Health Care Debate In the News
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06/23/2010
The Commonwealth Fund: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally, 2010 Update
by Karen Davis, Ph.D., Cathy Schoen, M.S., and Kristof Stremikis, M.P.P.
Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to three earlier editions—includes data from seven countries and incorporates patients' and physicians' survey results on care experiences and ratings on dimensions of care. Compared with six other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. Read the full report.
05/21/2010
OregonLive.com: The price of private health insurance.
by Samuel Metz, M.D.
How much would you pay to keep your private health insurance instead of a single-payer system? A thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars?
How about $350 billion?
Americans still persist in financing health care with unregulated private insurance. Consequently, our public health is the worst among civilized nations while our costs are the highest, bar none, in the world. Driving this high cost is overhead – plain old ponderous paperwork generated by our private insurance system – to the tune of $350 billion a year. Make no mistake: This money does not pay for health care. It pays for administrators, accountants, billing clerks and benefits managers to transfer our money to health care providers. Not all of this goes to private insurance companies, just $126 billion. And not all of that goes to profit and lobbying either. So where does the rest go? Read more...
05/15/2010
New York Times: Health Insurance Companies Try to Shape Rules.
Under the new law, insurers in the large group market are generally supposed to spend 85 percent of customers’ premiums on “clinical services” and quality-enhancing activities. Insurers and insurance regulators say that some companies will be unable or unwilling to meet the new standards.
05/03/2010
The Washington Post: Health insurers adopt some new rules early.
After being criticized as obstructionists during the long health-care debate, insurance companies now are implementing some popular provisions even sooner than the law demands.
04/25/2010
Santa Cruz Sentinel: Health care reform will cause heachaches, and much more.
"...Here go selected facts for the reader to assess..."
April 15, 2010
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Office of Oversight and Investigations: Implementing Health Insurance Reform: New Medical Loss Ratio Information for Policymakers and Consumers.
"Since August 2009, the Senate Commerce Committee has been investigating how commercial insurance companies spend the billions of dollars of premiums that American consumers pay..."
March 29, 2010
The Boston Globe: The state’s single-payer solution
"Overwhelming evidence suggests that nothing will work short of adopting a “single payer’’ system — under which all residents are covered by a public, comprehensive plan..."
Stat Shot!
Unnecessary administration consumes 31% of U.S. health spending, double that of Canada (16.7%). The average overhead among private U.S. insurers was 11.7%, compared with 1.3 % for Canada's single-payer system and 3.6% for our Medicare (a single-payer program for the elderly and disabled).
Health Care For All Texas
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Single Payer is health care based on need, not ability to pay
