November Bombshell

Wikileak surprises keep coming, but biggest bombshell may be premium increases, due to kick in on November 1.

Premiums will go up an average of 25% but will increase dramatically in some states – Arizona 116%, Oklahoma 69%, Tennessee 63%, Minnesota 59%.  

These increases are significant because  Obama promised premiums would decline by $2500 per family and consumers would be able to keep their doctor and health plan.  Neither promise has worked out.

So we are left with this situation- broken promises and narrow choices of doctor and premium and deduction spikes the middle class cannot afford.

Bill Clinton says ObamaCare is “crazy” with 25 million  Americans more uninsured being subsidized but many more millions suffering double, triple, or quadruple  unaffordable care.    Governor of Minnesota,   Mark Dayton,  formerly a fervid ObamaCare supporter,  says the health law is no longer affordable and must be changed, even repealed.

What’s gone wrong?

Dubious. Even false assumptions.

Assumptions

One,  ObamaCare would be a step forward towards universal health care.   Instead studies in two states,  Vermont and Colorado,  have shown universal care in their states would be exorbitant and unacceptable to their citizens.

Two,  ObamaCare would prove to popular with public.  Instead more than 500 polls have shown only three polls indicating favorability among the public.

Three,  one could tinker with insurance risk factors, such as excluding those with pre-existing conditions from calculating  premiums  and making it impossible to charge women more than women.  So, we have an unbalanced system with soaring premiums.

Four,  millenials would join health exchanges and pay costly premiums rather than fork up $695 for not being covered.   Wrong again.   Premiums cost twich as much as the penalty. As one millennial said,  “We may be young but we are not stupid.”

Five,   by crowding doctors into Accountable Care Organizations and having those organizations  being led by primary care doctors beholden to hospitals,  one could save Medicare money.  This hasn’t worked out yet,  and many of the original “Pioneer ACOs: have dropped out of ACO program,  including its poster child,  Dartmouth.

Six,   Doctors would accept  pay reductions, based on routine EHR data measuring quality outcomes and proper diagnostic and procedural use,  because they could not do otherwise,  i.e. participate in Medicare, Medicaid, and health exchange programs.   Wrong.   Many doctors, 10% to 50%, are not participating in programs  or are switching to direct pay,  concierge, medicine to avoid 3^rd party regulations,  penalties, and hassles.

And so it goes.   Insurers and doctors are withdrawing from most markets.    Doctors are not accepting federal programs, or or are slowing services for federal sponsored patients.  Talk of a death  spiral of ObamaCare is rampant,  and, if Trump is elected,  ObamaCare will be repealed.   If Clinton becomes president,  she promises big changes, or a public option, as a giant step forward towards total government control.

Trump Keeps Seizing Defeat from Jaws of Victory

Given a sane Donald Trump and the fact that 70% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction,  you might think he would win the election in a landslide.

 But according to Peggy Noonan in today’s WSJ, Trump is not a sane person.

Through his inappropriate, often crude, and inflammatory remarks,  he keeps seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.

His policy prescriptions to change the direction of U.S. are sound and reasonable and may revitalize America.

Among the current problems are these.

·         A stagnant economy with 1% growth.

·         The highest corporate tax in the world.

·         A staggering national debt of $20 trillion.

·         The possible collapse of the economic viability of the American middle class with growing economic equity.

·         An unpopular and unworkable health reform law, well on the way of doubling premiums,  imposing an average of $1000 deductibles  as the price for seeing a doctor, which may not be the one you would choose,  and the massive withdrawal of insurers from multiple markets,  leaving  one or two choices of health plans,  does not bode well for the future.

·         The loss of the Middle East with the explosive growth of ISIS outside of Iraq into 32 countries.

But alas,  Trump cannot help himself from firing off fatuous tweets or declaring war with juvenile comments on those who disagree with him.  

What Trumps needs are  a sense of deprecatory humor and graciousness towards his enemies.   But these traits are not part of his nature.

Shifting Sources of Power and Equality

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

George Orwell,  Animal Farm

As everybody knows,  social trends shift.

These equality shifts, often decades in the making, include:

·         The shift from masculine to feminine.  Women now dictate power shifts – in politics, in boardrooms, in the professions.  We shall soon have a woman president, more corporate women CEOs, more women lawyers and doctors and other professionals. 

·         The shift from traditional conservative values to more progressive secular values.  We see this everywhere, from attitudes towards gender equality, to same sex and cross-racial marriages, to more permissiveness towards teens,  to more acceptance of marijuana use.

·         The shift from nationalism to globalism.  Immigration across borders is growing,  more international trade is the norm,    more acceptance of other cultures is said to be desirable,  international travel and education is on the rise.

·         The shift from straight unadorned talk to political correctness. Politically correct speech is telling people what you think  they want to hear without offending anybody in a totally tolerant world.

·         The shift from individualism to corporate and large group activities.   You see this particularly in medicine.  The social media  ostensibly has fostered individual ism,  but in reality,  Facebook, Twitter, and iphones  and  the like are social collectivism activities and account for the world’s fastest growing international corporations.

·         The shift from privacy to transparency.    With emails and algorithms and open computer systems  and electronic health records,  credit cards,  and big data tracking,  nothing is private or confident anymore.

·         The shift from human decision making to machine decision making.    The use of machine learning and algorithms  over humans to solve and monitor complex problems.

Some of us yearn for the good old days when men were men, and women were women, and you could tell the difference; when you knew where you stood  based on values embedded over generations;   when you accepted the belief that it was the right thing to be patriotic and that your  country stood for what was good and noble;  when you acted on the basis of what was good for you was good for society and did not need outside management; when individual privacy  and confidentiality  were respected; when you didn’t need an algorithm to tell you how to act or think;  when you said what you meant and meant what you said.

Ah, yes, those were the days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second Presidential Dabate Transcript – ObamaCare Comments

 

Cooper: Ken Karpowitz has a question.

Karpowicz: The Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, it is not affordable. Premiums have gone up, deductibles have gone up, copays has gone up, prescriptions have gone up and the coverage has gone down. What will you do to bring the cost down and make coverage better?

Cooper: That first one goes to secretary Clinton.

Clinton: He wants to start it, he can start it. No, go ahead, Donald.

Trump: No, I'm a gentlemen, Hillary. Go ahead.

Cooper: Secretary Clinton.

Clinton: I think Donald was about to say he’s gonna solve it by repealing it and getting rid of the Affordable Care Act. And I'm going to fix it because I agree with you. Premiums have gotten too high, copays, deductibles, prescription drug costs and I have laid out a series of actions that we can take to try to get those costs down. But here's what I don't want people to forget when we’re talking about reigning in the cost that has to be the highest priority of the next president. When the affordable care act passed, it wasn't just that 20 million people got insurance who didn't have it before. But that, in and of itself is a good thing. I meet these people all the time and they tell me what a difference having that insurance meant to them and their families. But everybody else, the 170 million of us who get health insurance through our employers got big benefits. Number one, insurance companies can't deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition. Number two, no lifetime limits which is a big deal if you have serious health problems. Number three, women can't be charged more than men for our health insurance, which is the way it used to be before the affordable care act. Number four, if you are under 26 and your parents have a policy, you can be on that policy until the age of 26, something that didn't happen before. So I want very much to save what works and is good about the affordable care act. But we’ve got to get costs down, we’ve got to provide some additional help to small businesses so that they can afford to provide health insurance. But if we repeal it as Donald has proposed and start over again, all of those benefits I mentioned are lost to everybody. Not just people who get health insurance on the exchange. And then we would have to start all over again. Right now we are at 90% health insurance coverage. That's the highest we have ever been, in our country. I want to get to 100% and get cost down and quality up.

Cooper: Secretary Clinton, you are out of time. Mr. Trump, You have two minutes.

Trump: It is such a great question and it’s maybe the question I get almost, more than anything else. Outside of defense. Obamacare is a disaster. You know it, we all know it. It's going up at numbers that nobody’s ever seen, worldwide. It’s-nobody has ever seen numbers like this for health care. It's only getting worse. In 17, it implodes by itself. Their method of fixing it is to go back and ask Congress for more money. More, more money and we have right now almost $20 trillion in debt. Obamacare will never work. It’s very bad, very bad health insurance, far too expensive, and not only expensive for the person that has it, unbelievably expensive for our country. It’s going to be one of the biggest line items very shortly. We have to repeal it and replace it with something absolutely much less expensive. And something that works, where your plan can actually be tailored. We have to get rid of the lines around the state, artificial lines, where we stop insurance companies from coming in and competing because they wanted President Obama and whoever was working on it, they want to leave those lines because that gives the insurance companies, essentially monopolies. We want competition. You will have the finest health care plan there is. She wants to go to a single player plan which would be a disaster. Somewhat similar to Canada. If you ever noticed, the Canadians, when they need a big operation, when something happens, they come into the United States in many cases. Because their system is so slow, it's catastrophic in certain ways. But she wants to go to single payer, which means the government basically rules everything. Hillary Clinton has been after this for years. Obamacare was the first step, Obamacare is a total disaster and not only are your rates going up by numbers that nobody’s ever believed, but your deductibles are going up. So that unless you get hit by a truck, you will never be able to use it. It's a disastrous plan and it has to be repealed and replaced.

Cooper: Secretary Clinton, let me follow-up with you, your husband called Obamacare “the craziest thing in the world”, saying small business owners are getting killed, premiums doubled, coverage is cut in half. Was he mistaken or was his mistake simply telling the truth?

Clinton: No. I mean, he clarified what he meant and it’s very clear. Look, we are in a situation in our country where if we were to start all over again, we might come up with a different system. But we have an employer-based system: that’s where the vast majority of people get their health care. And the affordable care act is meant to try to fill the gap between people who are too poor and couldn’t put together any resources to afford healthcare, namely people on medicaid. Obviously, Medicare which is a single payer system which takes care of our elderly, and does a great job doing it, by the way, and then all the people who were employed, but people who were working but didn't have the money to afford insurance and didn’t have anybody, an employer or anybody else to help them. That was the slot that the Obamacare approach was to take. And like I say, 20 million people now have health insurance. So, if we rip it up and throw it away, what Donald is not telling you is we turn it back to the insurance companies the way it used to be. And that means that insurance companies get to do pretty much whatever they want including saying look, I'm sorry, you have diabetes, you had cancer—

Cooper: --Your time is up—

Clinton: --Your child had asthma, you may not be able to have insurance because you can't afford it. So let's fix what's broken about it, but let’s not throw it away and give it back to the insurance companies. That's not going to work.

Cooper: Mr. Trump, let me just follow-up—

Trump: I want to -- just one thing. Hillary, everything is broken about it. Everything. Number two, Bernie Sanders said Hillary Clinton has very bad judgment. This is a perfect example of it. Trying to save Obamacare—

Cooper: --Mr. Trump, you’ve said you want to end Obamacare, you’ve also said you want to make coverage accessible for people with preexisting conditions. How do you force insurance companies to do that if you are not mandating that everyone has insurance?

Trump: You’re going to have plans.

Cooper: What does that mean?

Trump: Well, I’ll tell you what it means. You’re gonna have plans that are so good because we’re going to have so much competition in the insurance industry, once we break out the lines and allow the competition to come.

Cooper: Are you going to have a mandate that Americans have to have health insurance?

Trump: Excuse me. President Obama by keeping those lines, the boundary lines around each state and it was almost done until just towards the end of the passage of Obamacare. Which by the way was a fraud. You know that. Because Jonathan Grouper, the architect of Obamacare was said, he said it was a great lie, it was a big lie. President Obama said you keep your doctor, keep your plan. The whole thing was a fraud and it doesn't work. But when we get rid of those lines, you have competition and we will be able to keep preexisting, we’ll also be able to help people that can't get, don't have money because we are going to have people protected. And Republicans feel this way. Believe it or not, we’re going to block grant into the states we’re going to block grant into medicaid so we will be able to take care of people without the necessary funds to cake care of themselves.

Cooper: Thank you Mr. Trump.

What’s Cooking on Eve of Second Presidential Debate

If you pay close attention to what’s cooking in the eve of tonight’s presidential debate,  the consensus is clear.

Cooking of Trump Goose

What’s cooking is Donald Trump’s goose.   His vulgar tape of 11 years ago has finally done him in.  If not a cooked goose, he is definitely a dead duck, unfit to replace the present lame duck.  Trump, it is said, is sexual predator and dangerous demagogue posing as a presidential candidate.

So the media and the editorial boards of major newspapers,  including  the conservative Arizona Republican,  Dallas Morning News,  and The Wall Street Journal would have us believe.

They may be right, for once again the gaffe-prone Donald Trump is stewing in the juice of  his past, his temperament, and his character.

 Unfortunate Part of the Cooking Controversy

The unfortunate part of this boiling controversy is that  it  overshadows other salient issues.

Some 70 percent of Amerifcans, mostly living in fly-over-country between the Eastern and Western left coasts, think American is headed in the wrong direction.

These middle-of-the-country folk are concerned about these issues.

·         The tepid 2% growth of the American economy over the last 8 years.

 

·         The effective unemployment grate, if you include those who have stopped looking for jobs, of 10 percent/

 

·         The stagnation of  wages and savings.

 

·         The erosion of middle class cultural values in the wake of rampant secularism.

 

·         The decline of  American prestige and power on the world stage secondary to  globalism,   failed foreign policies, and the rise to terrorism.

 

·         The frustrations of the “silent majority” which as been drowned out by the vocal minority , especially in academia,  the press, and other strands of the liberal elite.

 

• The "crazy" ObamaCare system, which Bill Clinton notes covers 25 million uninsured Americans while soaking millions more Americans with double digit premium and unaffordable deductibles while narrowing their choices of doctors and hospitals.

It’s enough to give you goose bumps about America’s future.   People are worried the present administration’s policies and their consequences have killed America’s golden goose.

ObamaCare Chaos

In Minnesota,  Oklahoma, and Tennessee,  three states in which I have lived or practiced,  ObamaCare premium rates are skyrocketing into the 50% to 67% range,  insurers are pulling out and citizens are losing plans and choices, and chaos reigns.

What does it all mean?   I was speaking to Dave Racer, a conservative publisher in Minnesota.  He says ObamaCare is unstable there, and major insurers are either increasing premiums,  capping enrollment,  or pulling out of health exchange markets.    He says if the Democratic Farmer Labor Market wins the next election there,   a universal coverage plan will be on the horizon within 18 months.

ObamaCare Alternatives

If ObamaCare health exchange markets fail, and ObamaCare goes down the tube, these options remain.

·         Universal single payer,  unlikely no matter who wins the presidency

·         A public option, if Clinton wins, with other fixes, such as ending  individual and employer options, moving the 55 to 65 crowd into Medicare, raising taxes for everyone. 

·         ObamaCare repeal, if Trump wins, with a market-based plan – competition across state line,  expansion of health saving accounts,  management of Medicaid by states – and God knows what else. 

·         Management of clinical medicine by machines and algorithms,  if progressively minded government experts have their way (Z, OBermeyer,M.D. and E.J. Emanuel , MD. of Harvard and Wharton (“Predicting the Future – Big Data, Machine Learning and Clinical Medicine, NEJM. September 29.”  

       Ekekial Emaneul Opinions

Ekekiel  Emanuel is one of the principle architects of ObamaCare.  He blames the Republicans for the health law’s problems and says with more government money poured into  “risk corridors,”  the health exchanges could be stabilized and insurer death spirals could be prevented,

Emanuel and co-author argue, that given time and money could solve complex clinical problems and “open up vast new possibilities in medicine.”  Machine learning will one, “dramatically improve the ability of professionals to establish a prognosis,” two,” displace much of the work of radiologists and anatomical pathologists,” three, “improve diagnostic accuracy.”

My Opinion

In my opinion, the health law’s travails result from the ACA being   passed without a single Republican vote, thereby triggering partisan opposition,  and from ignorance of the concept of insurance risk  by not allowing insurers to ask about pre-existing conditions.   

As far as “machine learning” goes,  I would point out that electronic medical records, have been a bust in the medical marketing space,  neither increasing efficiency, or improving quality in terms of diagnosis and prognosis.   I doubt that diagnostic  algorithms will significant displace radiologists or pathologists.   Data has a place as a supplement, but not as a replacement of these specialties.