EveryJoe » medicare

Social Security, Medicare on Shaky Ground

Mark Ellis — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:46:15 +0000

The economic situation has left much business in shambles, but the consequences of the recession may strike at those who rely on government programs like Social Security and Medicare. With more and more people leaving the workforce, these programs will eventually become so encumbered that they will collapse.

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Congress has recently been mulling over proposals to fix the forthcoming crisis situation for Social Security and Medicare. One of these plans of action is to create a bipartisan commission that will preemptively tackle the problems facing government benefit programs. This commission would then assemble a package of adjustments for Congress to approve, with no options left off the table.

President Obama has called for action to avoid the problems that the government benefits programs face but has not yet thrown his support behind the commission idea. Instead, Obama would prefer that Congress continue to focus on his health care and global warming initiatives.

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Social Security, Medicare on Shaky Ground

How Do We Increase the Patient’s Ability to Shop?

Bob Turek — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Forbes magazine’s medicare piece on how medical costs increase due to corporate lobbying for CT scanning coverage that drives equipment sales, reveals the market’s reaction:

Congress: “…tried to rope in runaway Medicare costs by dramatically cutting imaging payments in outpatient settings…”

Private Insurers: “…Companies like CareCore Radiology, American Imaging Management and National Imaging Associates cropped up to do the dirty work of reviewing and rejecting imaging orders on behalf of insurance companies…CareCore’s research shows a doctor who owns his own machine is four times as likely to order a scan as a doctor who doesn’t.”

GE:”…a lot of the arguments against imaging are bogus.”

Where does this leave the patient who is trying to inject competition into the process to lower prices? The bottom line appears to be the doctor-patient relationship- the patient must select doctors that they can trust to make the right decisions, not ones to simply increase business.

Do you feel that you can form a relationship with your doctor to get the right amount of tests and care? How else can we determine if a doctor is simply prescribing treatments to make more money? Is the whole process too difficult for the patient to control and make it competitive?

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How Do We Increase the Patient’s Ability to Shop?

Does the Government Stifle Competition?

Bob Turek — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Forbes magazine’s medical industry piece “Cranking Up the Volume” comments on GE’s lobbying efforts for medicare coverage for CT scans enabling sales of CT scanning equipment:

“The party has gone on too long”.

Apparently, excessive coverage for CT scans has led to over doing and “over” covering the scans, thus increasing medical costs:

“Radiologist David Gruen used to spend millions of dollars to replace his General Electric (nyse: GE – news – people ) MRI and CT scanners every three years. It was money well spent because the machines were always busy.”

The economics of this is very interesting: more money for allowable scans leads to buying more equipment which benefits GE. GE lobbys the government to cover scans that arguably aren’t needed. Patients ability to create competition for doctor’s services gets lost in the process. In this case, the government is allowing itself to be influenced by a specific group that ultimately increases medical costs.

Who should police GE and the government on this? Should the medical insurance companies be responsible for keeping the government and companies in check?

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Does the Government Stifle Competition?

Does Process and Information Visibility Help Increase Competition?

Bob Turek — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Forbes magazine recently wrote about the medical industry in “Cranking Up the Volume“. Presumably, higher “volume” means more visibility into the processes behind medicare, medical equipment, and diagnosis. My contention is that our medical costs will go down if we can increase competition. Competition usually comes into play when information becomes available- information about services, prices, and costs of providing services. A useful comparison dealing with understanding costs of providing services is in the auto sales area; a few years ago information about dealer costs and margins made available on the internet enabled competition by allowing buyers to shop around and better negotiate prices.

What do you think is the key to increasing competition, or being more competitive? Medical industry processes and information are complicated by the many parties involved including the government, corporations, lobbying groups, doctors, and patients- is increasing the visibility of the process and information a way to increase competition and drive down prices?

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Does Process and Information Visibility Help Increase Competition?