"Medicare for All" means ALL -- Accept no substitutes!

Let’s start with the good news. “Medicare for All” is definitely trending. It is the central domestic issue for the Democratic primary. This is because of the absolute crisis in the health system. It is also, let us remember, because of Bernie Sanders, who has supported a single-payer universal health system for decades and made it a central part of his 2016 presidential campaign. He didn’t win the nomination, but he won the battle of ideas, which is why it is so important in this campaign.

People love the idea of being covered for their healthcare needs, and having that coverage untethered from where they work (assuming that where they work provides health insurance), whether they can work if they have been laid off, can’t find a job, or are disabled, or whether they are quite old enough to qualify for Medicare, whether they are quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid (and let’s be straight, you have to be REALLY poor, even in the most generous states, and in some states it is just ridiculous). This is because the current healthcare system in the US really stinks. A huge percentage of those who are insured have terrible coverage, those who have reasonable coverage pay (often along with their employer) an extremely high amount for that coverage in premiums, deductibles and co-pays, and an unconscionable number of Americans are completely uninsured. The health outcomes in the US are terrible, trailing all other developed countries (discussed here many times). The only thing we lead in is the cost of the system, and of course the amount of profit made by the predatory components of it such as insurance companies, drug companies and some providers – which is of course totally related to why it costs so much.

An excellent example of the insanity of our current profit-driven system is provided by the Kaiser Health Network and covered by CBS Morning News and the medical news site “Medscape”, detailing how a dialysis patient received a half-million dollar bill because the dialysis center he went to, which was closest to his home (70 miles) was “out of network” for him. This particular patient will probably have his bill written off because of the extensive national coverage, but it happens all the time; it is the norm, not the exception. No wonder people are fed up!

The less good news is that, although most of the Democratic presidential candidates (notably excluding front-runner Joe Biden) have endorsed the words “Medicare for All”, their proposals are all over the place. Most of them do NOT guarantee universal coverage, not to mention the necessary expansion of benefits (“Improved and Expanded Medicare for All”) needed to ensure that the American people get ALL the health care that they need (including mental health, vision, hearing, long-term care, substance abuse treatment, etc.) The New York Times, which has made a crusade of limiting coverage of Bernie Sanders and trying to minimize or denigrate him when they do cover him, and is also an opponent of truly, universal, comprehensive single-payer health care, does have a very useful graphic in an article originally from the “Upshot” in February but in the print edition of August 13. It portrays the characteristics of many of the health plans proposed currently, and makes clear that only two, those sponsored by Sanders in the Senate and the bill in the House with Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) as the primary sponsor and over a hundred co-sponsors, actually would provide what we need.  

A clear exposition of many issues, including facts misrepresented about universal single payer, is summarized in an elegant piece in the Washington Post by Rep. Jayapal. It is an excellent point-by-point response to various criticisms and concerns that have been raised, and is well worth the time to read, even if you don’t have time to read the whole bill (Medicare for All Act of 2019).

Two of the most important criticisms to which she responds are particularly telling, since they are deeply tied. One is that people want to be able to keep their private insurance (presumably those who have, or possibly mistakenly think they have – good insurance). The “evidence” provided for this claim is that the percent of people who say that they support “Medicare for All” goes down if the question “even if you have to give up your current insurance” is added. Of course, the question is misleading; when people are told that they would be fully covered for everything, with no co-pays or deductibles or co-insurance, and that they will have completely free choice of providers, this objection goes away. Let’s be honest; no one cares about having a choice of which insurance company will deny them what they need; this is a nonsense concern. And, yet, this is driving the proposals of some presidential candidates and members of Congress to do a less-than-universal solution, some version of Medicare-for-More, or “buy-ins” or expansion of Obamacare.

The other objection, “how will we pay for it”, is also frequently heard, even from those who know how but just don’t want to accept it. The answer is very closely tied to the answer to the question above, because the cost only becomes impractically expensive if insurance companies – and their overhead and profit – are built back into the equation. A comprehensive Medicare-for-All program, when fully implemented, will be funded by the money that Americans and their employers pay for health insurance currently, including all the money spent by the federal government and states on Medicare and Medicaid, supplemented by additional taxes on corporations that do not already provide comprehensive insurance and on the wealthiest Americans. Yes, most people’s taxes would increase, but for the vast majority, the increase would be far less than they pay now in insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, and would “buy” them comprehensive care for all medical problems with no limited ‘panels’ of providers. Those who would pay more can well afford it. But the key here is not having insurance company profit and overhead built into the system; this is one big reason that the US health care system is so expensive, and leaving it in makes it much less affordable. To suggest such solutions is like saying “the cost of business is so high, especially including payoffs we make to gangsters for protection -- but of course it is really important that any new system we develop include those gangster payoffs!”

Why would many pundits and “liberal” media outlets like the NY Times, CNN, etc. want to create such confusion and undermine efforts to create a truly universal, comprehensive single-payer system? I can’t know. I do know that they are all in the upper tiers of income, have good insurance, and are surrounded at work and in their neighborhoods by those in similar situations. Maybe this makes them blind to the needs of most people; maybe they believe that the top 10% of income of which they are a part is in fact typical. Or maybe they realize their privilege and want to keep it, and don’t want everyone else diluting their access.

But including everyone is key, not only for the financial reasons, but for quality reasons. When the upper income and well-educated are in the same system as the poorer and less empowered, they can be depended upon to ensure that the system is of quality, and this benefit then applies to everyone. It is why we cannot let them opt out.

Out health care system is a mess, delivering poor outcomes for lots of money, and is a maze of different programs and eligibility. We don’t need more of that; we need to simplify it and have one outstanding system that covers everyone.

The high cost of US Healthcare: It's not mostly the demanding patients!

Did you know that American healthcare is the most expensive in the world? And did you know that health outcomes here are way lower than in other developed countries? Well, since you’re reading this blog, you probably did. But here’s a scoop: one of the main reasons for this high cost is apparently the demanding nature of American patients!

Wow, you’re thinking! I was under the impression that it was greedy drug manufacturers who sell drugs in the US at many times the price they are available in other countries! And insurance companies, making huge profits by collecting high premiums, co-pays, and deductibles and then trying their best to not pay for care! And the health industry itself, providers like hospitals and health systems, who, even when ostensibly “non-profit” act like for-profits trying to make the most money possible and paying their executives in the millions (although maybe less than the C-suites of the drug and insurance companies). You probably thought it was the whole corrupt end-stage gangster capitalist system that never met a dollar it didn’t want, no matter who it hurts.

Well, sorry you’re so naïve! Just read this article by David H. Freedman in the July, 2019 Atlantic, “The Worst Patients in the World”. The reason health care in the US is so expensive is the fault of people like his 74-year old father: “An accomplished scientist who was sharp as a tack right to the end, my father had nothing but disdain for the entire U.S. health-care system, which he believed piled on tests and treatments intended to benefit its bottom line rather than his health.”

And yet, Freedman points out, he demanded tests when he was sick! And he not only did nothing medical to try to help his health (like going to get checkups or preventive care), he actively undermined it by

…practically using the list of prohibited foods as a menu. He chain-smoked cigars (for good measure, he inhaled rather than puffed). He took his pills if and when he felt like it. By his late 60s, he’d been rewarded with an impressive rack of life-threatening ailments, including failing kidneys, emphysema, severe arrhythmia, and a series of chronic infections. Various high-tech feats by some of Boston’s best hospitals nevertheless kept him alive to the age of 76.

He also punched a doctor.

Then Freedman goes on to argue that it is both these characteristics, abusing oneself and not taking care of one’s health, including eschewing tests that were “intended to benefit its bottom line rather than his health,” but then demanding that the medical care system provide all the most expensive possible of those tests once he was sick, that typify the behavior and approach of many Americans and account for, in large part, the high costs of health care. While Freedman acknowledges his agreement with the concept of Medicare for All, he suggests that “We ought to consider the possibility that if we exported Americans to those other countries, their systems might end up with our costs and outcomes.”

Wow again! If w. imported US people (“patients” is the medical term for people) to, say, Canada or the UK or Denmark or France, their healthcare costs and outcomes might be, respectively, as high and poor as ours. It is not the first time that this argument has been made, but it is being featured in a major magazine, and written by a presumed progressive (or at least supporter of Medicare for All). Maybe it is worthy of being considered!

Or rejected. Maybe it is a fallacy to presume that it is a flaw in the character of the people who live in the US, compared with those in other countries, that is responsible for the high cost and poor outcomes of our health care system. Or maybe not, considering everything else about us (which I will not now consider in depth), our collective national character illustrated by things like putting migrant children in cages, denying global warming and the climate crisis, supporting the fossil fuel industry with far more money than we spend on education, or maintaining a ubiquitous system of racist law enforcement and imprisonment, just to name a few. I think it is a fallacy, though. I am sure there is a wide range of personality types within the US as well as in other countries; people who are more or less hostile, people who are more or less demanding, people who are more or less suspicious of anything that smacks of authority, and people who are more or less willing to do what they themselves can do to help themselves. So why does it seem like there are so many more in the US, and that this is a major contributor to our health care costs?

Because it does seem as if there are. I have been a doctor for a lot of years, and I have seen lots of people who do little or nothing that should be in their own control to improve their health, and yet are very demanding of expensive resources being used not only when they get sick, but after there is little chance of it benefiting them. People who, like Freedman’s father, contrary to all that “should” happen, are kept alive many years after they “should” have died as a result of the bad genes, habits, environmental factors, and luck that led them to the diseases they had. Yup. Bad behaviors. Shame! And then wanting “everything done” when it is too late, and, oh yeah, you don’t have to pay – the insurance pays. Which raises everyone’s rates. Yup, selfish.

But why would Americans be so selfish, mean, demanding? Why would they be different from other people? Would, in fact, exporting Americans to other countries raise their costs and worsen their health outcomes? That’s not an experiment that we can do easily, although there is no evidence anecdotally of this occurring. The real issue is the one I talked about at the start of this piece: a health system designed to enhance profit for the companies who own it (and the pieces of it). It is their practices that encourage many of the sorts of behaviors that Freedman and others note.

The entire health system is built on high-cost, high-tech interventions. There is far less profit in controlling, say, diabetes, with cheap generic drugs than in the newest high-cost patented drugs. There is enormous emphasis on procedures, diagnostic and therapeutic, that have little evidence of benefit, or evidence of benefit in a very narrowly-defined population. It is absolutely NOT true that a screening test of benefit for a high-risk population, for example, is of benefit for lower-risk people. There is incredible expenditure at the end of life, when often all that can be done is prolonging suffering. It is done because people, and companies, make money on it. And to complain that people behaving relatively rationally in response to these incentives is the problem is to engage, as is all too common, in victim blaming.

And if we blame the victims, we are hardest on those who are victimized in the most ways. The poor, the uneducated, the jobless, the homeless, the imprisoned, the children. Those who “demand” care because, historically, they are members of a class, race, or group that was systematically denied it. You may not feel a lot of sympathy for Freedman’s father (or maybe you do) since he had so much – a scientist, presumably with a reasonable income – who took poor care of himself and then cost the system piles of money to keep him alive until 76. But the system is hardest on those with the least.

And that is why “compromise” solutions to increase health care access rather than make it universal are not only morally wrong but bound to fail. The biggest question about “Medicare for All” is how much it will cost. But the answer is that the cost will be made up for by eliminating exorbitant private-sector profits. Half-measures, “Medicare for More” or “Improved ACA” don’t do that.

Everybody in, nobody out!

Medicare for All: Still a great idea!

My last several posts have all had “Medicare for All” in the title. This makes one more. Maybe I am in a rut, or maybe it is simply the most important issue confronting health care in the US. Certainly there has been a lot written about it; just a review of very recent articles in the New York Times includes a wide variety. Conservative columnist David Brooks informs us that there is “no plausible route” to get to it, and we are told by Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz that there is “no precedent” for abolishing private insurance. The angst of the Democratic Party leadership in dealing with this newly-resurgent demand from its base is also discussed at length, with the Associated Press letting us know that it is a “divisive issue for Dems”. Robert Pear tells us about Nancy Pelosi’s plan to “expand health coverage” while being sure to not cover everyone. Of course, President Trump, not to be outdone (nobodyoutdoes the #Trumpenik!) has now announced his own plan, to completely gut and get rid of the Affordable Care Act and its expanded coverage. This is seen as a great gift to Pelosi, who needed something coming from way to her right, and now can “pivot hard” to fight to preserve ACA from the GOP rather than fighting with her own party’s progressives.

Of course, the Trump plan – get rid of Obamacare and then, well, don’t really have a plan after that, but it will be great – makes even a lot of Republicans nervous. Gail Collins has a particularly good time pointing this out, noting that

‘Republicans in Congress began desperately leaking the news that they had tried to talk their alleged leader out of the idea. The Democrats were almost swooning with joy. Really, Trump could not have made them happier if he’d announced that he planned to unveil a new tax cut called Help for The Greedy Rich.’

She also observes that the President has now moved from “who knew health care was so complicated?” to “I now understand health care especially very well”. Of course, he doesn’t – in fact, he understands it much less well than most policy makers, which isn’t very well at all, but he does understand how to both appeal to his base and please the wealthy folks who control the Republican Party, and indeed much of the Democratic Party.

It is frequently pointed out that many of the people who were most helped by the ACA, in particular its provisions that allow individuals to buy insurance at community rating, prevent discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, and expanded Medicaid, are those in Trump’s base, and that eliminating the program and leaving another 20 million people without insurance might backfire. Paul Krugman’s column “The Republicans really hate health care” is accurate, and makes this point; for example, that West Virginia was promised better health care and more coal jobs. It has gotten only a few coal jobs, but 140,000 people stand to lose health care coverage if ACA is repealed. It remains to be seen if this will translate into folks voting against him and his minions, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Although, even the Wall St. Journal has had an op-ed by Robert Pollin advocating for Medicare for All.

So what is it with the Democrats? The concerns that are expressed by many centrist, leadership Democrats about Medicare for All, or Universal Health Care of any kind seem to be in three broad areas: 1) Is it a good thing to cover everyone? 2) What will be the price Americans pay for universal health care? 3) Is this a politically feasible possibility? It is important to recognize that the fact that these questions are being asked at all, and that there is a significant portion of the Democratic congressional delegation who support Medicare for All, and that there is huge support among the American people, is YUGE. It is a testimony to how important health care is to us, to the fact that most of us are not buying the GOP line, and to the success that Sen. Sanders had and continues to have in raising the issue and continuing to focus on it.

First, is it a good thing to cover everyone? Answer: Yes. Everyone needs access to health care, and those who need it the most are often those who are left out of current, past, and future schemes for coverage – mainly poor, or near poor, people. It might be ok to leave some people out if those advocating it, advocating incrementalism, would suggest that the appropriate people to be left of were themselves and people like themselves, or the wealthiest, who can afford to pay their own way. But no, it is always the most vulnerable. And, anyway, there is great advantage to everyone being in the same system; the wealthy and powerful will ensure that the system works for them, and if everyone is in it together, it is more likely to work for everyone. The Times has a recent article about  Sen. Sanders saying “No to incrementalism”, which for some reason makes it sound like a bad thing. It is not. Certainly not if you and your family are being the ones left out by incrementalism!

Second, what will be the price? It will cost a lot to cover everyone. The numbers that even the sponsors of HR 1384, the Improved and Expanded Medicare for All bill whose primary sponsor is Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, have put forward are very large. The thing is, though, the numbers that we spend NOW, by insurers and the federal and local governments (via Medicare and Medicaid and covering all their employees), and out of our own pockets in premiums, deductibles, and co-pays are far larger! And, of course, all this money buys us neither adequate health care for lots of people who are underinsured or have insurers denying claims, or good health outcomes. The US has for decades trailed the developed world in almost all measures of population health outcomes, and led only (by far) on money spent, both in total and per capita. Much of this money can be characterized as “waste” in the sense that it does not deliver health care to anyone, but is spent on high administrative overheads and profits for insurers and providers and drug manufacturers.

Third, is it politically feasible? This is an issue with lots of components. One highlighted by several articles in the media, such as the above-mentioned ‘Abolish private insurance: no precedent’ in the Times, are the jobs that will be lost in the insurance industry. And, although it doesn’t say it, in the offices of hospital providers who have armies of workers to fight with the insurance workers about payment. An expensive zero-sum game, except it is the people who pay. Sure, these are real job losses, but when has it been right to continue a bloated, non-productive industry that screws the whole country to protect jobs? I think never, but this is just a smokescreen for protecting profits. And HR 1384 actually contains funding for job retraining. The bigger issue for Democrats is money, money from big donors, as described in another NY Times article, ‘Even Liberal Democrats Can’t Quit Wealthy Donors and Their Big Checks’, although Sanders and Warren are the exceptions. In essence, “politically feasible” is always the one put forward by those who do not want big change to try to head it.

But there is great momentum from, you know, regular people, now. We have to keep it up and demand it from our legislators and candidates, and that will make it feasible.

Medicare for All, Compromise, and who gets left out

As the movement for Medicare for All gains steam, with the new bill, HR-1384, being introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and 100 co-sponsors (video available on PNHP Facebook page), the attacks have, unsurprisingly, started coming. They are hard and soft, overt and subtle. The overt attacks on it from Republicans who call it “socialism” are probably the least important. They, and the folks for whom socialism is a buzzword that has them throwing up their hands in horror, were never going to support it or any effort to have universal health insurance, and are probably not going to support any less-extensive compromise. On the other hand, they could learn something by reading about the experiences of people in the all-the-other-industrialized-countries-in-the-world who have some form of universal health care. For example, the recent piece in the Washington Post by an American studying in Taiwan,  uninsured in either country, whose abdominal pain nonetheless led him to go to the ER at 3am. He was seen and given treatment in 20 minutes, had lab tests and imaging studies, was diagnosed with a stomach virus and given 2 medications, and sent off. Total cost: $80. (March 1, 2019)

The real threat, unsubtle and incredibly well-funded, is from the insurance and hospital corporations (and “non-profit” health systems) who are responsible for about 30% of all dollars spent on health care in the US being for administrative costs (including their huge profits) and not actually health care. They are a major cause of the high cost of health care in the US, and stand to lose the most if Medicare for All is implemented, because it will be funded in large part by taking that money away from them. Thus, they are highly motivated to attack any such attempt, organized to do so, and are already doing it, as clearly presented in Health Care and Insurance Industries Mobilize to Kill ‘Medicare for All’, NY Times February 23, 2019. This will ultimately be the real fight, incredibly wealthy companies that would lose a lot of money will do almost anything to keep it, even though it will prevent a change in the current crazy, costly, poor-result non-system that we currently have, that would benefit the health of all the rest of us.

The more subtle attacks, or perhaps “criticisms”, are from other Democrats and ostensibly liberal media, like the Times. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sponsors a single-payer Medicare for All bill in the Senate, S-1804, and many of the current candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are co-sponsors, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is a cosponsor of HR-1384. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Rep. Julian Castro (D-TX) are not. S-1804 is not quite as good or comprehensive as HR-1384 (the even-better successor to the old HR-676), but this is not the reason almost all of them (except, of course, Sen. Sanders) have stepped back a little from, or danced around, their position on a single-payer program in various interviews with the press. They worry it might go too far, and while want support from single-payer fans, they fear alienating others, or believe that Medicare for All cannot happen, and talk about compromise. Several senators have introduced another bill that would allow people over 50 to buy into Medicare ('Medicare for More', but only if they pay). The Times, however, is getting more supportive; in their February 16, 2019 editorial ‘How Much Will Americans Sacrifice for Good Health Care?’, they move to focusing on the cost and practicality, and no longer say single payer or Medicare for All is not a good thing.

Of course, other leaders of the Democratic Party do not even pretend to support Medicare for All, and cling to the falsehood that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would be enough if the GOP had not let many of its components expire, and GOP governors had not refused to institute expanded Medicaid in so many states. The classic rendition of this song was performed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in an interview in a recent Rolling Stone. Dr. Don McCanne, in his great Quote of the Day, correctly says of Pelosi’s comments:

‘Perhaps most disappointing have been the responses of those who would prefer to continue to support the Affordable Care Act and add a public option - a Medicare buy-in for some…."All I want is the goal of every American having access to health care. You don’t get there by dismantling the Affordable Care Act." Further she says, "When they say Medicare for All, people have to understand this: Medicare for All is not as good a benefit as the Affordable Care Act." Has she been practicing composing Trumpisms? The Jayapal Medicare for All Act is vastly superior to ACA - absolutely no contest.’

“Compromise” is often touted as a good thing, and sometimes it is. Maybe it means you and your partner take turns deciding what movie to see or what to have for dinner. But often compromise is, as noted by business guru Stephen Covey, it is a “lose-lose”, where everyone gives up something they want. If we can find something that is “win-win”, it is of course better. Medicare for All might actually be a “win-lose”, a win for the American people (comprehensive health care for less money) but a loss of enormous profit for the big health and insurance corporations (no tears here).

The most obvious flaw in the logic of the mainstream Democrats is harping on the cost. Yes, it will cost a lot, but the average American family will pay less than they are now in premiums, deductibles and co-payments. The big saving would be in the elimination of the money being made by insurance companies, drug companies, and health systems, and apparently Speaker Pelosi is not ready to cut off their access to the trough. Already, the government pays almost 60% of all health costs (Medicare, Medicaid, coverage for government employees, tax breaks for employer contributions to health insurance, etc.) This means that, in our country, the government already pays more per capita than in most countries that cover everyone. Yes, HR-1384 would expand the benefits of Medicare (‘Improved and Expanded Medicare for All’) to be basically everything with no copays or deductibles, and this would be costly, but those of us who can afford it pay for them anyway, and those who cannot currently do without.

But there is another flaw. All of the folks advocating for less-than-universal-coverage, Medicare-for-More, buy-in to Medicaid for folks not poor enough to qualify now, let’s-not-let-the-perfect-be-the-enemy-of-the-good, are missing something. What they are missing is those people who are not covered or covered with poor insurance that won’t meet their needs if they are sick. All the compromise politicians and pundits seem to forget that these are real people, not just numbers (yes, if fully implemented the ACA covers 90%, but is that enough?). As I wrote in my very first blog post (“Universal Health Coverage”, November 28, 2008), ‘When was the last time, even in private but certainly in public, you ever heard someone say “I’m really suffering without health coverage, but don’t worry about including me and my family in your health reform plan. We don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”?’ Those advocating for less than universal coverage need to get out there and tell us who it is that they don’t think needs good health coverage, who can be left out. You? Your Uncle George or Aunt Minnie? Your neighbor? Who are the Americans who they are advocating leaving out?

I can tell you one thing. It won’t be them or their families.

Medicare for All, or "Eat well, take your medications, and good luck!"

I have often written about the need for a universal national health insurance plan in the US, even more frequently recently. This is in part because the rise in costs and cuts in health coverage for Americans, including especially those who are in states that did not expand Medicaid as part of the ACA, have continued to erode our health coverage and increase our cost. It is also in hope that the Democrats in Congress will not abandon a real “Medicare for All” program in favor of a non-solution such as “Medicare for More” or almost anything that maintains for-profit insurance companies.

A Nurse Practitioner friend writes:

Many patients I see are very complex and, I think, not NP (Nurse Practitioner) appropriate but no one else is there for them because they are uninsured. And they tell stories of meeting with cardiologists who talk about several interventions and then when the MD finds out no insurance just says to them, “Well, be sure to eat well and take your medications and good luck”. 

And every day I see the effects of having so many people without insurance. I see the ones who ended up in the ED because of preventable problems. Yesterday I saw a 33 year old mother of two who had hypothyroidism, no insurance, ended up with severe cardiomyopathy [heart muscle disease] and heart failure all for lack of thyroid medication due to lack of care due to lack of insurance -- and she works in an MD office doing billing to keep our health care system going for those with insurance!!!

This situation is neither rare nor new. It happens to that particular NP every day. NPs in many states work under “collaborative agreements” with sponsoring physicians, and in others have independent practice privileges. When the patients are too complex for them, “their” doctors may be unwilling to take them, if they are uninsured. In addition, in many cases, the NPs (or PAs) practice in remote sites – sometimes very remote. But, the reality is that even if the physician is willing to see them, even if the patient is seen initially by a physician and not an NP, ultimately there is a similar outcome for those people without insurance or with poor-quality insurance. This scenario happens all providers, physicians included, except those who refuse to care for poor, uninsured, and poorly insured people.

It is essential that everyone who cares for, or about, people realize this, including the politicians who make the decisions and the pundits who opine about such things. They may be well insured, and likely most of the people that they know personally are (although every day that number grows smaller and the financial and health exposure of those who thought they were well insured grows larger), but many, many people are not. Whatever sticker shock insured middle class people have when they get sick or need medication (see the graph on the cost of Humalog ®, the most common insulin for people who need that drug to stay alive, vs inflation), it is much worse every step you go down the ladder of income into poverty, down the levels from “good” to “fair” to “poor” to “no” insurance.

It is also critical to remember that any reform plan that does not cover 100% of everyone will leave people like the woman described above out, and the stories that physicians and other health providers have to tell about how their patients cannot get the care they need will keep coming. For a plan to not only be “good”, but to be affordable, every single person in the US needs to be IN. It is most affordable if it goes all the way, putting everyone in one plan (Improved and Expanded Medicare for All), because that would eliminate the massive profits of the insurance companies that have administrative overheads of over 30% (compared to Medicare’s 1-3%) and would tightly regulate the profits (and whatever your favorite expression is for money made over costs for “non-profits”) of providers. Other plans that are seen as compromises are, like so many “compromises”, lose-lose. By dealing in the insurance companies and their profits so they won’t oppose the change (as ACA did) we build in this cost to our system, siphoning off at least 1/3 of the dollars ostensibly spent on health care to overhead!

One of the most widely supported bad ideas is continuing Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C. Basically, the insurance company that sponsors such a plan takes the money you’d get for regular Medicare (Parts A and B) and you kick in an additional payment, and you are covered, as in an HMO, for a variety of other services that traditional Medicare does not. It sounds like a good deal, and it generally is for the recipient with all the plusses (extra services at usually lower cost) and minuses (limited choice of providers, limit to geographic coverage area) of an HMO. At first, it seems to be a win-win, for patients and the insurance companies represented by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). AHIP has garnered letters of support just recently from 302 House members and 66 Senators, of both parties. The problem is that the insurers get extra money that traditional Medicare doesn’t, costing the public a lot (and sometimes involving fraud). Continuing Medicare Advantage not only gives some people better coverage, and makes a single Medicare for All again financially challenged, it costs the government more and makes insurers richer.

A real Medicare for All – not a bunch of different plans, some of which cost more money and spend a lot of that on insurance company profit -- is not an unrealistic pipe dream. What is actually unrealistic is keeping the current system (or, better, non-system) we have, or some minor modification of it, and expecting that it will lead to better health for more people and lower cost. That won’t happen, and the idea meets Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. High costs – proportionately higher for low-income people – and poor health outcomes – also higher for low-income people – are baked into that system.

Or, we can notdo a comprehensive include-everyone program. We can stay with what we have, or some “part way compromise”. Read the story above again. Memorize it. Because, if we don’t have a universal health plan like every other developed country, it will continue to repeat thousands and thousands of times a day, in every city, state, and rural area in the USA.

If not, be sure to eat well and take your medications and good luck!

Venezuela and Medicare for All: Don't forget who benefits!

The mainstream media is not an evil, liberal-to-radical behemoth by any means. It is, however, often a willing, and sometimes self-deluded, ally and shill for the interests of the well-to-do in society, as well as for many questionable government policies. The latter is particularly important in the drumbeat buildups to wars, and is recently apparent in the coverage of Venezuela in journals such as the NY Times. The US government is making the case not only that Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro is illegitimate because it has decided his election was “unfair” and “tainted”, as well as an evil and violent dictator, but that it will recognize unelected self-declared Juan Guaido as president. The Times has gone so far as to publish a self-congratulatory op-ed by Guaido, and it news coverage is typified by ‘Venezuelans Opposed to Maduro Pour Into Streets for Day of Protests’ and a Sunday Review piece by a Guaido supporter called ‘Venezuela’s Very Normal Revolution’.

I do not doubt that thousands marched against Maduro or that millions oppose him (or probably that millions support him). I certainly am not saying Maduro and his government is good, or that there is not justifiable opposition to his violent repression of opponents. I am not saying that revolutions are bad. I am saying that this one is funded and supported by the US government not because Maduro is bad -- the US has supported and continues to support dozens of brutal dictators around the world. It is because he is not ourdictator, not one who supports US policy, and this is critical because Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. As for the NY Times -- as with most leftist governments, the support for the one in Venezuela comes more from the poorest people, while those with access to the NY Times are among the most privileged.

And this is the connection to domestic health policy, and in particular coverage of the Democratic candidates for president’s positions on Medicare for All. The NY Times (and all mainstream media) is of course owned by the very wealthy, and as individuals they see the world as members of the class of which they are part. But, possibly more important, the editors and reporters are middle and often upper-middle class, and they see the world from this perspective, from that of their families, and friends, and neighbors who are – amazingly – also privileged! The people who have access to these editors and reporters are very skewed awayfrom the most needy, or indeed most people (who are not the same as most people in an upper middle class suburb).

In specific, we get essentially uncritical coverage of the statements of billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz that “Medicare for All” is unaffordable, despite the clear fact that it is the current system that is unaffordable, and that a universal health system is going to cost less. One key part of this lower cost is the elimination of private health insurance companies’ profit, and their incentive to increase it by decreasing the availability of care. Yet the Times article covering Elizabeth Warren’s increasing iffiness on the issue contains phrases like ‘would people lose the choices offered by private insurance?’ That is, your ability to choose (maybe, depending upon what their employer offers) which overpriced-to-unaffordable policy, offered by which rapacious, obscenely-profit-making insurance company, to cover you so that, even after paying the premiums and co-pays and deductibles, you find out that, whoops, it doesn’t really cover what you thought it would or should, and you’re out of luck, and either have to pay out even more money you cannot afford or go without the health care you need. Wasn’t that what the insurance you bought supposed to get you?

Nope, not necessarily, and often not at all. The first goal of private insurance companies is to make a profit. That profit has to be maintained and expanded. The two major ways of doing so are 1) by raising the prices people (and their employers, if they are lucky enough to have employers who pay offer health insurance) pay, in premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, and 2) by denying coverage for care, or paying less for it, which often results in providers not, well, providing it to you. The insurers hire “pharmacy benefit managers” to get them the ‘best’ prices on drugs, often requiring your doctor to keep writing a different brand-name drug-of-the-month (again, see Danielle Ofri, “The Insulin Wars”), with the cost to you always going up.

What would Medicare for All offer? Or, more explicitly, Improved and Expanded Medicare for All, as in the House Bill that was H676 and will get a new number this year? First, everyone would be in the same program. No more shopping around for the least bad deal among the universe of bad insurance. Everyone would get the same benefits. The benefits would include all medically necessary health care: inpatient, outpatient, nursing home, home care, drugs, mental health, dental, eye care. Even hearing aids. Nothing excluded, except perhaps truly cosmetic surgery. Providers could not refuse to accept this insurance because they would have no business. Oh, maybe some doctors and hospitals could make a living caring for Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg and Saudi sheikhs who pay in cash, but there aren't very many of them, and so even the supplemental insurance we now buy would be unnecessary. There would be, you see, no deductibles or co-pays. Everything would be 100% covered. It sounds good. It would be good.

And it is not unaffordable. Currently, the government funds over half of health care (Medicare, Medicaid, government employees and retirees at all levels, military), and it is about 60% if you also count the revenue lost because employer contributions to health care premiums (unlike salary) are tax-deductible. The majority of the sickest and most needy (elderly, blind, and disabled) are already in Medicare. Most vulnerable children are in Medicaid or S-CHIP. To make up the additional cost, employers and individuals would continue to pay, but in taxes rather than premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, and for most (maybe not for Schultz and Bloomberg!) it would cost them a lot less. Most estimates of the excess costs in the US health care non-system are in the 30-35% range, for profits and administrative costs in the private sector (Medicare’s are in the 1-3% range). Administrative costs include insurance companies hiring armies of workers to deny claims, while providers have other armies to fight them, and demand more. This is money spent for no health benefit for the population, but it would be a mistake to minimize the extent to which those – insurers and providers and drug and device manufacturers – who are pocketing it would go to keep it coming.

Thus the role of the mainstream media, and the mainstream Democrats – to appeal to the needs (not desires, real needs!) of most of the people for health care and at the same time not threaten the wealthy and profitable sectors that can fund campaigns for or against them. Thus the concerns of “don’t people want to have their private insurance?” and even more ludicrous their choice of insurance company (“I’ve always been an Aetna man! So what if it costs a little more and I get just as little? I’m worth it!”). Thus the nonsensical pieces on how much a single payer Medicare for All program will cost, which ignore the cost of our current arrangement. And, somehow, manage to not address the fact that this current arrangement leaves concern for people’s health to last, and so doesn’t deliver it.

I understand that people are worried about change. But the cost, in dollars and health, of the current system has moved the majority of the population to want something different, something that meets their needs and costs less.  It is available, if we seek to do it, if we can resist the pressures from the industries and billionaires who profit from the current way of doing things.

When we read about the need to overthrow foreign dictators, or hang on to private insurance companies, we always must remember to ask: cui bono?

Hospitals post their charges: almost indecipherable, but important!

The recent Trump administration order to have hospitals post their prices has been widely covered in the media, along with both headlines and articles that make it clear that these prices list are far from…clear! For example, Robert Pear’s article in the NY Times on January 13, 2019, titled “Hospitals Must Now Post Prices. But It May Take a Brain Surgeon to Decipher Them” , starts:

‘Vanderbilt University Medical Center, responding to a new Trump administration order to begin posting all hospital prices, listed a charge of $42,569 for a cardiology procedure described as “HC PTC CLOS PAT DUCT ART.”

Baptist Health in Miami helpfully told consumers that an “Embolza Protect 5.5” would cost them $9,818 while a “Visceral selective angio rad” runs a mere $5,538.’

The Arizona Star piece on Tucson hospitals had a more moderate title, “Hospitals post prices, but public can find it confusing”, but made the same points. As a physician (if not a brain surgeon!) I think I can figure out what most of these mean, but the point that they are making is that they are hard for almost everyone to understand. The reason, of course, is that they have simply posted online their “chargemasters”, the price list that they supply to insurers (including Medicare and Medicaid), which are based on the nationally used “procedure codes”; these are numbers which identify different treatments that are abbreviated as above. So, the charge at Baptist for a radiologist injecting dye into an artery supplying your intestines is only a little over $5,000, while Vanderbilt charges over $42,000 to do a surgical procedure to close a shunt artery in your heart that is vital to fetal circulation but normally closes spontaneously after birth. The question is, what does all this mean? And what are you and I supposed to do with this information?

Elisabeth Rosenthal, the emergency room physician turned NY Times reporter turned editor of Kaiser Health News, is more optimistic in her Times Op-Ed on January 22, 2019, “Donald Trump did something right”. She acknowledges the opacity of the posted charges to most people, but says it is a great step forward, because they areaccessible, at least to those who are academic experts, and can be compared, both one hospital to another (“Maybe, just maybe, a hospital will think twice before charging a $6,000 “operating room fee” for a routine colonoscopy if its competitor down the street is listing its price at $1,000”), and to alternative treatments (“With access to list prices on your phone, you could reject the $300 sling in the emergency room and instead order one for one-tenth of the price on Amazon.”) Obviously, these would not be easily available on your phone now, but her hope and expectation is that third parties will develop apps that will take this nearly impenetrable information and make it easily accessible to people, as apps such as GoodRx® have done for drug prices. She emphasizes the magnitude of this change, since before now these prices have been closely-guarded secrets.

Rosenthal makes a number of other important points that illustrate the fact that this system is not only opaque, but deeply morally corrupt. Hospitals are run as businesses, to make money, even when they are ostensibly “non-profit”. Their CEOs and other executives are mostly businessmen, CPAs and MBAs – even when they are physicians, which sometimes happens, they are usually also MBAs – and are hired for their ability to run a money-making operation that happens to sell health care. And sell it, to your insurance company, at what often seems like deeply discounted prices because they are based on absurdly inflated chargemasters. “You don’t really want to change your charges if you have a Saudi sheikh come in with a suitcase full of cash who’s going to pay full charges,” says one CEO. More important, it allows them to reach agreements with insurers to pay a lot less than the official “price”, which in turn allows those insurance companies to brag to you about how much money they saved you. Rosenthal notes this is farcical, raising prices to make you think that you got a discount (‘If a supposedly $1,000 TV is “on sale” for $80, it’s not really a discount. It’s an absurd list price’), and that it emulates practices in other arenas, such as airlines overestimating their flight times to make it seem like they have a better on-time percent.

At a higher level, Rosenthal points out what is wrong is that these inflated charges do make a difference. Your co-pays and deductibles, if you are insured, are based upon the amount that your insurer pays, so that if they have agreed to pay only 20% of the listed charge, $200 for the TV set instead of $1000, you still may pay more than if you bought it for $80 cash. And certainly more than if the insurer were paying 20% of the old list price, say $500. You pay. You always pay. (See, for example, how insulin manufacturers and insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers, each following their own profit incentives, have made insulin – a life saving treatment for millions of people with diabetes – often unaffordable: Danielle Ofri, “The Insulin Wars”.)

And, of course, there is the nasty little glitch that it is the most vulnerable and most needy, those who are uninsured as well as sick, and often poor, that get charged the full list price, the $1000 for the TV, or the ostensible “uninsured discount”:

When Wanda Wickizer had a brain hemorrhage in 2013, a Virginia hospital billed her $286,000 after a 20 percent “uninsured” discount on a hospital bill of $357,000 — the list price, according to chargemaster charges. Medicare would have paid less than $100,000 for her treatment.

Wait. Medicare? Medicare would have paid a quarter of their list price and a third of what this uninsured person got billed with the “discount”? Yes. And that is a place to start. Hospitals – or the third-party app developers that will let you see these prices on your phone – should be required to list the Medicare-approved payment right next to what they will charge you, or your insurer. That would measurably increase the “light of day”.

Of course, some doctors and hospitals do not want to accept Medicare for this reason – they can charge more money to insurance companies, who pass it on to you in premiums (in addition to your co-pays and deductibles) while claiming to be saving you money. There is a solution to this also, although Rosenthal does not mention it. It is to have everyone in the same insurance program, a single payer, an improved and expanded Medicare for All. This would set the rates and pay them, without co-pays or deductibles for necessary services. Everyone in the same plan would mean that the better educated, wealthier, and generally more empowered would ensure that it worked for them – and thus would work for everyone else, middle-class, poor, and even homeless.

Yes, hospitals and other service providers (physicians, nursing homes, etc.) and drug companies and insurance companies would make less profit. I’m sure that your heart goes out to them (maybe the next requirement could be the posting of the salaries of the C-suite executives at hospitals…). But, after all, what the health care system should be run for, and is run for in every other developed country, is the health of the people, not the profit of corporations.

Amazing, huh? And it could be that way here!

"Single Payer", "Medicare for All": Good ideas and about time!

The call for a universal health care system in the US is probably greater than it ever has been. While, of course, the Republicans, whose only firm position is completely kowtowing to billionaires and major corporations, are opposed to it, many Democrats have signed on to the “Improved and Expanded Medicare for All” bill in Congress (120 at last count). Democrats running across the country have been calling for “single payer” as well as “Medicare for All”, from outspoken Democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NY (and of course Bernie Sanders) to moderate Democrats running in states and districts that Trump won. They correctly see this as an issue that cuts across traditional liberal-conservative lines, and even racial lines, and may be their path to victory.

Many Republicans (although not the Republican congressional leadership) are reading the same tea leaves, and are hedging, trying to say that they favor the things that people like about the ACA (most important, the protection against insurers denying coverage for pre-existing conditions). Of course this often requires major dissembling for those who, like our Arizona GOP candidate for Senate Martha McSally, voted to gut the ACA, and even Texas senator Ted Cruz who authored the “Cruz Amendment” that would strip virtually all protections for people under ACA. President Trump, never one for nuance, has no difficulty having it both ways: he calls for the repeal of ACA while insisting that his health care plan will protect people’s ability to have health insurance, pre-existing conditions or not (it won’t).

It is in this context that the recent Sunday NY Times’ Magazine article by Elisabeth Rosenthal and Shefali Luthra, ‘“Don’t get too excited” about Medicare for All’ becomes important. For starters, “Don’t get too excited” is not necessarily the opinion of the authors but a quotation from Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN). Rep. Cooper was responding to the surprise of one of his Nashville constituents, Dr. Carol Paris, President of the leading physician advocacy group for single payer, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), that he had signed onto the Medicare for All bill. Nonetheless, the article does raise many cautions about the movement to single payer or Medicare for All, mainly about different interpretations of the meanings of this by different advocates, and incomplete and sometimes inaccurate understanding of them by regular people. The most important thing about it, however, is that it had to be written at all because there is such a movement; long-time activists, including PNHP physicians, remember that it was not too long ago that such an idea was poo-pooed, dismissed. Not now.

Clearly, the quantum step forward was the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. The establishment pundits of both parties were shocked at how popular and successful this old Jewish socialist from Vermont (ok, originally Brooklyn) was across the country. He didn’t win the Democratic nomination, true, but he might have won the general election against Trump. Certainly, his straight talk and the fact that he directly addressed the felt needs of regular people was the main reason for his popularity, and people’s fears about their health risks and costs were central to this (see A majority of Americans are worried about health care costs -- and a majority of Congress doesn't care, October 16, 2018). Bernie had advocated for single payer for decades, as had great leaders before him including the late Representative Ron Dellums of California (see Ron Dellums: Loss of a great leader and a job for the rest of us, July 31, 2018), but the visibility of his presidential campaign skyrocketed the visibility of single payer.

Rosenthal and Luthra utilize a good bit of ink describing what single payer is --the government is the only payer for health care, rather than multiple private insurers; Canada is the best example of this, and Britain has a government-owned national health service. They also note that Medicare for All means exactly that, that everyone, not just those over 65 and the blind and disabled, would be in the Medicare program. Of course, since Medicare is a single payer program, it would be single payer. They describe the misconceptions people have (“would I be able to keep my present plan?”), and also talk about other countries, such as France and Germany, that have universal health care without a single payer but with a heavily-regulated marketplace. They observe that partialist solutions do not generate the enthusiasm of single payer, but that the latter would be the hardest and thus (perhaps) most difficult to institute. Among the concerns they note are the displacement of insurance company employees and the decrease in doctors’ income.

But these are the most important points.

1.       Our health care system is not working. Our life expectancy is much lower than other developed countries, about 43^rd, and a recent article in Smithsonian Magazinecovers work that projects that it will drop another 21 places by 2040, to 64! Other measures of access to care and quality of care are comparably poor. Yes, there are heroic and wonderful things that medical care can do for people, but if these are not accessible to everyone, and if the cost of them precludes spending on even basic care for everyone, it is not working.
2.   Our health care system is incredibly costly. By far, we spend more, overall, as % of GDP, and per capita, than any country in the world, as illustrated by the graph from the Kaiser Family Foundation. It is more than twice as much as most of the developed countries, all of which have far better health status.
3. Profit is the problem. Specifically, corporate profit made from providing health care services (or, in the case of insurance companies, not providing health care). This is how we manage to do both #1 and #2 – because the functional goal of the US health system is not to increase the population’s health but to make as much money as possible for insurers, hospitals, drug companies, and providers.

These are the core issues that need to be addressed, and what sets the US apart from all other developed countries. Yes, Canada has a single payer system such as we might have with Medicare for All (and they even call it Medicare). Britain has a National Health Service, with most hospital and health care facilities owned by, and some doctors employed by, the government. Britain, however, allows private insurance for those who can afford it, Canada does not. France and Germany and Switzerland have multiple insurers, but they are not unfettered to maximize profit by denying care. In Switzerland, for example, insurers have to be non-profit, have to offer the same benefits, and have to charge the same amount. They compete on quality of service! Can you imagine that here?

So, while Rosenthal and Luthra repeat the idea that single payer, although the most enthusiasm-generating, would involve the biggest change, it is also, in another sense, the least complicated. Trying to get to a system like that that evolved in these other countries over decades will be more complicated to understand and to implement. Many of the suggestions for incrementalism (“Medicare for More”, “public option”) will not solve the problems we have because they do not include everybody, and because they do not eliminate the incentive for making money on the back of denying care that is the core flaw in our current situation.

“Medicare for All” and “single payer” are popular among people because their core meaning is understandable, and they would address the needs that they have.

• ·        Everybody in, nobody out!
• ·        No profiteering!

Simple message. Needed solution.

How to prescribe a glucometer – or why I can’t support Medicaid-for-All

This is a guest post by Seiji Yamada, MD, MPH.

A shorter version recently appeared on the KevinMD blog, http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2017/09/heres-glucometer-turned-doctor-medicaid.html

In a recent Vox interview, Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii announced his plans to sponsor a bill to allow individuals without insurance to buy Medicaid coverage for themselves.  As a family doc who cares for patients on Medicaid in safety net clinics in Senator Schatz’s home state, I cannot support such a plan.

While private insurance companies offer supplemental insurance, Medicare continues to be run largely by the federal government.  In contrast, while Medicaid programs receive federal funding, they are largely run by state governments.  In a trend known as Medicaid managed care, in recent decades, states have been contracting out Medicaid to private insurance companies.

Prior to 1994, Hawaii’s state Medicaid system was run by HMSA, Hawaii’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  During the Clinton presidency, the buzzword was managed competition, the idea being that insurance corporations would compete on price to provide publicly funded health insurance.  Thus in 1994, the State of Hawaii devolved to managed care Medicaid and started farming out Medicaid to other corporations besides HMSA.  In 2009 Medicaid managed care was extended to the aged, blind, and disabled.

Medicaid also generally reimburses at lower rates than Medicare or private insurance.  (Senator Schatz proposes to fix this.)  However, low reimbursement is only one reason that physicians in private or group practice take few Medicaid patients today.  Another reason is the administrative hassles to care put up by insurance companies as well as the difficulties of dealing with multiple insurance companies.  Thus, Medicaid patients have relatively restricted networks of providers from which to choose.  Many are therefore seen by safety net providers such as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) or training clinics.

The modern practice of medicine is complicated enough, but the different requirements and different formularies of different insurance companies complicates it to Kafkaesque levels.  I believe that the powerlessness and helplessness induced by this nightmarish bureaucracy is a major cause of physician burnout.  I want to give just one example.  Let us say that one of our patients has newly diagnosed diabetes.  Let us say that he has Medicaid.  Just to prescribe him a glucometer, I have to go through the following:

Patients on Medicaid must enroll with one of the following:  HMSA, AlohaCare, Ohana (WellCare), United Healthcare, and Kaiser.  I need to go to the insurance section of the patient’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) to find out which insurance corporation is responsible for this patient.  Then I go to The Prescribing Guide (http://prescribingguide.com/), a cheat sheet developed and maintained by my family medicine faculty colleague Chien-Wen Tseng, MD.  The prescribing guide tells me which brand of glucometer to prescribe.

Each insurer contracts with a different glucometer manufacturer, so I can’t just prescribe a generic glucometer.  I have to figure out whether to prescribe Freestyle, or OneTouch, or AccuChek.  Because the contracts are continually re-negotiated, the preferred brand can change every six months.  If you enter the wrong brand, the pharmacy will reject it and tell you to get a prior authorization.

Next, I have to identify the ICD-10 code that corresponds to the highest complexity of the patient’s diabetes.  Does she have nephropathy, or neuropathy, or ophthalmopathy?  I often have to review the patient’s labs to see if the creatinine/GFR is abnormal.  Am I going to place the patient on long-term insulin?  Because if I am, I can justify asking for test strips for more than once a day testing.  The number of times per day the glucose is to be measured, the ICD-10 code, and whether or not the patient is on insulin has to be on the prescription.  If not, the pharmacy will reject it.

Now that I have prescribed a glucometer, I can now start working on prescribing a diabetes medication.

And I’ve yet to address the fatigue, the blood pressure, or the back pain for which his friend’s oxycodone worked real good, Doc.

. . .

“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players” -Shakespeare

Was this theater of the absurd composed by Alfred Jarry?  Samuel Beckett?  No, this play was composed by the layers of business administration types that have piled onto the health care system over the past couple of decades to bring corporate-style efficiency to medicine.  Insurance companies limit their costs by imposing roadblocks.  By making it so time-consuming and so frustrating to get anything done, we physicians throw up our hands and decide, no it’s not worth the hassle to order a different medication or sophisticated tests.  Perhaps my patient gaining weight on a sulfonylurea would benefit from a glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists or a sodium glucose transporter 2 inhibitors instead.  But the prior authorization form requires me to list the dates that the patient has taken every other diabetes medication she has ever been prescribed . . .

For those physicians who are employed by hospitals or other institutions, we are finding that our employers are engaging in an arms race with the insurers by hiring their own army of coders and billers.  These coders and billers find our documentation lacking in order to maximize return.  So now we are told to write addenda to chart notes entered months ago - in order to justify higher reimbursement.  These coders and billers shake their heads sadly and say to themselves, “Dr. Yamada, you are such an idiot.”

. . .

The new interns started in July.  When they were medical students, I taught them about the pathophysiology of diabetes, about the evidence base of what treatments have been shown to improve patient outcomes, about how to discuss lifestyle measures, about the social determinants of the development of diabetes.  Now that they’re interns, though – all of that goes out the window.  Now that they’re managing real patients, I teach them how to enter billing codes into the electronic health record, and how to get a glucometer covered by insurance.

They look at me with incredulity.  They are dumfounded by how irrational and Byzantine our health system is.  They realize that I am no longer teaching them medicine.  Because there is no time for that now.  There is only throughput.  Treat ‘em and street ‘em.

 “Welcome to the desert of the real,” I say.  “Get used to it.”

. . .

The MBAs who manage us physicians say, “It’s not about throughput.  It’s about quality.  We’re not going to pay you for throughput any more.  We’re going to pay for performance.  We don’t care how many times you see the patient.  We only care about their A1cs.”

OK, then, tell me how you get better outcomes with a patient with diabetes without seeing them every once to talk with the patient about diet and exercise, to prescribe a glucometer so they can learn how diet and exercise affects their glucoses.  What is the point of telling the homeless patient to bring down their A1cs by eating more fresh vegetables?  What use is the A1c when the patient has cancer?  What does the patient dealing with domestic violence care about her A1c?  To measure the quality of care provided by a physician through A1cs is like the drunkard searching for his keys under the streetlight because that’s where the light is.  The A1c is easily measured.  Other aspects of medical care are not so easily assessed.

. . .

Insurance companies and their corporate mind-set have so thoroughly taken over American medicine that we can hardly see the forest for the trees any more.  EHRs, essentially designed for reimbursement purposes, define the patient encounter – such that physicians look only at their screens.  I can’t afford to make eye contact with my patients, or I’ll fall hopelessly behind.  Was there a time that we used to eat lunch?  Nowadays, lunchtime is for finishing with charting or dealing with phone calls.  Dealing with medication refills, or lab or x-ray results?  Planning for the patients on tomorrow’s schedule?  We do that in the evenings or weekends by remote access to the electronic health record.

Though Senator Schatz’s proposal would make Medicaid something like the public option that didn’t make it into the Affordable Care Act, it would likely leave intact insurance company-run Medicaid managed care – with its restricted networks and administrative hassles.  As a practicing physician, I would like to get corporate profits and the layers upon layers of bureaucrats out of medicine.  The American physician is in a predicament like that of Josef K in Kafka’s The Trial.  The rules are obscure and seem to be constantly changing.  We are never told what crime we committed to justify our being treated the way we are.  The sense of a lack of agency and helplessness induced is one major cause of physician burnout.  The practice of American medicine needs to be rationalized, so that we health workers can go back to focusing on the medicine.  Medicare for All is what we need.  Not all the inefficiencies and irrationalities of the modern practice of medicine will be fixed by Medicare for All – but patients and doctors need a way out of this Kafka novel.