Category: Healthcare

The Collapse of Chinese Rural Healthcare

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I remember reading about the “Barefoot Doctors“, paramedics sent out by Mao Zedong to address the lack of healthcare in the the rural regions, and now, with the Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive focus on economic development in urban areas, their rural healthcare system has been systematically dismantled:

Tan Zhengrui serves some 700 people in China’s rural Miyun county, making doctor’s rounds on his motorcycle with a stethoscope, thermometer and blood-pressure gauge — the sum total of his medical equipment.

Just 80 kilometers (50 miles) from central Beijing, Tan’s clinic in Peng He Yan village consists of a bed, a bench and a couple of desks. He doesn’t even have a scale to weigh patients.

The focus of the article is on the worries that if Swine Flu “goes viral”* in the rural areas, there will be nothing to arrest its spread.

Note that Tan Zhengrui, who started his career as one of Mao’s “Barefoot Doctors,” is due to retire, and there is no replacement in sight, and he suggests a return to the old ways, “We need a policy like Mao’s, to order people out to the countryside.”

Certainly, requiring a year of internship in the rural areas as a part of a doctor’s education would not be a bad thing.

*Sorry for the pun.†
†OK, I’m not really sorry for the pun, I’m an invertebrate punster, so slug me.‡
†Not sorry for that one either.

Snake Oil?

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So, Barack Obama has gotten the medical industry to promise $2 trillion in health care savings over the next 10 years, by limiting medical inflation to “only” 4.7% a year.

I think that it’s clear that the medical industry is lying, but I have no clue as to what Obama is up to, except perhaps that this is a preemptive strike to prevent the public option from being discussed…I’m not smart enough to figure out another reason.

Me, I’d bank on the fact that almost everyone hates their insurance company, and wage Jihad against them, but that is just me.

Maybe there is some sort of Obam jujitsu going on here, and I just don’t see it.

Health-Care: Obama Looks Ready to Cave on Public Option

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And his allies in creating universal health coverage are pissed off:

More than 70 House Democrats recently warned party leaders that they will not support a broad health reform bill that does not offer consumers a government-sponsored policy, and two unions withdrew from a high-profile health coalition because it would not endorse a public plan.

“It’s way too early” to abandon what it considers a central plank in health reform, said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He said the organization pulled out of the bipartisan Health Reform Dialogue because it feared its friends in the coalition were sacrificing core principles too soon. “You don’t make compromises with your allies.”

So he’s looking at compromising on what should be one of the goals of the program:

Many Republicans and industry executives say that any program modeled after Medicare — with its power to set prices — would have an unfair advantage over private-sector competitors and eventually force some companies out of business.

Destroying private health insurance companies in the US should be one of the goals.

They are in large part responsible for the problem, and taking them down has the overwhelming support of everyone who has had to deal with them.

If there is not a public insurance option, I will contact my Congressman and ask him to vote against it.

What is Shinseki Thinking?

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It appears that Eric Shinseki is considering billing veterans’ private insurance companies for the treatment of service related injuries.

I don’t think that this is an attempt to bill veterans, just extract more money from their insurers, but it’s a very bad idea:

  • It means that they will fight their insurance companies over billing.
  • It raises the costs of employers of hiring disabled vets.
  • It is the first step on a slippery slope to privatizing VA care.

Put a stake through its heart now.

Enough with the DINOs

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Specifically, Senator Max Baucus (DINO-MT), who thinks that making people pay income tax on their healthcare benefits is preferable to raising taxes on the well-to do:

Currently, the portion of health benefits that are covered by a person’s employer is tax-free income. Baucus said last week that taxing those benefits should be considered. That way, health care reform would be funded with health care dollars.

Baucus says taxing health benefits wouldn’t necessarily be harmful to lower- and middle-class Americans.

If it won’t be harmful, then I’m Karl Rove’s secret love child.

Of course this will harm “lower- and middle-class Americans”. That’s what its intention is: Tax the poor to keep a tax break for the rich.

I understand that you won’t find a flaming liberal representing Montana. I get that, and if he were low on the seniority totem pole, I might let it slide, but he’s 7th in seniority, and so is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Unfortunately, his next election will be in 2014, but this guy needs to be kept away from the machinery of government to the maximum degree possible.

There is a reason that Baucus is whoring for rich people from one of the poorer states in the nation, as the Wiki notes, 91% of his donations in 2008 came from out of state, so his money comes from bankers, insurance companies, etc., and he is offering them a return on his investment.

Obama Health Care Plan: No Single Payer

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So, Obama sets up a summit on health care reform, and invites everyone but advocates for single payer, and finally, when the screaming gets too loud, relents, and invites a hand full of them.

This does not bode will for his plan.

First, if he is not more ambitious in his initial proposal than his basic desires, it will be cut down to nothing in Congress, and second, the insurance companies are evil, and any plan that makes supporting their business model a central tenet is doomed to fail.

This is Despicable

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It appears that big pharma and medical device manufacturers are gearing up to fight a provision in the stimulus bill which would compare outcomes for different treatments, so that healthcare professionals would know how they compare to each other, they are claiming that it’s, ” the first step to government rationing.”

The real reason that they are opposed to this is because selling people expensive s#@$ that does not work better than the cheap stuff is their business model.

Tom Daschle Withdraws as Head of HHS

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Nominally, he withdrew because of tax questions, but there are reports that this New York Times OP/ED convinced him to withdraw.

When even the New York Times realizes that you have functioned as an über lobbyist and calls you on it as game over.

Matt Taibbi was far more colorful in his description of Daschle and his revolving door porfiteering, “Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger.”

Senate Passes SCHIP Expansion

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One interesting thing is that ‘Phant support for the bill has plummetted, because the prior times that they voted, they knew that Bush would veto, so there was no chance of it becoming law.

The Republican Party, opposing healthcare for children since 1945.

The GOP claimed that it was about providing healthcare to the children of legal immigrants, but really, it’s another case of their opposing a program because it will work, albeit imperfectly, as it will still leave about 5 million children without health insurance.

A similar measure has already passed the house.

Why We Need a National Health Service

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This little anecdote from the New York Times:

The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.

Our system is not just broken. Our system is insane.

Economics Update

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Well, let’s start with where I got it really wrong, energy, where oil closed below $50/bbl, and retail gasoline prices fall below $2.00/gallon.

I was completely wrong on both counts about my predictions.

In the meantime, the credit crunch is savaging an industry highly dependent on venture capital, biotech.

In the long run, that may be a good thing, because when they aren’t making money, they aren’t lobbying Congress, which makes health care reform, at least for prescription drugs, that much easier.

In terms of the overall credit crisis, things still stink, though Calculated Risk’s Credit Crisis Indicators are neutral in terms of spreads, there has been an incredible flight to US Treasuries, driving rates down to record lows.

Of course, we could be in Europe, where both manufacturing and services are dropping like a stone, and the Euro bank Prez is telegraphing another rate cut