Thursday, February 28, 2013

By Putting Patients First, Hospital Tries To Make Care More Personal

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Texas Gov. Perry Says No To Medicaid Expansion

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Women To See Higher Prices For Long-Term Care Insurance

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Health Care Law Saves Seniors Billions on Prescription Drugs

For the third straight year, the Affordable Care Act provided millions of American seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare lower costs on prescription drugs and improved benefits.� Since the health care law�s enactment, 6.1 million Medicare beneficiaries have saved over $5.7 billion on prescription drugs.

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act provided a one-time $250 check for people with Medicare who reached the Part D prescription drug coverage gap also known as the �donut hole.� Since then, individuals in the �donut hole� have continued to receive discounts on prescription drugs. Discounts on both brand name and generic drugs will continue to increase each year until the coverage gap is completely closed in 2020.

In 2012, 3.5 million people with Medicare in the �donut hole� saved $2.5 billion on prescription drugs, more than the $2.3 billion they saved in 2011.

Increased Access to Preventive Services

In addition to making prescription drugs more affordable, the Affordable Care Act is helping Americans take charge of their own health by removing barriers to preventive services.� Prior to the healthcare law, people with Medicare had to pay deductibles or co-pays for many preventive care services.� But in 2012, many recommended preventive services, including annual wellness visits, were offered to people with Medicare, with no deductibles or co-pays. �Cost is no longer an issue for seniors and people with disabilities who want to stay healthy by detecting and treating health problems early.�

As a result of better access, use of preventive services has expanded among Medicare beneficiaries.� An estimated 34.1 million people with Medicare benefited from coverage of preventive services with no cost-sharing last year.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the Medicare program has also been strengthened in other areas.� Compared to 2011, people with Medicare saw only moderate premium increases in 2012 for Medicare Part B benefits, which cover outpatient care, doctors' services, lab tests, durable medical supplies, and other services.� For those who enrolled in Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans, average premiums remained steady.� And they now have access to a wider range of high-quality plan choices, with more four and five star plans than were previously available.� Moreover, the Affordable Care Act continues to make Medicare a more secure program, with new tools and enhanced authority to crack down on criminals who are looking to defraud the program.

With free preventive services and more affordable prescription drugs, Medicare is improving access to care and promoting the best care for people with Medicare.

Related:

Closing the Donut HoleSeniors and the Affordable Care ActStrengthening MedicareMedicare: Questions & Answers

Monday, February 25, 2013

Health Care’s New Trend: Spending Dollars More Wisely

Today, a new report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services included good news for consumers and our health care system. This report provides more evidence that the health care law will help control costs and save money for families while extending coverage to millions of Americans. According to the new report:

Health care costs stay steady. Contrary to claims made by opponents of the health care law, today�s report found that the Affordable Care Act did not result in increased health care costs. In fact, the report showed a slight decrease in costs in 2011.Consumers will save money. Out-of-pocket spending will decrease by 1.5% as provisions of the Affordable Care Act � the health care law � kick in. In the short run, consumers won�t see the kind of price hikes on prescription drugs they have become accustomed to in recent years. The report finds that growth in prescription drug spending will decline from 3.9% in 2011 to 2.9% in 2012 and to 2.4% in 2013. That�s real money back in the pockets of millions of Americans.No increase in national health spending as a percent of GDP for five years. From 2009 through 2013, national health spending will not increase as a percent of the economy.Slower growth in health care spending once changes are implemented. The Affordable Care Act is projected to insure over 30 million additional Americans, resulting in improved access and thus health spending as they gain coverage.� Once implemented, the report shows that national health spending growth is projected to be lower than it would have been without the health care law from 2017 through 2019.

This report is consistent with other recent reports, one of which stated: �Four years of historically low growth is noteworthy and we may be at the start of a new normal.���

The health care law has contributed to these results and will continue to help move us forward.� We�re rooting out fraud and abuse, and have stopped people across the country who are scamming the Medicare system.� Medicare is making cutting-edge payment reforms, such as demonstrations launched by the CMS Innovation Center that will test models that save money and improve care, and help ensure that these models are replicated across the country.� We have implemented policies to hold insurance companies accountable.� And, we�re investing in primary care and prevention that will help keep small health problems from turning into big ones.

Thanks to reforms like these, the Affordable Care Act is helping control health costs and expand coverage, and ensure better health and better health care, for all Americans in the next decade and well beyond.

Arizona Seeks To Balance Patients And Profits With Home Care

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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Health Care Spending In America, In Two Graphs

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Saturday, February 23, 2013

Lesson Learned: A Curb On Drugmakers' Gifts To Medical Students

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Why Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott Flip-Flopped on Obamacare

Florida Gov. Rick Scott was elected in 2010 almost entirely thanks to his activism opposing the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Scott spent $20 million of his own considerable fortune attacking the law, and the Republican backed the state’s lawsuit challenging its constitutionality all the way to the Supreme Court. Scott had declared last summer that Florida would implement the law basically over his dead body, including the optional part that would provide federal funding to expand Medicaid to people making up to 138 percent of the poverty line.

So it was a bit of a surprise Wednesday when he announced suddenly that he had changed his mind: Florida should embrace the Medicaid expansion. We’d like to think that this article might have had something to do with his decision; Scott himself claims that mother’s death inspired his change of heart. But it’s more likely that the decision was a direct result of the US Department of Health and Human Services agreeing to grant Florida a waiver that would allow it to move more Medicaid recipients into private managed-care plans�many of which are part of huge corporate insurance companies waiting to cash in on the latest installment of Obamacare. (The Medicaid expansion is expected to send $66 billion in federal funds to Florida in the next decade.)

Scott has been saying for months that if HHS approved Florida’s waiver request, he might be more willing to take the Medicaid expansion. He was in DC in January meeting with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over the issue. But HHS’s decision to grant the waiver was somewhat surprising, given that the state was asking to expand a very troubled pilot project going back to the Bush era. The pilot project, which also required a waiver from HHS, allowed the state to put Medicaid recipients in five counties into private, HMO-type health plans rather than the traditional government health plan for the poor and disabled. Scott has championed the pilot as an innovative way of keeping government spending in check. Health care advocates, though, saw the program as a major disaster.

A study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute backed up their claims, finding that the biggest problem with the “reform” was that insurance companies got into the program thinking they’d make a lot of money, only to discover that they actually had to care for people who were expensively sick. Nine plans dropped out of the pilot project in a year, leaving many patients without access to any primary health care. There were horror stories, too: the woman denied a kidney transplant, the man with a lifelong seizure disorder who suddenly found he couldn’t get the Botox injections that calmed his seizures. If the patients weren’t getting dropped by the managed-care plans, they were fleeing them for whatever other options they could find. There’s no evidence that the private plans saved the state any money.

“We’ve been raising hell for a couple of years saying this is a problem,” says Laura Goodhue, executive director of Florida CHAIN, a consumer advocacy group that works for the uninsured in Florida. “When you’re caring for an expensive population with multiple conditions, lots of mental-health issues, the only way to make a profit is to delay and deny services, and that�s what we saw in Florida.”

Some of the companies chosen to lead the Medicaid “reform” pilot project weren’t exactly stellar performers before they got there. Wellcare, one of the HMOs in the project (and a major donor to Florida’s GOP), paid out $80 million in 2009 to settle charges federal criminal charges that it had lied about how much it actually spent on health care for poor kids and other vulnerable clients. Last year it paid out another $137.5 million to settle False Claim Act lawsuits alleging schemes to wring extra money out of Medicaid programs, including those in Florida, as well as cherry-picking customers and other abuses.

Despite experiences like these, the Florida Legislature in 2011 voted to expand the pilot project, and big insurers have been jumping to get into this market, (The insurance giant WellPoint, for instance, recently bought Amerigroup, a large Medicaid managed care company, to get in on new business thanks to Obamacare.) But to fully implement its new privatization law, Florida needed the federal government, which pays for about half the program, to waive certain requirements designed to protect patients.

Consumer advocates had fought the law and have been lobbying the Obama administration against granting Florida a waiver. And they had some success. Recently, HHS refused to allow Florida to let HMOs charge Medicaid enrollees $10 co-pays for doctor visits or $100 for emergency room visits for non-emergency care, as the state law allows.

And while Scott has heralded this week’s news about the latest waiver approval as a victory, what HHS actually agreed to is less than the governor and the HMO companies lobbying for the changes were probably hoping for. Among other things, HHS said that the state still has a long way to go to protect consumers enrolled in private plans, and that the approval of the waiver was “conditional,” premised on Florida developing “robust” community input and data-driven goals and strategies.

Goodhue says the new waiver has many more consumer protections built into it than the one granted under the Bush administration, and that hopefully it will prevent some of the problems that occurred under the state’s pilot program. She still doesn’t think that managed care is the way to go to improve Medicaid. But in the end, she�s pleased that it’s not as bad as it could be, and if it means that a million Floridians will get new coverage, that’s something advocates can get behind.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Need A Price For A Hip Operation? Good Luck With That

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Friday, February 15, 2013

New Funds Could Shorten Waiting Lists For AIDS Drugs

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Thursday, February 14, 2013

How I Lost My Fear of Universal Health Care

When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada’s Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn’t choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.

When I got pregnant shortly after moving, I was apprehensive. Would I even be able to have a home birth like I had experienced with my first 2 babies? Universal Health Care meant less choice right? So I would be forced to do whatever the medical system dictated regardless of my feelings, because of the government mandate. I even talked some of having my baby across the border in the US, where I could pay out of pocket for whatever birth I wanted. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that midwives were not only covered by the Universal health care, they were encouraged! Even for hospital births. In Canada, midwives and doctors were both respected, and often worked together.

I went to my first midwife appointment and sat in the waiting room looking at the wall of informational pamphlets. I never went to the doctor growing up, we didn’t have health insurance, and my parents preferred a conservative naturopathic doctor anyways. And the doctor I had used for my first 2 births was also a conservative Christian. So I had never seen information on birth control and STDs. One of the pamphlets read “Pregnant Unexpectedly?” so I picked it up, wondering what it would say. The pamphlet talked about adoption, parenthood, or abortion. It went through the basics of what each option would entail and ended by saying that these choices were up to you. I was horrified that they included abortion on the list of options, and the fact that the pamphlet was so balanced instead of “pro-life.”

During my appointment that day, the midwife asked her initial round of questions including whether or not I had desired to become pregnant in the first place. Looking back I am not surprised she asked that, I was depressed at the time, (even though I did not list that on my medical chart) and very vocal about my views on birth control (it wasn’t OK, ever.) No wonder she felt like she should ask if I was happy to be having this baby. But I was angry about the whole thing. In my mind, freedom was being violated, my rights were being decided for me by the evils of Universal Health Care.

Fast forward a little past the Canadian births of my third and fourth babies. I had better prenatal care than I had ever had in the States. I came in regularly for appointments to check on my health and my babies’ health throughout my pregnancy, and I never had to worry about how much a test cost or how much the blood draw fee was. With my pregnancies in the States, I had limited my checkups to only a handful to keep costs down. When I went in to get the shot I needed because of my negative blood type, it was covered. In fact I got the recommended 2 doses instead of the more risky 1 dose because I didn’t have to worry about the expense. I had a wide array of options and flexibility when it came to my birth, and care providers that were more concerned with my health and the health of my baby than how much money they might make based on my birth, or what might impact their reputation best. When health care is universal, Drs are free to recommend and provide the best care for every patient instead of basing their care on what each patient can afford.

I found out that religious rights were still respected. The Catholic hospital in the area did not provide abortions, and they were not required too. I had an amazing medically safe birth, and excellent post-natal care with midwives who had to be trained, certified and approved by the medical system.

I started to feel differently about Universal government mandated and regulated Health care. I realized how many times my family had avoided hospital care because of our lack of coverage. When I mentioned to Canadians that I had been in a car accident as a teen and hadn’t gone into the hospital, they were shocked! Here, you always went to the hospital, just in case. And the back issue I had since the accident would have been helped by prescribed chiropractic care which would have been at no cost to me. When I asked for prayers for my little brother who had been burned in a camping accident, they were all puzzled why the story did not include immediately rushing him to the hospital. When they asked me to clarify and I explained that many people in the States are not insured and they try to put off medical care unless absolutely needed, they literally could not comprehend such a thing.

I started to wonder why I had been so opposed to government mandated Universal Health care. Here in Canada, everyone was covered. If they worked full-time, if they worked part-time, or if they were homeless and lived on the street, they were all entitled to the same level of care if they had a medical need. People actually went in for routine check-ups and caught many of their illnesses early, before they were too advanced to treat. People were free to quit a job they hated, or even start their own business without fear of losing their medical coverage. In fact, the only real complaint I heard about the universal health care from the Canadians themselves, was that sometimes there could be a wait time before a particular medical service could be provided. But even that didn’t seem to be that bad to me, in the States most people had to wait for medical care, or even be denied based on their coverage. The only people guaranteed immediate and full service in the USA, were those with the best (and most expensive) health coverage or wads of cash they could blow. In Canada, the wait times were usually short, and applied to everyone regardless of wealth. If you were discontent with the wait time (and had the money to cover it) you could always travel out of the country to someplace where you could demand a particular service for a price. Personally, I never experienced excessive wait times, I was accepted for maternity care within a few days or weeks, I was able to find a family care provider nearby easily and quickly, and when a child needed to be brought in for a health concern I was always able to get an appointment within that week.

The only concern I was left with was the fact that abortion was covered by the universal health care, and I still believed that was wrong. But as I lived there, I began to discover I had been misled in that understanding as well. Abortion wasn’t pushed as the only option by virtue of it being covered. It was just one of the options, same as it was in the USA. In fact, the percentage rates of abortion are far lower in Canada than they are in the USA, where abortion is not covered by insurance and is often much harder to get. In 2008 Canada had an abortion rate of 15.2 per 1000 women (In other countries with government health care that number is even lower), and the USA had an abortion rate of 20.8 abortions per 1000 women. And suddenly I could see why that was the case. With Universal coverage, a mother pregnant unexpectedly would still have health care for her pregnancy and birth even if she was unemployed, had to quit her job, or lost her job.

If she was informed that she had a special needs baby on the way, she could rest assured knowing in Canada her child’s health care needs would be covered. Whether your child needs therapy, medicines, a caregiver, a wheelchair, or repeated surgeries, it would be covered by the health care system. Here, you never heard of parents joining the army just so their child’s “pre-existing” health care needs would be covered. In fact, when a special needs person becomes an adult in Canada, they are eligible for a personal care assistant covered by the government. We saw far more developmentally or physically disabled persons out and about in Canada, than I ever see here in the USA. They would be getting their groceries at the store, doing their business at the bank, and even working job, all with their personal care assistant alongside them, encouraging them and helping them when they needed it. When my sister came up to visit, she even commented on how visible special needs people were when the lady smiling and waving while clearing tables at the Taco Bell with her caregiver clearly had Downs Syndrome.

I also discovered that the Canadian government looked out for it’s families in other ways. The country mandates one year of paid maternity leave, meaning a woman having a baby gets an entire year after the birth of her baby to recover and parent her new baby full-time, while still receiving 55% of her salary and their job back at the end of that year. Either parent can use the leave, so some split it, with one parent staying at home for 6 months and the other staying at home for 6 months. I could hardly believe my ears when I first heard it. In America, women routinely had to return to work after 6 weeks leave, many times unpaid. Many American women lost their jobs when becoming pregnant or having a baby. I knew people who had to go back to work 2 weeks after giving birth just to hang onto their job and continue making enough money to pay the bills. Also every child in Canada gets a monthly cash tax benefit. The wealthier families can put theirs into a savings account to pay for college someday (which also costs far less money in Canada by the way), the not so wealthy can use theirs to buy that car seat or even groceries. In the province we lived in, we also received a monthly day care supplement check for every child under school age. I made more money being a stay at home mom in Canada than I do in the States working a close to a minimum wage job. And none of the things I listed here are considered “welfare” they are available to every Canadian regardless of income. For those with lower incomes than we had there are other supports in place as well.

If a woman gets pregnant unexpectedly in America, she has to worry about how she will get her own prenatal care, medical care for her child, whether or not she will be able to keep her job and how she will pay for daycare for her child so she can continue to support her family. In Canada those problems are eliminated or at least reduced. Where do you think a woman is more likely to feel supported in her decision to keep her baby, and therefore reduce abortions?

Since all of these benefits are available to everyone, I never heard Canadians talking about capping their incomes to remain lower income and not lose their government provided health coverage. Older people in Canada don’t have to clean out their assets to qualify for some Medicare or Social Security programs, I heard of inheritances being left even amongst the middle classes. Something I had only heard about in wealthy families in the USA.

And lest you think that the Canada system is draining the government resources, their budget is very close to balanced every year. They’ve had these programs for decades. Last year Canada’s national debt was 586 billion dollars, the USA has 15.5 trillion dollars in national debt. Canada has about one 10th the population of the US, so even accounting for size, the USA is almost 3 times more indebted. And lest you think that taxes are astronomical, our median income taxes each year were only slightly higher than they had been in the States, and we still got a large chunk of it back each year at tax time.

In the end, I don’t see Universal health care as an evil thing anymore. Comparing the two systems, which one better values the life of each person? Which system is truly more family friendly?

Former Quiverfull believer, Melissa is a member of the Spiritual Abuse Survivor Blogs Network at No Longer Quivering – she blogs at Permission to Live.

Nixoncare Finally Wins

“The time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high-quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it.” – Richard Nixon

The Supreme Court decision to uphold the constitutionality of Barack Obama�s Affordable Care Act has caused a rejoicing among liberals not seen since the 2008 presidential election. The threat of repeal of the legislation now known by friend and foe alike as Obamacare, has united democrats and republicans too. The inability of any president to successfully provide universal health care to Americans made the passage and survival of Obamacare seem like a greater victory than it actually was. Republicans are united in thwarting the initiatives of any democratic president, especially a black one whose very presence causes them to react like one of Pavlov�s dogs.

Barack Obama�s health care plan is very much like a health care plan first presented by another president in 1971. Then president Richard Nixon presented a plan that was very similar to the over hyped Obamacare. Nixon proposed forcing private insurance companies to cover everyone regardless of prior health condition, and the government subsidizing those unable to pay.

The elation created by the Obama court victory is symptomatic of many things that are very wrong in the American body politic. Once again we see proof that the democrats of the 21st century are akin to the republicans of forty years ago. There is no other way to explain their bizarre rejoicing because a bandaid has been placed over a gunshot wound.

Nixon�s proposal ultimately failed because the late senator Ted Kennedy opposed it. Kennedy was the democratic point person on health care and he saw the obvious flaws in a plan which maintained a dependence on the rule of private health insurers. He assumed that an eventual democratic presidential victory would bring true health care reform, and torpedoed the Nixon initiative which is now being celebrated by democrats as a progressive triumph.

The Obama plan does address some of the major problems inherent in the current system, such as allowing parents to continue covering young adult children and preventing pre-existing conditions from barring access to coverage. These are certainly worthy goals, but a true single payer, medicare for all plan would address those problems too, and would also address the biggest obstruction to true health care reform, the reliance on private health insurance companies to provide care for every person.

Private health insurance companies are the problem, and the Affordable Care Act presents a huge windfall for them. When Obama�s plan goes into full effect in 2014, there will still be nothing to prevent health insurance companies from manipulating the market place and giving Americans access to inferior coverage with high deductibles. Medical care bankruptcies will not disappear, and the true death panel, privately run health care, will continue with the help of government dollars. Nixon�s plan was in some ways superior to Obama�s because it called for strict federal oversight of the insurance companies. Greater regulation would have prevented what will now be an inferior and overly expensive system from dictating health care outcomes.

As Vice President Biden famously said, the Obama plan is a �big f*ing deal.� It is a tremendous political victory for Obama but once again we must ask if political victories and also victories for the people. We now have a deeply flawed health care system which is more entrenched than ever. The argument that this plan will eventually lead to a single payer system is highly problematic. Big pharma and health insurance companies were at the negotiating table every step of the way while single payer advocates were locked out.
This act solidifies their control over our lives and shows once again the degree to which corporations drive American public policy.

A victory for Obama is not necessarily a victory for the people, even if that political victory causes insanity among republicans. Scorn from Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are not necessarily justifications for rejoicing. Republicans can�t strike a blow against Obama in part because he accepted and promoted so many of their policies. From making war around the world, to bailing out the banks, to bailing out health care, Obama and the democrats act like the republicans they say are their political enemies.

We are told that Ted Kennedy must be smiling in his grave because his long held dream came true. After living to see only backward steps in the health care system he acknowledged regret at not accepting the Nixon plan The president who resigned in disgrace ended up winning in the end. Nixon may also be happy in the great beyond. It took a black man and the democratic party to give him his final political victory.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Stressed Out Americans Want Help, But Many Don't Get It

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Saturday, February 9, 2013

Feds Reject Mississippi's Plan For Insurance Exchange

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Will Your Long-Term Care Coverage Keep Up With Changing Times?

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Friday, February 8, 2013

Stressed Out Americans Want Help, But Many Don't Get It

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Monday, February 4, 2013

Lesson Learned: A Curb On Drugmakers' Gifts To Medical Students

More From Shots - Health News HealthExperimental Tuberculosis Vaccine Fails To Protect InfantsHealthShortage Of Brain Tissue Hinders Autism ResearchHealthQuick TB Test Builds Up Arsenal Against Drug-Resistant BacteriaHealthNovartis Recalls Triaminic And Theraflu Cough Syrups

More From Shots - Health News

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Please keep your community civil. All comments must follow the NPR.org Community rules and terms of use, and will be moderated prior to posting. NPR reserves the right to use the comments we receive, in whole or in part, and to use the commenter's name and location, in any medium. See also the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Community FAQ.

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Sunday, February 3, 2013

Washington’s Revolving Door Is Hazardous to Our Health

We’ve seen how Washington insiders write the rules of politics and the economy to protect powerful special interests, but now as we enter the holiday season, and a month or so after the election, we’re getting a refresher course in just how that inside game is played, gifts and all. In this round, Santa doesn’t come down the chimney — he simply squeezes his jolly old self through the revolving door.

It’s an old story, the latest chapter of which came to light a few days ago with a small item in Politico: “Elizabeth Fowler is leaving the White House for a senior-level position leading ‘global health policy’ at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group.”

A familiar name. We had talked about Liz Fowler on Bill Moyers Journal in 2009, during the early stages of Obama’s health care reform. She was at the center of the action, sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee at committee hearings. We noted, “She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she’s working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.”

After Obamacare passed, Senator Baucus himself, one of the biggest recipients in Congress of campaign cash from the health care industry, boasted that the architect of the legislation was none other than Liz Fowler. “I want to single out one person,” he said.

“… Liz Fowler is my chief health counsel. Liz Fowler has put my health care team together… She put together the white paper last November 2008, [the] 87-page document which became the basis, the foundation, the blueprint from which almost all health care measures in all bills on both sides of the aisle came. She is an amazing person. She is a lawyer; she is a Ph.D. She is just so decent. She is always smiling, she is always working, always available to help any Senator, any staff. I just thank Liz from the bottom of my heart.”

The health care industry was very pleased, too. Early on in the evolution of Obamacare, the Senate and the White House cut deals that protected the interests of the health care industry, especially insurers and the pharmaceutical companies. Lobbyists beat back such popular proposals as a public option, an expansion of Medicare, and a requirement that drug companies negotiate the prices they charge. As the eagle-eyed journalist Glenn Greenwald noted in The Guardian last week, “The bill’s mandate that everyone purchase the products of the private health insurance industry, unaccompanied by any public alternative, was a huge gift to that industry.” That sound you hear isn’t jingle bells; it’s cash registers ringing.

And Liz Fowler? The White House brought her over from Congress to oversee the new law’s implementation, first at the Department of Health and Human Services and then as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy.

And now, it’s through the revolving door once more. Yes, Christmas has come a little early for the peripatetic Ms. Fowler, as she leaves the White House for the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. As Greenwald writes,

“[Ms. Fowler] will receive ample rewards from that same industry as she peddles her influence in government and exploits her experience with its inner workings to work on that industry’s behalf, all of which has been made perfectly legal by the same insular, Versailles-like Washington culture that so lavishly benefits from all of this.”

Friends of Liz Fowler will say this is harsh — that she was the talented, intelligent protégée of two liberal Democrats — outgoing California Congressman Pete Stark and the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York — who believed in public service as a calling. That she was seriously devoted to crafting a health care reform proposal that would pass. No doubt, but it’s not the point. She’s emblematic of the revolving door culture that inevitably means, when push comes to shove, corporate interests will have the upper hand in the close calls that determine public policy. It’s how insiders fix the rules of the market, no matter which party is in power.

The last time we looked, 34 former staff members of Senator Baucus, whose finance committee has life and death power over the industry’s wish list, were registered lobbyists, more than a third of them working on health care issues in the private sector. And the revolving door spins ever faster after a big election like the one we had last month, as score of officials, elected representatives and their staffs vacate their offices after the ballots are counted. Many of them head for K Street and the highest bidder.

When his administration began, President Obama swore he would get tough. “If you are a lobbyist entering my administration,” he said, “you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years… When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I am President. And there will be a ban on gifts by lobbyists to anyone serving in the administration as well.”

Reforms were passed that are supposed to slow down the revolving door, increase transparency and limit the contact ex-officials and officeholders can have with their former colleagues. But those rules and regulations have loopholes big enough for Santa and his sleigh to drive through, reindeer included. The market keeps growing for insiders poised to make a killing when they leave government to help their new bosses get what they want from government. That’s the great thing about the revolving door: one good turn deserves another.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Magnets May Pull Kids With Sunken Chests Out Of Operating Room

More From Shots - Health News HealthAre NFL Football Hits Getting Harder And More Dangerous?HealthLesson Learned: A Curb On Drugmakers' Gifts To Medical StudentsHealthSalmonella Undermines Hedgehogs' Cuteness OverloadScienceHow Owls Spin Their Heads Without Tearing Arteries

More From Shots - Health News

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Please keep your community civil. All comments must follow the NPR.org Community rules and terms of use, and will be moderated prior to posting. NPR reserves the right to use the comments we receive, in whole or in part, and to use the commenter's name and location, in any medium. See also the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Community FAQ.

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