Latest Hub Issues & Best Blogs

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US Breast Cancer Drug Decision 'Marks Start of Death Panels'
Nick Allen, in Los Angeles and Andrew Hough

The Daily Telegraph, 8/16/10

America's health watchdog is considering revoking its approval of the drug Avastin for use on women with advanced breast cancer, leading to accusations that it will mark the start of 'death panel' drug rationing. A decision to rescind endorsement of the drug would reignite the highly charged debate over US health care reform and how much the state should spend on new and expensive treatments. Avastin, the world’s best selling cancer drug, is primarily used to treat colon cancer and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2008 for use on women with breast cancer that has spread. ... The FDA advisory panel has now voted 12-1 to drop the endorsement for breast cancer treatment. The panel unusually cited "effectiveness" grounds for the decision. But it has been claimed that "cost effectiveness" was the real reason ahead of reforms in which the government will extend health insurance to the poorest. Read more...

Health Care Premiums Are Already Soaring In Advance of Obamacare
Bradley Blakeman

Fox News, 8/16/10

This past month millions of Americans got notice from Blue Cross/Blue Shield providers across the country that their insurance premiums were going way up effective immediately. Here is the terse reason CareFirst/ Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Washington gave its subscribers for raising a monthly premium from $333 to $512 on a middle aged man who is healthy, is not a smoker and is not obese: "Your new rate reflects the overall rise in health care costs and we regret having to pass these additional costs on to you."  Read more...

Do State Governments Have the Authority to Enforce ObamaCare’s Insurance Regulations?
Peter Suderman

Reason, 8/16/10

As part of the new health care law, state governments are expected to enforce a host of federally defined regulations on health insurers. Just one problem: It seems that a number of states do not have the authority to enforce those regulations. ... The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is playing this down, arguing that even states that lack explicit authority to enforce the new regulations can use related powers to coax insurers into following the new rules. In a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, the NAIC wrote that “almost all states can use their form approval process, investigative powers, and/or market conduct exam authority to hold licensed insurers accountable for their compliance with the federal laws. This, combined with coordinated enforcement by the federal regulators, should be sufficient to ensure carriers comply with the new requirements.” But notice the hedging: It’s not all states, but almost all states. And those existing powers will only be sufficient in combination with federal enforcement. In other words, a number of states do not have the necessary powers to enforce the rules that the new health care law instructs them to enforce. Read more...

Mass. Mess: ObamaCare's Ugly Future
Sally Pipes

The New York Post, 8/16/10

“Law Will Extend Medicare Fund, Report Says,” was the New York Times headline. “Medicare Funds to Last 12 Years Longer Than Earlier Forecast, Report Says,” was the similar take of the Washington Post. Those two stories were upbeat summaries of what the latest report on Medicare’s long-term financial outlook supposedly revealed. But was that really the most newsworthy headline here? How about the fact that the person who compiled all of the data for this report, and knows its contents better than anyone else, utterly repudiated its findings? That’s right. Richard Foster, the chief actuary of the Medicare program and the man responsible for overseeing the production of the data which forms the basis of this annual report’s forecast, has advised the public — in his official “Statement of Actuarial Opinion” printed at the end of the trustees’ report — not to believe any of the modestly rosy conclusions contained within it. Read more...

Move Over Mom, Here Comes ObamaCare
Ron Bachman

The Daily Caller, 8/16/10

For years, consumers have been encouraged to use lower cost generics and even less expensive OTC medications. ... Many use a plan-provided debit card to pay for medications. As part of their insurance plans, families can use these accounts to purchase OTC medications such as prenatal vitamins, antacids, allergy medicines, pain relievers, and cold medicines. So, what changes under ObamaCare? Read for yourself. Section 9003 of ObamaCare states: “A drug is a prescribed drug determined without regard to whether such drug is available without a prescription.” What??? Translation from government-speak: Effective January 1, 2011, an OTC medication needs a doctor’s prescription to be defined as a qualified medical expense, even if it is otherwise available without a prescription! Only in the world of government control and bureaucracy would it make sense to require a mom, who is treating a sick child at 3am, to get a prescription for an OTC medication. That trip to the 24-hour pharmacy just got “government complicated.” Read more...

Economy Led to Cuts in Use of Health Care
Robert Pear

The New York Times, 8/16/10

The economic crisis in the United States has reduced the use of routine medical care, and the cutbacks here are much deeper than in countries with universal health care systems, researchers say in a new report. The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that “Americans, who face higher out-of-pocket health care costs, have reduced their routine medical care” much more than people in Britain, Canada, France and Germany. Individuals and families in all five countries lost income because of unemployment and lost wealth because of steep declines in stock prices. Read more...

Innovative Health Programs Counter Primary Care Shortage
Rita Rubin

USA Today, 8/15/10

About 65 million Americans live in communities with a shortage of primary care doctors, physicians trained to meet the majority of patients' health care needs over the course of their lives. How much more difficult will finding a primary care doctor become as a result of the recently passed health care reform legislation, which will extend coverage to an estimated 34 million currently uninsured Americans by 2019? Massachusetts, which in 2006 passed a law that led to nearly universal coverage of its 6.6 million residents, might provide some clues. Read more...

Interpreting the Health Care Law
Scott Gottlieb

American Enterprise Institute, 8/14/10

The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate committees that oversaw health reform weighed in this week on an arguably small matter of how the new law was being shaped. But the intrusion has some big implications, not only for what it means to the question at hand, but its foreshadowing of the very political context in which regulatory decisions implementing the new law are likely to be made. The letter turned on the question of the "legislative intent" when crafting a definition of the federal taxes that could be excluded from calculating the medical loss ratio that insurers will be held to. At issue is a part of the new health law that fixes how much insurers must spend on medical benefits versus administrative costs. Read more...

Health Care Freedom Comes to Colorado
Steven Moore

The Wall Street Journal, 8/14/10

Add Colorado to the list of states that are saying to ObamaCare: not here, thank you. Last week the state's Secretary of State certified that the Colorado Health Care Freedom Act had qualified for the November ballot. More than 130,000 Coloradoans signed petitions seeking to exempt themselves from major portions of federal health reform signed by President Obama in March. Jon Caldara, the initiative's sponsor and president of the conservative Independence Institute, said the measure would make Colorado "a health care sanctuary state." If approved in November, citizens would be exempt from the mandate requiring them to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. They'll also be immune from government forcing them into a public or private health care plan against their will. Read more...

Misled on Medicare
Stanford G. Ross and David M. Walker

The New York Times, 8/14/10

From 1990 to 1995, we served as public trustees for Social Security and Medicare. ... One of the reforms we were proudest of during our tenure was the inclusion of a separate public trustees’ statement with the annual summary trustees’ report. We tried to make these statements as clear, concise and honest as possible. ... It is because we so value these reports — and what they stand for — that we feel compelled to express our profound disappointment with this year’s report, which for the third year in a row was assembled without the input of independent trustees. To make matters worse, the conclusions expressed in this year’s Medicare report were, to our minds, based on unreasonable assumptions that produced unrealistic and misleading results. The unwarrantedly optimistic report could produce a serious misunderstanding of the true financial condition of Medicare and result in significant public confusion. Read more...

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