NY Times: Medical Malpractice System Breeds More Waste

From the NY Times "Ecnomic Scene," with thanks to New America Health Blog for the link.

The title belies the very even-handed way this topic is addresses. Worth reading.

The debate over medical malpractice can often seem theological. On one side are those conservatives and doctors who have no doubt that frivolous lawsuits and Democratic politicians beholden to trial lawyers are the reasons American health care is so expensive. On the other side are those liberals who see malpractice reform as another Republican conspiracy to shift attention from the real problem.

Yet most people, I suspect, still aren’t sure exactly what to think. For them, the good news is that the issue has inspired a lot of research by economists and others with no vested interest. And after sifting through years of data, these researchers have come to some basic factual conclusions.

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America’s Health Care is … Fairly Average - Pew Research Center

Daily Number: America’s Health Care is … Fairly Average - Pew Research Center

res ipsa loquitor...

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AHIP's Commissioned Report

In case you're looking for good analysis of the AHIP shot across the bow...

http://www.newamerica.net/blog/new-health-dialogue/2009/health-reform-ahip-got-what-it-paid-15314


http://www.newamerica.net/blog/new-health-dialogue/2009/health-reform-gloves-are-15299

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Physician's Perspective on Health Reform Slides

I updated my slides on physicians' opinions on health reform for a talk tonight for the Pittsburgh Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

The new slides are here. ( I hope I fixed the link!)

I had to strip out the slides of me (and Doctors for America) at the White House, and on our way TO the White House, already in our white coats in order to get under the 5 MB Google docs limit.

Cheers,

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Excess Deaths Due to Lack of Access to Health Care

From coverage of the recent study of Woolhandler, et. al.

As medical care has improved for people with health insurance, the consequences of being uninsured have worsened, according to a new study that says the lack of coverage translates into nearly 45,000 deaths each year among working-age Americans.
Researchers from Cambridge Health Alliance report in the American Journal of Public Health on a study that followed 9,005 adults under 65 years old who took part in a national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1986 through 1994. After 12 years, 351 people had died. Sixty of them were uninsured and 291 were insured.
After accounting for age, education, income, and other factors, the researchers found that people without private insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of dying than people with private insurance. An earlier study by the Institute of Medicine based on 16 years of data through 1993 found that uninsured people had a 25 percent higher risk of dying than insured people, which translated into 18,000 additional deaths.

I usally quote the 18,000 number as it is from th IOM, a very respected body, but the new figures point to an increase that likely reflects what's going on "on the ground."

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Doctors for America on way TO the White House

White coats already on, thank you very much!

October 5, 2009

And a link to the FoxNews.com article with quotes from me that were, happily, pretty accurate.

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NEJM -- Doctors on Coverage -- Physicians' Views on a New Public Insurance Option and Medicare Expansion

NEJM -- Doctors on Coverage -- Physicians' Views on a New Public Insurance Option and Medicare Expansion:

"Overall, a majority of physicians (62.9%) supported public and private options. Only 27.3% supported offering private options only."

I realized I didn't have this posted yet! The 3/4 of physicians ties in nicely with my estimate that physicians groups representing 3/4 of physicians also support health care reform in general and HR 3200 in particular.

The companion article is instructive, too.

a large majority of respondents (78%) agreed that physicians have a professional obligation to address societal health policy issues. Majorities also agreed that every physician is professionally obligated to care for the uninsured or underinsured (73%), and most were willing to accept limits on reimbursement for expensive drugs and procedures for the sake of expanding access to basic health care (67%). By contrast, physicians were divided almost equally about cost-effectiveness analysis; just over half (54%) reported having a moral objection to using such data "to determine which treatments will be offered to patients.

...the 28% of physicians who consider themselves conservative were consistently less enthusiastic about professional responsibilities pertaining to health care reform.

This last bit is a bit interesting, as at our Pennsylvania Medical Society Board retreat we discussed this last bit and the overwhelming consensus, as best I could tell, was that this was not controversial, and that part of our jobs was making these determinations.

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