Forbe's Blog "The Apothecary" has an adult...

[boutons_deux]

Pump $10Bs of taxpayer money into "for results" R & D instead "for profits" medical R & D.

(BigPharma spends $60B/year on marketing alone. double what it spends on research)

Govt to finance/ research products that are manufactured under contract to US corps only, with all mfring required in USA. Profit margins on drug + device mfring to be regulated, like a public utility.

[boutons_deux]

Can't talk about health care reform without fixing the corrupted, compromised UCA-owned FDA

Intimidation, retaliation and marginalizing of safety at the FDA

The FDA is often accused of serving industry at the expense of consumers. But even FDA defenders are shocked by recent reports of an ins utionalized FDA spying program on its own scientists, lawmakers, reporters and academics that included an enemies list of "actors" and collaborators.

The paranoid and retaliatory email monitoring program, which sought to suppress the safety opinions of those hired to give their safety opinions, has provoked swift action from Capitol Hill. "I am writing to express my disappointment and disbelief with the way the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has retaliated against whistleblowers who expressed concern to Members of Congress and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) regarding safety concerns about medical products," wrote Sen. Charles E. Grassley, (R-IA), Ranking Member Committee on the Judiciary to FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, the day after the breadth of the surveillance was reported in the New York Times.

Government agencies cannot discourage whistleblowing and reporting of wrongdoing by monitoring employees, echoed a White House memo sent to all government agencies about the FDA spy program.

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index....ckgroundid=651

[ElNono]

What effect, if any, do you see price controls having on R&D?

I expect some effect. It's difficult to quantify though. Right now we're on the absolute opposite end: almost half of their budget or more is spent on just marketing. Universities aren't going anywhere, and some R&D is done there too. Plus, as Drachen said, we're subsidizing R&D and marketing for the rest of the world right now. As I said in my previous post, you can nuance the effect by concentrating it on just a subset of the area. But something needs to be done with costs. They're way out of hand, and it's clear that expecting insurance companies to bring those costs down hasn't worked.

[ElNono]

One way you can reduce costs would be to force all medical providers to list prices. Imagine if you could actually shop for medical service the way you would purchase a laptop, TV or lawnmower. We don't do this because everything has been prenegotiated with our insurance providers. Once we cover our premiums someone else picks up the bill so who cares.

We just had a baby a few months ago. We are starting to get the insurance statements and bills that come with having a baby. The hospital charged something like $250 to check my wife's tempature. There were about 50 charges on the bill altogether. It amazes me at all the random pricing of services. Not to mention the ten bills that come later for services for my baby, only part of that is covered in the hospital bill.

If Americans could shop prices instead of our insurance providers, costs would almost certainly come down in my humble opinion.

I agree too. The billing part of this thing is a major ordeal right now, and rarely, if ever, you get to see prices before any procedure.

[Winehole23]

I’m a little late to this particular party (I’m still in Canada, for my last theatrical jaunt northward of the summer), but I just wanted to chime in to say: neither the Obama nor the Romney campaign’s Medicare attacks entirely make sense. If you just look at the question of bending the cost curve, the competing plans have more in common than not. Moreover, the Romney-Ryan approach (if we assume it will be based on the most recent Ryan plan) specifically depends on something like ACA to function at all.

http://www.theamericanconservative.c...es-all-around/

[Winehole23]

Romney and Obama are Both Medicare Double-Counters


By Josh Barro Aug 24, 2012 9:00 AM CT



One of the Obama administration's talking points in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been that the law extends the solvency of the Medicare trust fund. By slowing the growth of Medicare spending, the law postpones the date when the Medicare Trust Fund will be exhausted to 2024 from 2016.


Conservatives have typically responded that this claim involves double counting. The law cuts Medicare spending in order to make funds available to finance and expansion of Medicaid and subsidies for middle-income people to buy private health insurance. If the money is being spent on a new benefit, it can't also be used to shore up Medicare.
The president's double count is actually in line with the silly law that governs the Medicare Trust Fund -- more on that later -- but as a matter of measuring fiscal sustainability, the conservative critics are right: You can't spend money and say it's being set aside to cover debts due in the future.


But now, Mitt Romney is doing a Medicare double-count of his own which is in line with neither the law nor any reasonable yardstick for fiscal sustainability. Campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul says Romney's plan will "repeal Obamacare and replace it with patient-centered reforms that control cost throughout the health care system and extend the solvency of Medicare."


It's hard to see how that can be the case. Romney would repeal the Medicaid and insurance subsidy provisions in Affordable Care Act, theoretically freeing up those funds to shore up Medicare. But he has also pledged to restore the law''s $716 billion in scheduled Medicare cuts over the next decade -- that is, Romney will take the money he saves on Medicaid and spend it on Medicare. If he says these savings will also shore up the Medicare trust fund, he is double counting, too.


The main reason that politicians are able to so abuse the Medicare trust fund in their discussions of it is that the trust fund makes little sense as a fiscal concept. Like the Social Security Trust Fund, it is an accounting fiction. There is no pool of investments in the fund, just Treasury bonds that list the federal government as both creditor and debtor.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...-counters.html

[Winehole23]

It's a point that Ryan himself made in his speech accepting the vice presidential nod on Wednesday night. Attacking Obama's health care reform law, Ryan said its "biggest, coldest power play of all" targeted seniors for $716 billion in cuts. But Ryan's own budget counted on those same savings, which in fact would be squeezed from reimbursement payments to hospitals and insurers. Asked about the inconsistency of Ryan attacking cuts his own plan embraced, Cantor begged off. "The assumption was that, um, the, the, ah, again — I probably can't speak to that in an exact way so I better just not," he said.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.co...-name-details/

[Winehole23]

The Virginia Republican said his party is laying out a path to salvage the long-term solvency of Medicare. And he took on President Obama for engaging in "scare tactics" over those en lement reforms in the Ryan-authored House GOP budget. "At the same time, he is the one who is taking massive amounts of cash out of very popular programs like Medicare Advantage and the prescription drug program," Cantor said. "This directly impacts seniors."

same

[Winehole23]

full on schizo. Republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouths on Medicare.

[Winehole23]

and scaring seniors, which used to me a Democrat speciality.

[boutons_deux]

The Medicare Killers

It finally may have dispelled the myth that he is a Serious, Honest Conservative. Indeed, Mr. Ryan’s brazen dishonesty left even his critics breathless.

But Mr. Ryan’s big lie — and, yes, it deserves that designation — was his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Actually, it would kill the program.


The Republican Party is now firmly committed to replacing Medicare with what we might call Vouchercare. The government would no longer pay your major medical bills; instead, it would give you a voucher that could be applied to the purchase of private insurance. And, if the voucher proved insufficient to buy decent coverage, hey, that would be your problem.

Moreover, the vouchers almost certainly would be inadequate; their value would be set by a formula taking no account of likely increases in health care costs.

Why would anyone think that this was a good idea? The G.O.P. platform says that it “will empower millions of seniors to control their personal health care decisions.” Indeed. Because those of us too young for Medicare just feel so personally empowered, you know, when dealing with insurance companies.

Still, wouldn’t private insurers reduce costs through the magic of the marketplace? No. All, and I mean all, the evidence says that public systems like Medicare and Medicaid, which have less bureaucracy than private insurers (if you can’t believe this, you’ve never had to deal with an insurance company) and greater bargaining power, are better than the private sector at controlling costs.

You can see this fact in the history of Medicare Advantage, which is run through private insurers and has consistently had higher costs than traditional Medicare. You can see it from comparisons between Medicaid and private insurance: Medicaid costs much less. And you can see it in international comparisons: The United States has the most privatized health system in the advanced world and, by far, the highest health costs.

So Vouchercare would mean higher costs and lower benefits for seniors. Over time, the Republican plan wouldn’t just end Medicare as we know it, it would kill the thing Medicare is supposed to provide: universal access to essential care. Seniors who couldn’t afford to top up their vouchers with a lot of additional money would just be out of luck.

Still, the G.O.P. promises to maintain Medicare as we know it for those currently over 55. Should everyone born before 1957 feel safe? Again, no.

For one thing, repeal of Obamacare would cause older Americans to lose a number of significant benefits that the law provides, including the way it closes the “doughnut hole” in drug coverage and the way it protects early retirees.

Beyond that, the promise of unchanged benefits for Americans of a certain age just isn’t credible. Think about the political dynamics that would arise once someone born in 1956 still received full Medicare while someone born in 1959 couldn’t afford decent coverage. Do you really think that would be a stable situation? For sure, it would unleash political warfare between the cohorts — and the odds are high that older cohorts would soon find their alleged guarantees snatched away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/op...gman.html?_r=1

[boutons_deux]

...conversation about Medicare reform.

Why the Democrats' 'Mediscare' Attack Won't Work Against Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney

The Romney and Wyden-Ryan plans preserve traditional Medicare



Obama has cut Medicare more than Romney-Ryan would

"research from three liberal Harvard researchers"

who paid for the research?

who identifies/confirms them as "liberal"?

[Winehole23]

As President Obama and Democrats try to salvage the reputation of the Affordable Care Act, a national Republican group will hit 12 Democrats–all running in Senate elections next year–over changes to Medicare. The National Republican Senatorial Committee will highlight Wednesday the candidates' support for the federal health care law, better known as Obamacare, and what Republicans call $717 billion in cuts to the popular en lement program that guarantees health insurance to seniors.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...dicare-attack/

[boutons_deux]

"salvage the reputation of the Affordable Care Act"

it will salvage itself from the Repug/tea bagger sabotage. The Repugs will have to salvage themselves from their red states poor who won't get Medicaid nor health insurance.

So House Repugs voted multiple times to approve Ryan's severe MEDICARE/SS-cutting budgets, and now they plan to attack the Dems for the not-credible cut of $770B?

[Winehole23]

why not? should rile up the party base about as well as the last time

[Th'Pusher]

why not? should rile up the party base about as well as the last time

You mean when Romney used it? It will likely be just as successful.

[Winehole23]

was it particularly unsuccessful last time?

Romney didn't win, but I'm not sure I'd put that down, as you seem to suggest, to the GOP adopting the traditional Democratic Party tactic of demagoguing Medicare.