Reverse Your Outlook On Healthcare
January 13, 2010 by
admin
Filed under
Blog, Healthcare Alerts, Healthcare Reform, News & Events, Uncategorized
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward.
This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled “u @ 50″ by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it. Then apply the concept to healthcare reform? Enjoy!
Health Care Reform At Any Cost?
December 28, 2009 by
admin
Filed under
Blog, Healthcare Alerts, Healthcare Reform, News & Events
As Washington hastens to wrap up the particulars of health care reform, let’s stop to reflect on the potential consequences. Our national health expenditure as reported for 2007 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was $2.2 Trillion or 16.2 percent of GDP. The percent jumps to 17.5 based on the 2009 forecasted expenditure of $2.5 Trillion and third-quarter annualized GDP.
Fast forwarding to 2015 the U.S. population is projected to increase from 307 to 324 Million with those ages 65 and older increasing from 39.0 to 45.6 Million. Health expenditures are forecasted to increase to $3.5 Trillion by 2015, before expanding coverage under the proposed health care reform legislation. Let’s consider carefully the implications of rapid health expenditure growth in a recovering economy. The minutes of the Federal Reserve System FOMC of November 3-4, 2009, suggest long term GDP growth rates in the 2.5 to 2.8 percent ranges, moderately higher than the IMF which suggests the U.S. GDP growth rate will be below 2 percent “for a considerable time”. Assuming a 2 percent growth rate from 2009 forward our national health expenditure will reach 22.0 percent of GDP in 2015, before expanding insurance coverage.
While the Congressional Budget Office has scored the Senate plan at a cost of $147 Billion (2016 maximum insured population) before excise taxes and penalties…this analysis fails to recognize the additional consumer or employer cost. There is no reason to believe those uninsured today will consume less health care services than those presently insured. It fact, there may be a case for suggesting the uninsured have built-up health care needs. Unlike the sophisticated forecast of CBO, we derived our cost estimates from the actual experience of the 2007 national health expenditure.
On average, people covered by Medicare expend $10,975 and the insured population spends $8,433 per person. Applying this experience to the estimated 32 Million uninsured people to be covered under the Senate plan, health care expenditures have the potential to increase by $269.9 Billion (in 2007 dollars) or $316.2 Billion annually by 2015, assuming a 2 percent inflation rate. By 2015 the combined effects of population changes, the proposed expansion of coverage, utilization growth rates, and inflation have the potential of increasing our national health expenditure to an astonishing 24.0 percent of GDP.
As health care marches to higher levels of GDP it places economic recovery, Federal deficit reduction, and the American way of life at great danger. As Americans, we can all agree the health care system needs to be reformed, but to expand coverage without simultaneously reforming the delivery system is beyond rational economic comprehension.
True Reform in Healthcare by Our Elders
July 14, 2009 by
Tom Clarke
Filed under
Blog, Healthcare Reform
Having managed Hospitals and Nursing Homes for 29 years I have conversed with thousands of patients and residents. I can assure you the one universal truth in Nursing Home care is no one voluntarily wants to be in a Nursing Home. Despite this truth over 1,000,000 of our Elders are institutionalized at a per person cost according to a MetLife 2007 survey of over $77,000 annually. Growth in State Medicaid funded Nursing Home cost Read more
Real Healthcare Reform
July 14, 2009 by
Tom Clarke
Filed under
Blog, Healthcare Reform
In his landmark book, Good to Great, Jim Collins discovered the truly great companies of America rigorously hired the best talent and brutally 
confronted the facts. True acknowledgment of the facts allows for intelligent people to work together and engage in real problem solving. Avoiding the facts only prolongs the inevitable such as we have recently experienced in our countries financial system. The brutal facts of health care are more difficult to acknowledge because they affect each of us personally. As individuals we all want access to Neonatal Care should we have a 23 week old premature baby or if our 75 year old mother needed Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery. But the brutal fact is Read more
Why Health Care Reform will be Swift, Dramatic and Ultimately the Right Course of Action
April 20, 2009 by
admin
Filed under
Blog, Healthcare Reform
The cost of health care in America has emerged as a central issue in our current economic crisis and in the expansion of health coverage for the uninsured. Driving our National Read more
Solving the Health Care Reform Puzzle Piece by Piece
Proposed Health Care Reform
Everyone agrees that the US health care system needs major reform. President Obama has proposed a wide range of health care reforms. He focused on the hospital’s new role as a coordinator of patient post acute care. Furthermore, the hospital will be at risk for all readmissions occurring within 30 days of discharge. Read more
Health 2.0: How Boomers will Change Healthcare
Who is driving the healthcare revolution? How will healthcare providers respond to these changes?
The patients will have a significant role. With Baby Boomers (28% of US population) quickly entering Read more
Physician 2.0 –Building Optimal Practice Guidelines
Our globally connected cyberspace has dramatically changed the functioning and decision making process of the physician. Kirsten Broadfoot, Syndicom writes in an article about technologies entering Read more
Unraveling the Maze of Post Acute Solutions
As insurance companies and governmental payment sources push for early discharge from hospitals, an ever-increasing patient market needs more care than they have received in an acute care setting. This population has four care solutions-Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH), Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility (IRF), Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) and Home Health Care (HHC) agencies. All of these providers may be paid from insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or private sources. While these providers can all theoretically serve the same patient population, there are Read more
Meeting the Challenges of Quick Discharge!
Finding solutions to reducing patient discharge rates is the key to reducing health care costs. Post Acute Care, in combating patient functional decline, has proven to significantly increase discharge rates and thus reduce health care cost.
Many older adults, now consisting of baby boomers, which are admitted to the hospital and experience a prolonged stay also experience a decline in functional status. Activities of daily living such as bathing, toileting, dressing, and Read more
-->