Health Care Adrift

I rarely if ever add guest posts to my blog.  In a way this may be seen as snobbish, however I don't see it that way.  As Natural Health News is the original an earliest source for quality good natural news.  Natural Health News led by example and sites that get more readers stealthily spied on our web sites, copied our writing without attribution, used our original format, and began selling their souls to the same banter you find on mainstream media sites.  But then there are many more lemmings than I'd care to document.


Because Natural Health News has high standards I have chosen an article very similar to an issue I was discussing at a recent Socrates Cafe gathering.  The ideas written in this post are much the same as I tried to espouse to other skeptical group members.  But do remember that the "death panel" remains in the Affordable Care Act , section 3403.  It is rationing of care by fiat.

Of course this is an old practice by Big Insurance.  It certainly continues and will explode once 2014 arrives.

My best advice is to learn to be better able to take care of your health.

And I do hope you think about what this writer has to say -

Rescuing Medicaid and Medicare Patients The pain we feel in life is going to get worse though it is possible to go against the flow and rise above it all. Specifically the pain of poverty is going to continue to rise in the United States as Greek-style International Monetary Fund oriented austerity is being imposed on the US. Taxes and regulations are increasing and public benefits and services are going down. The US is now starting to be hollowed out as efficiently as Greece and that will be the death of the western medical system and the economy built around it.

Pharmaceutical multinationals have halted shipments to Greece because of the economic crisis. Even the Swiss Red Cross slashed its supply of donor blood to Greece because it has not paid its bills. Pharmacies in Greece describe chaotic scenes as clients desperately search from shop to shop for much-needed drugs. Greece’s Pharmaceutical Association said "around 300 drugs are in very short supply," adding that "It’s a disgrace.

Congress needs to cut the debt, or that’s what the budget experts are saying. They say the government needs to rein in the mushrooming cost of the biggest budget-busting programs: Social Security, Medicaid and especially Medicare. The American administration is now wanting to make some administrative changes in the Medicare program that might lower payments to healthcare providers, while also reducing benefits or raising premiums for wealthier Medicare patients. These tinkering tactics don’t come anywhere close to addressing the monstrous programs that the country nor the people can afford anymore.

The paradigm of western medicine has led to the creation of a very expensive ineffective medical system that is bankrupting the government as well as its citizens. Mainstream medicine prefers that people endure its treatments no matter what the cost. Even if its principles and practices break the nation it would rather civilization ends as long as they can continue to build proton beam radiation machines at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars each.

We all know, even doctors know, how dangerous allopathic medicine is. It is as dangerous as it is expensive. The point is that we do not need nor can we afford this form of medicine that is going to be wiped out in the next great depression as it is now being wiped out in Greece.

Bernanke at the Helm

Though Bernanke seems to believe that we should all go down with the ship it does not have to be that way. Bernanke knows nothing about medicine and seems to be blind to the future because as everyone also knows he is stuck in the past. He is what I call a true blue level consciousness person, someone stuck in the levels of ideas and concepts that only exist in memory and thus the past. His high speed printing presses might be leading the bullet train to a crash at the end of the tracks but he is not looking forward only back.

It’s always the Great Depression for him, the early thirties unless that is all a lie and he is just the message-boy of the people who own him, the Federal Reserve System and the rest or most of the central banks around the world.

In the world of medicine the train wreck has arrived. Community-based cancer care, where until recently four out of five Americans with cancer were treated, is in serious crisis. The April 1 payment cut to Medicare mandated by sequestration will make cancer clinics go broke if they give Medicare patients the chemotherapy they need, oncologists claim. “A lot of us can’t believe this is happening,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates on Long Island.

Cancer clinics are turning away thousands of patients due to fears that treating them could jeopardize the bottom line. Oncologists across the country are finding it impossible to administer chemotherapy drugs while keeping their clinics afloat, let alone turn a profit.

This video is about people dying because of Obama care. But the conclusions are wrong. Everything is wrong when they start talking about expensive chemotherapy. Some think we should take water from a stone (money from a bankrupt government) and keep feeding the medical paradigm that does not allow for safer, less expensive and even more effective cancer treatments. Or we can save a few hundred billion and trillions through the next decade by learning to treat cancer differently.

For most people that is just too big of an idea to swallow but I have published a complete form of treatment that can be administered to cancer patients at home for a cost of four to five thousand dollars for a three month program. I believe my Natural Allopathic Medicine protocol approach is safer and more effective than their miserable system of cancer treatments that have hardly changed at all through the decades.

When the financial system finally splits at the seams and the economy goes down hard survival skills will include learning how to take care of oneself whether one has cancer or not. Might as well start learning unless you think you have all the time in the world and that we can magically print our way to heaven like Bernanke believes.

Let him pay for the ridiculously expensive cancer treatments with his digital money. All they have to decide is to do it and presto money can fall from heaven into oncology clinics across the country. They do it for the banks why not for the cancer patients? It is time to stop thinking of just the price of gold and start thinking about how we are going to take care of our families when the system completely collapses around us as it is already doing in Greece, Spain and many other countries.

Mark A. Sircus 

Health Insurance Reform: ACTUARIAL IMPACT ON MEDICARE

UPDATE: 7 September -  

Steep rate hikes on way for individual health insurance

Double-digit rate increases are hitting most individual health-insurance plans in Washington state, hurting jobless workers and worrying insurance regulators.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012827665_ratehikes07m.html

UPDATE: How Health Care Is Hampering Economic Recovery

by GoozNews ~ 27 Aug 2010 09:02am

Reed Abelson over at the New York Times' Prescription blog has an interesting reporton a new study questioning Detroit's strategy of relying on health care to bolster its lagging economy. I posted the following comment:
Detroit is merely a microcosm of the nation as a whole. Health care is the only sector that has added jobs throughout the Great Recession, just as it added jobs throughout the previous two decades (see my article in The Fiscal Times here).
What nobody wants to look at is how it continues to do so regardless of economic conditions. The answer is simple. There are no constraints on spending. Providers through insurers pass on rising costs to businesses and consumers in a marketplace where demand elasticity is very low because demand is dictated by the supply side (i.e., doctors/hospitals/input industries prescribe, patients obey).
It's like Keynesian stimulus with one vital exception, which turns it into its opposite. When the government engages in deficit spending to stimulate demand, it borrows from the future. When the health care sector engages in automatic demand-driven cost increases, it takes its cash in real time from every other sector of the economy, including the government. That may be acceptable when the rest of the economy is growing. During recessions, like now, it becomes a major drag that hampers economic recovery.

UPDATE: 25 August
Anthem Blue Cross allowed to move ahead with rate hikes

California insurance regulators cleared the way Wednesday for Anthem Blue Cross to implement scaled-back rate hikes after a previous rate increase was canceled amid an uproar over its size.
Anthem said it intends to put the new rates -- averaging 14% and as high as 20% -- into effect Oct. 1 for nearly 800,000 individual California policyholders.
The Woodland Hills company backed off its initial plan to increase premiums in March as much as 39% after consumers, regulators, lawmakers and even President Obama criticized it. Insurance regulators say the six-month delay saved policyholders $180 million. Anthem is the state's largest for-profit insurer.

from John Goodman's Health Policy Blog, 21 August
For the first time in Medicare history, the Medicare Chief Actuary has called the projections in a Medicare Trustees Report “unreasonable” and “implausible” and encouraged everyone to ignore them and view instead an “Illustrative Alternative” report. The alternative opens this way:
The Trustees Report is necessarily based on current law; as a result of questions regarding the operations of certain Medicare provisions, however, the projections shown in the report do not represent the “best estimate” of actual future Medicare expenditures.

and from the FDA

Slight Increase for Medicare Drug Premiums Next Year
Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part D will pay an average of $30 per month for their prescription drug benefit premiums in 2011, a $1 increase over what they paid this year, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officials.
Premiums stayed relatively stable because of a discount program in the the healthcare reform law, Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator of CMS' Center for Medicare, told reporters Wednesday.Cost will remain about steady, and so will benefits, said CMS Administrator Don Berwick, MD.
The low rates will "add stability" to the Medicare Part D program, which has an enrollment of about 27 million seniors, Berwick said.
When Part D first began, the program was projected to cost $634 billion for fiscal 2004 through 2013. Instead, it will cost $373 billion for those same years, Paul Spitalnic, of CMS' Office of the Actuary told reporters.
The main reason for the program coming in $261 billion under projected costs is that the rising costs of prescription drugs slowed in the early 2000s and more people switched to generics, explained Spitalnic.
In addition, Part D plans have been able to negotiate more drug rebates than anticipated, and fewer beneficiaries enrolled than the government originally predicted.

While the debate rages, Seniors get hit with higher costs

Some Medicare Rates to Rise
Find out what changes to expect -- and what you can do -- if you have a prescription-drug plan or Medicare Advantage plan.

By Kimberly Lankford. October 8, 2009

What is going to happen to rates for Medicare Part D prescription-drug plans next year? Can I switch plans?

Prices for both Medicare Part D prescription-drug plans as well as Medicare Advantage plans are going to rise in 2010. And you have from November 15 to December 31 to decide whether you want to stay in the same plan or switch plans for 2010.

Average premiums for Part D plans are increasing by 7% in 2010, to $30 per month, and average premiums for Medicare Advantage plans are jumping by 22%, to $39 per month. These price hikes may be particularly tough to stomach next year, when Social Security will not have a cost-of-living increase.

And premium increases are only part of the picture. More than 60% of Part D plans will charge an annual deductible in 2010 ($310 is standard) before covering any drug costs, up from the 45% that charged a deductible in 2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Fewer Part D plans will provide coverage in the so-called doughnut hole, which begins after you reach $2,830 in total drug spending and extends until your total drug costs for the year reach $6,440 in 2010; within that gap, you generally have to pay all the bills yourself. The plans that do provide some coverage in the doughnut hole cover only the cost of generic drugs; otherwise, you’re on your own.
And be sure to check how each Part D plan treats your specific medications: Co-payments are rising, and many insurers are changing formularies. For example, you could end up with higher out-of-pocket costs if your insurer switches your drug from preferred to co-pay nonpreferred. Ask your doctor whether you can switch any of your drugs to a generic or lower-cost medication; the policy with the best deal for brand-name drugs may not be the best deal for generics.


The Medicare prescription-drug-plan finder is an excellent tool to analyze the costs of Part D plans for your situation. Type in your drugs and dosages, and you’ll see total out-of-pocket costs -- premiums as well as co-payments -- for your medications throughout the year. Or call 800-633-4227 for personalized assistance.

This year’s premium increases come on top of previous cumulative price hikes. Premiums for AARP MedicareRx Preferred, the most popular Part D plan, have risen by 50% since 2006, according to Avalere Health, a health-care consulting firm. Premiums for Humana Enhanced, also a popular plan, have increased by 180% over the same time period.

If you’re struggling to afford the premiums for Medicare Part B, a Part D prescription-drug plan and a medigap policy, consider going with Medicare Advantage, which provides medical as well as prescription-drug coverage through a private insurer (it may also include dental and vision care). Almost 87% of Medicare beneficiaries will have access in 2010 to a low-cost Medicare Advantage plan that charges no premium above the cost of Medicare Part B.

These plans, too, have their drawbacks. Many are boosting premiums and increasing co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital stays and prescription drugs. You may have to pay much more out of pocket for certain types of treatments, such as chemotherapy, than you would with Medicare and medigap. And be sure to find out whether your providers participate in the plan (the least-expensive plans, Medicare HMOs, have the tightest restrictions on doctors and hospitals).

If you are already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, you should receive an annual notice of change in late October that outlines any differences in your plan’s coverage and costs from 2009 to 2010, which should be a key piece of your research, says Donna Burtanger, senior director of Medicare for SilverLink. To find out about prices and coverage for plans available in your area, as well as customer-service ratings, go to the Medicare Options Compare tool at Medicare.gov.

Many people are concerned that Medicare Advantage plans will leave the business if Congress passes a health-care reform plan that cuts back on subsidies to private insurers. If your plan does shut down, you may switch to another Medicare Advantage plan or move back to traditional Medicare. If you do, insurers must offer you medigap plans A, B, C or F regardless of your health (otherwise, the price of a new medigap policy may be based on your health, unless you signed up for Medicare Part B in the past six months).
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