment to a third party. This problem originated when they were able to buy first dollar healthcare insurance coverage. Consumers were not and are still not at financial risk even though their health is at risk.

This system of disease management demands that patients become responsible for the management of their disease.

Our health is our most valuable asset. We must be responsible for our health.

Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges continue promote the same defect in our healthcare system. It does not encourage patients to be careful about healthcare dollars or the responsibility for their healthcare.

“Doctors, therefore, are in a powerful position. We can recommend care of little or no value because it enhances our incomes, because it’s our habit, or because we genuinely but incorrectly believe in it, and patients will tend to follow our recommendations.”

Please note that Gawande indicts physicians in his second sentence for recommending care of little or no value because it enhances income.

In fact ordering a CAT scan, MRI or lab work does not enhance physicians’ income unless the physicians own the machinery. Hospitals and independent testing centers own the machinery to do these tests and make the profit. Therefore his reason for “Overkill” is not primary.

Dr. Gawande goes on to expand Professor Arrow’s argument about over-testing in a system of “information asymmetry.”

“Another powerful force toward unnecessary care emerged years after Arrow’s paper: the phenomenon of overtesting, which is a by-product of all the new technologies we have for peering into the human body.”

“The United States is a country of three hundred million people who annually undergo around fifteen million nuclear medicine scans, a hundred million CT and MRI scans, and almost ten billion laboratory tests.”

New technologies have ben a boom to the practice of good medical care. It could be argued that someone getting hit in the head and developing a long lasting headache should get a CAT scan or MRI of the brain rather than pre MRI, CAT scan era, a skull x-ray that would tell us almost nothing.

Perhaps the unnecessary care is not so unnecessary. Perhaps it is important to know the baseline study results of tests to understand the progression of an illness and controlthrough blood testing.

There does seem to be too much testing. What might be the cause?

Dr. Gawande overlooks a very important cause of over-testing.

It is defensive medicine. Physicians are afraid of getting sued in our litigious society if they miss something. The Massachusetts Medical Society study brought out this very important point. Physicians by their own admission over-test to avoid missing an underlying disease.

A rough estimate of the cost of over-testing in America is between $200 billion to $750 billion dollars a year as a result of defensive medicine.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanual, an advisor to President Obama, has stated that the healthcare system does not need malpractice reform because defensive medicine only cost the system $25 billion dollars a year. The cost is insignificant. He is dead wrong. He is also immune to law suits because of institutional protection. He does not appreciate the wear and tear on the physicians being sued.

As Obamacare makes the healthcare system more dysfunctional consumers have less responsibility for their healthcare. A system of socialized medicine is evolving as a result of Obamacare. The government takes care of us. We all know that Medicare is unsustainable. Intelligent well-respected folks like Antul Gawade use questionable logic to unintentionally erode peoples’ trust in physicians and their judgment.

Meanwhile taxes continue to rise and America is digging itself into a deeper financial hole.

The question should be how do we do things in a constructive rather than a destructive way.

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

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Obamacare Enrollment Deceptions Continues

May 3, 2015

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

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Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP, MACE

I made a big deal out of the poor enrollment in Obamacare throughout the winter.

There are more than 330 million Americans who should have healthcare insurance. In 2014, 15 million people lost their healthcare insurance because of Obamacare regulations.

At the end of the healthcare enrollment period for 2014 the Obama administration claimed there were 9 million enrolled in health insurance exchanges. The number was modified to 6.7 million enrollees because of mistakes in counting dental plans and non-payment of the enrollees’ initial premium.

Never the less President Obama did a victory lap and declared Obamacare is working. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is very difficult to keep track of all the false numbers thrown at the public.

The 2015 open enrollment period was delayed one month until after the mid-term elections for political reasons. President Obama and the Democrats wanted to keep the conversation about Obamacare out of the traditional media headlines.

The enrollment period of November 15^th to December 31^st was extended to February 15^th 2015. On February 16^th it was extended to March 1^st 2015.

On February 16, 2015 Aaron Albright, as CMS spokesman announced,

“Americans who couldn't enroll in federal Obamacare insurance plans over the weekend because of computer glitches or long waits will now have until next Sunday to sign up, federal officials announced early Monday.

"We are pleased that the vast majority of consumers were able to apply and pick a plan through HealthCare.gov or its call center without a problem,"

"For those consumers who were unable to complete their enrollment because of longer than normal wait times at the call center in the last three days or because of a technical issue such as being unable to submit an application because their income could not be verified, we will provide them with a time-limited special enrollment period for March 1 coverage."

“The special enrollment period begins Monday and ends Feb. 22.”

The extension was prompted by the Saturday outage of an Internal Revenue Service function for Obamacare enrollment, which could have prevented about 500,000 people from enrolling.

The enrollment period was extended to allow those predicted 500,000 to enroll.

The enrollment period was was extended from February 15^th to February 22^nd and the March 1^st.

On March 1^st a special tax penalty enrollment extension was started to expire April 30^th.

Only 98,000 enrolled during that 2 month extension. The predicted five hundred thousand (500,000) people did not enroll as was announced.

On December 15^th2014 these were the published enrollment figures.

“ Confirmed 2015 QHPs: 3,039,524 as of 12/15/14”

“Estimated 2015 QHPs (Cumulative):

11/21: 610K (462K HCgov) • 11/28: 1.02M (765K HCgov) • 12/05: 1.80M (1.35M HCgov) Thru 12/15: 4.70M (3.52M HCgov”

http://acasignups.net

Enrollment by state can be studied in the following link.

The Obama Administration bragged:

“The number of people enrolling or re-enrolling last week was considerably higher than in previous weeks. Week one saw 500,000 enrollees, week two had 300,000 and week three saw 600,000 sign up through HealthCare.gov.”

Only 3.4 million sign ups were confirmed to receive healthcare coverage by January 1,2015.

This is only seventy percent (70%) of the expected enrollment through 12/15/14. The enrollment had been extended before New Year to February15, 2015.

“The government estimates a total 10.7 million will enroll by February 15,2015. On February 2,2015 there were 7.53 million qualified enrollees. The original estimate in 2010 was 17.5 million. The first 2015 estimate enrollment in 2014 was reduced 3 months ago to 13 million. The enrollment figure was modified.”

Somehow, the February 22 deadline was extended to April 30, 2015. The Obama administration continues to make up the rules as the go.

On April 28^th two days before the open enrollment period was supposed to close for 2015 http://acasignups.net/ publish these figures.

Confirmed Exchange QHPs: 11,897,180 as of 4/28/15
Estimated: 12.30M (9.38M via HCgov) as of 4/28/15

http://acasignups.net/

It is important to note that only 9.38 million people enrolled via HCgov in 2015. There is no change from the 2014 pre modification of the 2014 data.

It is not known how many enrollees paid their first premium.

None of these fact have been reported in the traditional media. Obamacare and the health insurance exchanges are not doing as well as President Obama says they are.

President Obama and his administrations continue to lie to Americans about enWhen is the American public going to demand a stop to the Obamacare deceptions?

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

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How Should Healthcare Quality Be Measured?

April 26, 2015

inDisinformation and the healthcare system, Medicine: Healthcare System, Patients Problems, Physician's Problems, Quality medical care measures, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D., FACP,MACE

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s (USPSTF) grading system for measuring the quality of healthcare is an wrong. It results in a way to limit physicians’ judgment and treats medical care as a commodity. It enables a computer program to judge if physicians have followed an algorithm to treat patients.

“The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).^[57]^[^{citation needed} has developed grading systems for assessing the quality of evidence for making judgments about treatments.

Level I: Evidence obtained from at least one properly designed randomized controlled trial.
Level II-1: Evidence obtained from well-designed controlled trials without randomization.
Level II-2: Evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case-control analytic studies, preferably from more than one center or research group.
Level II-3: Evidence obtained from multiple time series designs with or without the intervention. Dramatic results in uncontrolled trials might also be regarded as this type of evidence.
Level III: Opinions of respected authorities, based on clinical experience, descriptive studies, or reports of expert committees.”

The grading system is wrong. I will lead to shabby medical care. If quality of care should be measured, it should be measured by using Evidence-Based Behavioral Practice evaluations

“Evidence-based behavioral practice (EBBP) "entails making decisions about how to promote health or provide care by integrating the best available evidence with practitioner expertise and other resources, and with the characteristics, state, needs, values and preferences of those who will be affected.”

“Empirically supported treatments (ESTs) in some clinical settings are defined as "clearly specified psychological treatments shown to be efficacious in controlled research with a delineated population" ^[3]

Only when physicians’ clinical judgment and observations are included in the assessment of their quality of medical care should evaluation of that quality of care be measured.

The narrow criteria of the USPSTF will not define quality. It will only serve to restrict access to care and penalize physicians for using clinical judgment and consumers’ from receiving medical care.

Suddenly, it becomes easy to see how difficult it is to assess the quality medical care.

There is little question that an occasional physician practices terrible medicine. This is obvious to the medical community. The mechanism for improving a bad physicians quality of care is in place but not well executed.

Few, especially healthcare policy wonks, seem to understand the difficulty of assessment of medical care.

It should be easy for policy wonks to understand the limitations and criticisms of evidence based medicine.

Yet the Obama administration regards evidence-based medicine as measured presently as the gold standard of clinical practice,

Limitations and Criticisms of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)

EBM produces quantitative research, especially from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Accordingly, results may not be relevant for all treatment situations.^[67]

This is obvious to most physicians.

The theoretical ideal of EBM (that every narrow clinical question, of which hundreds of thousands can exist, would be answered by meta-analysis and systematic reviews of multiple RCTs) faces the limitation that research (especially the RCTs themselves) is expensive; thus, in reality, for the foreseeable future, there will always be much more demand for EBM than supply, and the best humanity can do is to triage the application of scarce resources.

The reasons for EMS shortcoming are listed below. The list is not complete.

Because RCTs are expensive, the priority assigned to research topics is inevitably influenced by the sponsors' interests.
There is a lag between when the RCT is conducted and when its results are published.^[68]

There is a lag between when results are published and when these are properly applied.^[69]
Certain population segments have been historically under-researched (racial minorities and people with co-morbid diseases), and thus the RCT restricts generalizing.^[70]
Not all evidence from an RCT is made accessible. Treatment effectiveness reported from RCTs may be different than that achieved in routine clinical practice.^[64]
Published studies may not be representative of all studies completed on a given topic (published and unpublished) or may be unreliable due to the different study conditions and variables.^[71]
Research tends to focus on populations, but individual persons can vary substantially from population norms, meaning that extrapolation of lessons learned may founder.
Thus EBM applies to groups of people, but this should not preclude clinicians from using their personal experience in deciding how to treat each patient. One author advises that "the knowledge gained from clinical research does not directly answer the primary clinical question of what is best for the patient at hand" and suggests that evidence-based medicine should not discount the value of clinical experience.^[56] Another author stated that "the practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research."^[72]
Hypocognition (the absence of a simple, consolidated mental framework that new information can be placed into) can hinder the application of EBM.^[73]
Valid enthusiasm for science should not cross the line into scientism, losing critical perspective.
Although clinical experience and expert opinion are insufficient by themselves, neither are they valueless, as EBM fervor that approaches scientism sometimes tends to paint them.

This last point is repetition of a very important shortcoming.

An informed clinician can weigh confounding variables in a clinical case and decide that following a population-based guideline to the letter feels inadequate for the situation. Thus clinical backlash against "cookbook medicine" is not always misguided, and "guidelines are not gospel."^[74]
Conceptual models, by having fewer variables than always-multivariate reality, face limits of predictive accuracy, just as even the best supercomputer simulations cannot predict the weather with 100% accuracy, whether because of the butterfly effect or otherwise.
Thus, just as clinical judgment alone cannot give epistemological completeness, neither can RCTs and systematic reviews alone.”

The answer to the reader’s last comment and question, “I believe a carrot and stick approach may be necessary with more carrot and less stick. Your thoughts?” is

I believe that government must learn how to evaluate quality medical care accurately, if they want to base healthcare payments on the quality of medical care. Presently, the government is far from achieving that goal.

It could also be that measuring quality medical care is not President Obama’s goal.

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

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Medical Care Must Not Be Converted To A Commodity

April 19, 2015

inConsumer Driven Health Care, Disinformation and the healthcare system, Medicine: Healthcare System, Stakeholder Mistrust

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Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

This blog post is a follow up to my last blog "Restricting Access To Care." I published this blog on May 10 2010. The Obama administration has ignored every word. As consumers and physicians might have notice the quality of medical care and the patient/physician relationships have deteriorated as I predicted because Obamacare.

Medical care is not patient centric. Healthcare reform (Obamacare) has been focused on process and not patients. This focus has distorted the effectiveness of medical care even more that it was pre Obamacare.

President Obama has increased the complexity of healthcare in an attempt to make medical care a commodity. His scheme is failing at the expense of consumers.

President Obama keeps on telling the same lie. “Obamacare is a success.” Consumers are not that stupid.

The public must start understanding what is happening now and not complain about why medical care has been destroyed later.

Once the public understands what is happening, individuals must write their congressperson and protest.

Consumers must not believe every lie thrown at them by the traditional media especially when the lie is counter to their every day experience.

I am republishing a previous blog that explains the attempt of turning medical care into a commodity.

Medical Care Must Not Be Converted To A Commodity

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

" President Obama is creating a new bureaucratic agency. It is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The Independent Payment Advisory Board will not be measuring clinical judgment or patient compliance when judging the effectiveness of treatment. Its measurement will be physician compliance with evidence based medicine. President Obama, please reexamine your premises.

I am in favor of clinical practice guidelines and evidence based medicine. However, both should be used as an educational tool for physicians and not as a punitive tool to judge payment.

The USPHTF will determine the evidence based medicine to be used. I have pointed out the deficiencies in the USPHTF in the past.

This bureaucracy is an attempt by the government to commoditize medical care. Once medical care is commoditized the cost for medical care is suppose to decrease.

Intensive control of the blood sugar for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus can be expensive in the short run. If intensive control decreases the complications of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus it can decrease costs in the long term.

The conclusion of the ACCORD study was intensive control was not worth the cost of medical care in the short term or long term. After the data was reexamined it turned out that the ACCORD conclusions were incorrect.

“It was not hypoglycemia from intensive control or intensive control itself that caused the increased deaths in the ACCORD study.”

Unfortunately, this information was not being reported on every TV station as the original study results were. The original study results set back universal use of intensive control of Type 2 Diabetes at least a decade.

“ It was important to say that in the intensive group it really was not the people with lower A_1c who had problems, it actually was those who had the higher A_1c who, despite intense efforts, we couldn't get under control."

This means patients did not comply with their responsibility to intensively control their chronic disease or their physicians did not teach them to control their blood sugar adequately.

"This reexamination gives a stronger momentum to the idea that we need to be thinking that one size doesn't fit all, we need to have different targets for different groups of people and perhaps different treatment strategies to reach those different targets as well. That's troubling both clinically and to the trialist.”

"This is something of a new idea, because previously there has been a strong impetus to having standardized guidelines for doctors and people with diabetes, but it's probably not the right thing to do.”

The reader can sense the discomfort of the academic physicians. They are realizing they cannot commoditize medical treatment. Ask any experienced practicing physician about their patients. Patients have different attitudes about their disease and treatment.

Each patient has to be related to differently. This is clinical judgment. Physicians communicating with their patients is called the physician patient relationships. Patients should be responsible for their outcomes along with physicians. This is the art of medicine. Neither patient nor physician can be treated as a commodity.

President Obama, I hope you are listening. Medical care is difficult to commoditize.

The ACCORD study originally suggested that the goal to normalize the HbA1c resulted in an increase in cardiovascular deaths. It turned out not to be true.

On the other hand an observational study was just published concluding that the lower the HbA1c the lower the complication risk.

“The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study is a community-based assessment of 11,092 middle-aged adults in four US communities with normal HbA1c were followed for up to 15 years (4 visits at about 3-year intervals) for onset of new diabetes, new CVD, stroke, and all-cause mortality.”

The higher the HbA1c the higher the average blood sugar and the greater the risk for chronic complications of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. HbA1c is a measure of the average blood sugar over the previous three months.

Table. HbA1c Levels and Corresponding Multivariate Hazard Ratios

HbA1c Level	Multivariate-Adjusted Hazard Ratio
< 5%	0.52 (0.40-0.69)
5% to < 5.5%	1.00 (reference)
5.5% to < 6%	1.86 (1.67-2.08)
6% to < 6.5%	4.48 (3.92-5.13)
≥ 6.5%	16.47 (14.22-19.08)

HbA1c = hemoglobin A1c

“The hazard ratios for stroke were similar, but for all-cause mortality, HbA1c displayed a J-shaped association curve. All associations remained significant after adjustment for the baseline FPG.”

The study found HbA1c values predicted Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) or death, whereas fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels were not significant after adjustment for other risk factors.

“The recent ADVANCE [Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease: Preterax and Diamicron MR Controlled Evaluation], ACCORD [Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes], and VADT [Veterans Affairs Diabetes Trial] trials left us wondering about the value of tight glycemic control in reducing CVD risk.”

“One of the many shortcoming of each of these trials was that most participants had had diabetes for many years, and the designs could not account for the long-term accumulation of glycemic burden.”

The authors claim that the vascular damage from high HbA1c may have already occurred. Tight control during the trials might have had relatively little effect. This is probably not true.

There is evidence that normalizing the blood glucose can lead to regression of the vascular lesions that cause the complications of Diabetes.

The current ARIC analysis demonstrates that higher HbA1c levels, even in the normal range, increase CVD risk.

These results are not conclusive because it is an observational study as opposed to a double blind placebo controlled study. The USPHTF and President Obama’s Independent Payment Advisory Board would not give this study as much credit as the ACCORD study.

The ACCORD study was a placebo controlled double blind study. Its conclusions have more power than an observational study (ARIC). The problem is ACCORD measured the wrong endpoint. ACCORD has resulted in a great disservice to the standard of medical care of diabetes.

The results of The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study suggest that maintaining a HbA1c as near normal as possible even before the onset of diabetes may help prevent CVD.

As President Obama tries to quantify the standard of care he could be picking the wrong standard of care in order to reduce the cost of medical care. All medicine is local. Standards of care are always evolving. The standard of medical care should be determined by local medical leaders who are respected as teachers by local practitioners. It can also be enforced by local peer review with no monetary interest in the outcome.

President Obama’s effort to improve medical care at a reduced price will not succeed if it is interpreted as a punitive measure by a national bureaucracy.

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

May 30, 2010 "

A healthcare system that would work and be cost effective must be a consumer driven healthcare system. It must be patient centered and not stakeholder centered.

It must put consumers in a position of responsibility for their health and healthcare dollars and not in a position of dependence on the government.

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

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Medical Care Must Not Be Converted To A Commodity

April 19, 2015

inConsumer Driven Health Care, Disinformation and the healthcare system, Medicine: Healthcare System, Stakeholder Mistrust

• Leave a comment

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

President Obama has increased the complexity of healthcare in an attempt to make medical care a commodity. His scheme is failing at the expense of consumers.

President Obama keeps on telling the same lie. “Obamacare is a success.” Consumers are not that stupid.

The public must start understanding what is happening now and not complain about why medical care has been destroyed later.

Once the public understands what is happening, individuals must write their congressperson and protest.

Consumers must not believe every lie thrown at them by the traditional media especially when the lie is counter to their every day experience.

I am republishing a previous blog that explains the attempt of turning medical care into a commodity.

Medical Care Must Not Be Converted To A Commodity

Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

I am in favor of clinical practice guidelines and evidence based medicine. However, both should be used as an educational tool for physicians and not as a punitive tool to judge payment.

The USPHTF will determine the evidence based medicine to be used. I have pointed out the deficiencies in the USPHTF in the past.

This bureaucracy is an attempt by the government to commoditize medical care. Once medical care is commoditized the cost for medical care is suppose to decrease.

“It was not hypoglycemia from intensive control or intensive control itself that caused the increased deaths in the ACCORD study.”

This means patients did not comply with their responsibility to intensively control their chronic disease or their physicians did not teach them to control their blood sugar adequately.

President Obama, I hope you are listening. Medical care is difficult to commoditize.

The ACCORD study originally suggested that the goal to normalize the HbA1c resulted in an increase in cardiovascular deaths. It turned out not to be true.

On the other hand an observational study was just published concluding that the lower the HbA1c the lower the complication risk.

Table. HbA1c Levels and Corresponding Multivariate Hazard Ratios

HbA1c Level	Multivariate-Adjusted Hazard Ratio
< 5%	0.52 (0.40-0.69)
5% to < 5.5%	1.00 (reference)
5.5% to < 6%	1.86 (1.67-2.08)
6% to < 6.5%	4.48 (3.92-5.13)
≥ 6.5%	16.47 (14.22-19.08)

HbA1c = hemoglobin A1c

The study found HbA1c values predicted Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) or death, whereas fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels were not significant after adjustment for other risk factors.

The authors claim that the vascular damage from high HbA1c may have already occurred. Tight control during the trials might have had relatively little effect. This is probably not true.

There is evidence that normalizing the blood glucose can lead to regression of the vascular lesions that cause the complications of Diabetes.

The current ARIC analysis demonstrates that higher HbA1c levels, even in the normal range, increase CVD risk.

The results of The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study suggest that maintaining a HbA1c as near normal as possible even before the onset of diabetes may help prevent CVD.

President Obama’s effort to improve medical care at a reduced price will not succeed if it is interpreted as a punitive measure by a national bureaucracy.

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

May 30, 2010 "

A healthcare system that would work and be cost effective must be a consumer driven healthcare system. It must be patient centered and not stakeholder centered.

It must put consumers in a position of responsibility for their health and healthcare dollars and not in a position of dependence on 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.

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