Viewpoints: Medicare’s Plan For Prosthetics; GOP Stumbles On Health; Prisoners Paying For Care
A selection of opinions on health care from around the country.
The Hill:
Medicare Should Not Reverse Standard Of Care For Amputees
Today, Medicare officials have before them a draft rule that would increase the suffering of hundreds of thousands of men and women who are working hard to make their way in the world as amputees. It is not an exaggeration to say that research into advanced prosthetics will not only cease but the standard of care will regress back to the good old days in 1969 when I was first fit with a wooden leg. ... Here’s a note for budget hawks: Total prosthetic limb spending for Medicare peaked in 2010 and has decreased every year since. Total spending on prosthetic limbs and orthotic braces by all payers in this country is less than $2 billion a year. To put that amount in perspective, we spend $7 billion a year for hip and knee replacements. (Bob Kerrey, 9/1)
The Dallas Morning News/Chicago Tribune:
Study Looks At Health Care Spending's Rise In Twilight Years
A person's health care spending tends to be high in the last year of life but not as high as conventional health economics suggests. The biggest spending comes from years of custodial, disability care endured in nursing homes and hospitals mostly by women who don't have long-term care insurance. (Jim Landers, 8/31)
The New York Times' The Upshot:
The Problem With G.O.P. Plans To Sell Health Insurance Across State Lines
At the Fox News Republican debate last month, Donald Trump offered a way to lower health care costs: allow insurers to sell their policies across state lines. ... The idea is that by eliminating the red tape associated with state insurance regulation, insurers will be able to offer national plans with lower administrative costs. That would expand consumers’ choices and reduce the price of insurance. The proposals also all assume that, in place of expensive regulations in some states, insurers would have the option of choosing to base their companies in a state with fewer rules. ... The trouble is that varying or numerous state regulations aren’t the main reason insurance markets tend to be uncompetitive. (Margot-Sanger Katz, 8/31)
Los Angeles Times:
Would The GOP's Healthcare Ideas Work? It Depends On Your Definition Of 'Work.'
Just like in the 2012 election, every Republican candidate for president wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Some of the candidates have even come forward with ideas for replacing it, and we are beginning to get a sense of what Republican healthcare reform might look like. Judging from rhetoric alone, Republicans seem to want to achieve what Obamacare has already accomplished. (Larry Levitt, 8/31)
The New York Times:
Psychology Is Not In Crisis
Is psychology in the midst of a research crisis? An initiative called the Reproducibility Project at the University of Virginia recently reran 100 psychology experiments and found that over 60 percent of them failed to replicate — that is, their findings did not hold up the second time around. The results, published last week in Science, have generated alarm (and in some cases, confirmed suspicions) that the field of psychology is in poor shape. But the failure to replicate is not a cause for alarm; in fact, it is a normal part of how science works. (Lisa Feldman Barrett, 9/1)
Bloomberg:
Why We Fall For Bogus Research
[O]n Thursday, Science published the results of a project that aimed to replicate 100 famous studies -- and found that only about one-third of them held up. The others showed weaker effects, or failed to find the effect at all. This is, to put it mildly, a problem. But it is not necessarily the problem that many people seem to assume, which is that psychology research standards are terrible, or that the teams that put out the papers are stupid. Sure, some researchers doubtless are stupid, and some psychological research standards could be tighter, because we live in a wide and varied universe where almost anything you can say is certain to be true about some part of it. But for me, the problem is not individual research papers, or even the field of psychology. It's the way that academic culture filters papers, and the way that the larger society gets their results. (Megan McArdle, 8/31)
Modern Healthcare:
Prisoners Have Skin In The Game, Too
Talk about skin in the game! In this case, it's more like muscle and bone. At least 38 states are charging prison inmates co-payments for healthcare services, according to a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Those fees typically are $20 or less, according to a story on the study by Stateline. But in Texas, state prison inmates who request a medical visit can be charged $100. In Utah state prison, inmates can be charged up to $2,000 for a hospitalization. “We do it for the same reason your insurance company does, to eliminate abuse by making the inmates put a little skin in the game,” Tommy Thompson, jail administrator at the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee, told Stateline. (Harris Meyer, 8/28)
The Philadelphia Inquirer:
How Much To Cut Drug Prices?
On August 20, the Kaiser Family Foundation published the latest results from its poll that tracks health care opinions among American consumers. The pollsters found that only slightly more than four in 10 respondents (42 percent) have a positive view of pharma companies. That ranks the pharma industry near the bottom, with just oil companies below it at 40 percent. Although people recognize pharma's contributions to improving the length and quality of life (they put pharma in the middle of the pack as far as social contributions), 74 per cent of this sample said Big Pharma is too concerned about making money and not concerned enough about helping people. (Daniel R. Hoffman, 8/31)
The Richmond Times-Dispatch:
More Work Remains On Mental Health
Four months ago, police officers arrested JayMicheal Mitchell for stealing a Snickers, a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a snack cake from a 7-Eleven. They took him to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, where he remained until Aug. 19 — when he was found dead in his cell. Nothing at the moment suggests foul play. But neither does anything about the case seem right. The 24-year-old Mitchell suffered from bipolar disorder, and had been awaiting transfer to the Eastern State mental hospital. He kept waiting, because no beds were available. (8/31)
Modern Healthcare:
Hospital Admission Policy In Dismaland
Over the several years that the CMS and hospitals have been tussling over the reasons behind the steady rise in short-term observation stays, no one until now has suggested the increase represents a deliberate effort by hospitals to avoid Medicare's 30-day readmission penalties. But in a blog post on the Health Affairs website last week, single-payer advocates Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler made precisely that charge. (Merrill Goozner, 8/29)