Multi Medium

So Many Wankers, So Little Time…

Probably not the same guy…

I’m not sure he can top today’s WOTD, but McCain’s healthcare adviser is pretty damn bad:

John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, thinks the numbers put out by the Census highlighting Texas’ [health insurance] plight are “misleading:”

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

That’s right. John Goodman’s solution to the health care crisis in America is to change the definition of “uninsured” so that magically, everyone is insured.

Brilliant!  Everyone can get free healthcare… once it’s too late to help.  Either that, or the threshold for visiting the ER gets so low that people start dropping like flies in overcrowded waiting rooms.

Goodman’s phony solution is a textbook example of the Republican power-of-words, we-create-our-own-reality strategy of solving problems by defining them away.  Just like how the Bush administration’s “eliminated” illegal torture, detentions, and wiretapping by bullying Congress into making them legal, or toyed with the idea of reclassifying fast food work as “manufacturing,” or when the Reagan administration famously tried to turn school cafeteria ketchup into a vegetable.

But wait, the wankery doesn’t end there!  It sounds like this charming Goodman fellow is probably a fan of today’s WOTD:

Here is the variation in life expectancy among ethnic and racial groups in the United States and as you can see, it’s all over the map. [...] but doctors just don’t control our over eating, over smoking, and shoot outs in the hood.

Fascinating.  Apparently the neverending gang wars that all minorities participate in contribute just as much to their mortality rates as substandard healthcare.  Not that Republicans would be interested in doing anything about that either, other than locking up anyone who even looks like they might be wearing gang colors.

Add comment August 28th, 2008 at 07:36pm Posted by Eli

The Joys Of Minimum Coverage

Well, this is vile but unsurprising:

Unlike the heavily regulated group insurance market, advocates say the individual insurance market is rife with “junk insurance” policies that provide minimum benefits, such as hospital-only coverage, and don’t set limits on out-of-pocket expenses.

Advocates say it’s often impossible to determine what a plan does or doesn’t cover, and some consumers – like Mary McCurnin and Ron Bednar of Rancho Cordova – find out too late after they run up thousands of dollars in medical costs.

Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s Senate Bill 1522, which is sponsored by the consumer advocacy coalition Health Access California, would standardize the individual insurance market and limit out-of-pocket expenses.

Health plans would be split into five tiers to allow consumers to compare prices and better understand what they were buying.

(…)

Health Access cites families like McCurnin and Bednar, self-employed graphic designers, who purchased a policy from Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee.

McCurnin and Bednar said they paid a monthly premium of $600 for what they thought was comprehensive coverage. But in 2002, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and he had open-heart surgery, they learned otherwise.

Their plan covered only 10 percent of his hospitalization, and the company rescinded her coverage because she didn’t disclose on her application that she was given a prescription for an anti-depressant years ago that she never filled.

With more than $250,000 in medical bills, the couple filed for bankruptcy protection and now face the loss of their home.

“Health insurance companies will do everything they can not to cover you,” McCurnin said. “Having good (individual) health insurance is a myth.”

Donna Ledbetter, a spokeswoman for Mid-West National Life Insurance, said federal law prohibits the company from commenting on the case.

“(But) we are confident that defined-benefit health plans have a place in the insurance market and provide value to those who would otherwise have no coverage at all,” Ledbetter said.

Nicole Kasabian Evans, a spokeswoman for the California Association of Health Plans, said SB 1522 will increase health care costs and the ranks of the uninsured.

“By making health plan products fit within narrow boxes with strict benefit requirements, this bill could take lower-cost options off the table for consumers,” Evans said.

Yes, because every American should be entitled to pay $600 for health insurance that doesn’t actually cover anything and can be summarily withdrawn for the merest technicality.  I don’t know what we would do if the government took that privilege away from us.

And here I thought that the point of health insurance was not for the sole purpose of allowing you to say that you have health insurance (i.e., those godawful “minimum coverage” car insurance commercials that seem to air every fifteen minutes), but so that you could actually get medical care without going bankrupt.  Silly me.

As a side note, one of my first thoughts when Hillary and Obama started talking about using “mandates” to impose universal healthcare rather than making it available through single-payer, was that it would create a huge market for just exactly this kind of bogus “junk insurance.”  Everyone can say that they’re insured, Democratic president gets to say that they’ve given us universal healthcare, insurance companies collect billions of additional dollars without having to provide any actual coverage - everybody wins!

(h/t Elliott)

1 comment June 22nd, 2008 at 01:36pm Posted by Eli

Another Kind Of Pre-Emptive War

Only this one is against the consumer:

For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.

But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product — even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.

This legal argument is called pre-emption. After decades of being dismissed by courts, the tactic now appears to be on the verge of success, lawyers for plaintiffs and drug companies say.

The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted.

More than 3,000 women and their families have sued Johnson & Johnson, asserting that users of the Ortho Evra patch suffered heart attacks, strokes and, in 40 cases, death. From 2002 to 2006, the food and drug agency received reports of at least 50 deaths associated with the drug.

Documents and e-mail messages from Johnson & Johnson, made public as part of the lawsuits against the company, show that even before the drug agency approved the product in 2001, the company’s own researchers found that the patch delivered far more estrogen each day than low-dose pills. When it reported the results publicly, the company reduced the numbers by 40 percent.

The F.D.A. did not warn the public of the potential risks until November 2005 — six years after the company’s own study showed the high estrogen releases. At that point, the product’s label was changed, and prescriptions fell 80 percent, to 187,000 by last February from 900,000 in March 2004.

(…)

A series of independent assessments have concluded that the agency is poorly organized, scientifically deficient and short of money. In February, its commissioner, Andrew C. von Eschenbach, acknowledged that the agency faces a crisis and may not be “adequate to regulate the food and drugs of the 21st century.”

The F.D.A. does not test experimental medicines but relies on drug makers to report the results of their own tests completely and honestly. Even when companies fail to follow agency rules, officials rarely seek to penalize them. “These are scientists, not cops,” said David Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown Law School.

So, in other words, the pharma companies would get off scot-free because the FDA approved their dodgy drugs… and the FDA’s oversight capability has been so gutted and crippled by the Bush administration (where have we heard that before) that it would approve pure arsenic if Johnson & Johnson told it their lab tests looked brilliant.

If the FDA is forced to rely on the drug companies to provide honest test results, then the drug companies should be 100% liable if they falsified those tests to get approval.  Period.  Either that, or the Bush administration should be liable for turning the FDA into an ineffectual joke.

(h/t Elliott)

2 comments April 6th, 2008 at 11:40am Posted by Eli

Unsurprising Finding Of The Day

This surprises… no-one:

A nationwide study has found that the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid are more likely than those with private insurance to receive a diagnosis of cancer in the late stages of the disease, often diminishing their chances of survival.

The study by researchers with the American Cancer Society also found that blacks had a higher risk of late diagnosis, even after accounting for their disproportionately high rates of being uninsured and underinsured. The study’s authors speculated that the disparity might be caused by a lack of health literacy and an inadequate supply of providers in minority communities.

(…)

The widest disparities were noted in cancers that could be detected early through standard screening or assessment of symptoms, like breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer and melanoma. For each, uninsured patients were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed in Stage III or Stage IV rather than Stage I. Smaller disparities were found for bladder cancer, kidney cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer, with only the last two not being statistically significant.

When comparing blacks to whites, the disparities in late-stage diagnosis were statistically significant for 10 of the 12 cancers. Hispanics had a higher relative risk as well but less so than blacks.

The study’s authors concluded that “individuals without private insurance are not receiving optimum care in terms of cancer screening or timely diagnosis and follow-up with health care providers.” Advanced-stage diagnosis, they wrote, “leads to increased morbidity, decreased quality of life and survival and, often, increased costs.”

(…)

“There’s evidence that not having insurance increases suffering,” said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer. Dr. Brawley said it was clear that some patients with possible cancer symptoms - say, a persistent cough that could indicate lung cancer - were delaying doctor’s visits because they were uninsured.

I have insurance, and I hate going to the doctor’s. But hey, just ask Dubya - there’s no need for preventive care, all you have to do is go to the emergency room when you come down with some cancer.

(h/t dakine)

Add comment February 17th, 2008 at 08:53pm Posted by Eli

Surprise Revelation Of The Day

NYT uncorks a shocker:

The case for providing health coverage for all Americans got even more compelling in the past week when two new studies presented the most comprehensive evidence yet that the lack of health insurance is seriously harmful to a patients health. The studies found that uninsured people suffer significantly worse outcomes from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer than those who have coverage.

Not having insurance is bad for your health! Who knew?

Add comment January 3rd, 2008 at 07:57pm Posted by Eli