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The Mission Ahead: Health Care

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Portenoy & Zeltzer: Treating Pain Must Be Key Part of Health Reform Bill

Nov. 13, 2009

The pain treatment provisions in the health care reform bill passed by the House are the first steps we need to take to improve care and reduce costs in treating pain in this country.

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Ross: We Can’t Gamble With Children’s Health

Nov. 13, 2009

As the special interests load up for the final fight and the politicians prepare for the last debates in health care reform, there is one special interest whose protection should not be debatable — kids.

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Bray: Limiting Flexible Spending Accounts Is Not Effective Health Care Reform

Oct. 29, 2009

Health reform proposals that would affect the use of flexible spending accounts unfortunately have received relatively little attention during the health care debate.

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Sandt: Bipartisan Support Grows for Addressing Nation's Hepatitis Scourge

Nov. 6, 2009

While lawmakers, budget experts and health care policy gurus have long known that chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and cancer threaten to overwhelm our health care system, too few in Washington, D.C., have recognized that chronic liver disease deserves to be part of the conversation.

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Lamm: Resuscitate End-of-Life Counseling

Oct. 28, 2009

The level of passionate debate — on both sides — over the House health care reform bill provisions to make advance care planning consultations available to Medicare beneficiaries has been the product of strongly held convictions to be sure.

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Holtz-Eakin: Baucus Bill May Pass, But Efforts to ‘Bend the Curve’ Are Dead

Oct. 21, 2009

In 1968, when Vietnam and political protest created a cultural generation gap in America, the Pulitzer Prize-winning gerontologist, psychiatrist and founding director of the National Institute on Aging, Dr. Robert Butler, identified another kind of generation gap. He dubbed it “ageism,” the tendency to dismiss older people as interchangeable, less than competent, diminished by age. Today the growing number of older people contributing in vital ways to their families and communities has challenged but not eliminated those stereotypes, and ageism is creeping into the health reform debate.

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Holtz-Eakin: Baucus Bill May Pass, But Efforts to ‘Bend the Curve’ Are Dead

Oct. 16, 2009

The U.S. Senate is giving Shakespeare a run for his money: generating sound and fury over the need for health care reform while producing legislation that is much ado about nothing.

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Smith: Status Quo Is Broken for Young Adults

Oct. 1, 2009

Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama directly enlisted young people in the fight for health care reform. His speech immediately shifted the debate from “Do young people care about health care reform?” (yes, we care) to “What should young people be fighting for?”

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Merritt: PBM ‘Disclosure’ Gives Drugmakers and Drugstores Free Hand to Charge Higher Prices

Oct. 1, 2009

Under the guise of “transparency” and “disclosure,” legislation under consideration in both the House and Senate would undermine prescription drug competition and give the upper hand to the drugmakers and independent pharmacists to increase prices.

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Roberts: Transparency in Pharmacy Benefit Manager Industry Is Key to Lowering Health Care Costs

Sept. 28, 2009

“Why do these drugs cost so much?” It’s a question community pharmacists hear from patients on a regular basis — and more frequently with the economic downturn.

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Honda: Baucus Should Be More Inclusive With Health Care Plan

Sept. 22, 2009

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-Mont.) much-publicized proposal to exclude undocumented immigrants — and legal immigrants here less than five years — from purchasing health insurance coverage through the National Health Exchange runs counter to several core components of health care reform.

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Johns: Fundamental Health Reform Involves Investing in Alzheimer’s Research

Sept. 21, 2009

As Washington searches for ways to pay for health care reform, one investment opportunity, with potentially huge returns, has been overlooked. It’s Alzheimer’s disease. That is, investment in the research needed to stop it.

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Beattie: We Can’t Afford to Fall Down on Falls

Sept. 18, 2009,

Every 18 seconds.
That’s how often a shaken older adult goes to the emergency room, often in pain, after a fall. The explanations can sound mundane — slipping on a loose rug, getting dizzy rising from a chair, tripping over the cat. But one out of three older adults in America falls every year and for many the experience is life-changing, causing hip fracture, traumatic brain injury, or early nursing home admission. In 2005, falls killed nearly 16,000 older adults.

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Donatelli: Baucus Plan Just Like the Rest

Sept. 18, 2009

“Health Care According to Max Baucus” has finally arrived. It’s the most ballyhooed event since the debut of “The Jay Leno Show” at 10 p.m. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has toiled for months in search of a “bipartisan” vehicle to move health care reform forward.

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Tran: A Wait We Can’t Afford

Sept. 10, 2009

Imagine waiting five years to get a cancer screening or another test that can reveal a health problem like a tumor at an early stage. In fact, current U.S. policy puts an estimated 358,000 people in that unacceptable position: They’re tax-paying legal residents who cannot afford health care services yet must wait five years to enroll in Medicaid.

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Hanna: Welcome Back, Congress. Now Please Get to Work

Sept. 9, 2009

As Congress returns to work this week, it won’t take long to see what lessons the Members have learned from the often-stormy town hall meetings during the Aug. recess.

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Love & Glassman: Don’t Kill Competition for High-Tech Drugs

Sept. 9, 2009

The two of us have often been on opposite sides of important policy debates on technology and health care, but we are united today in viewing with alarm recent Congressional action involving biologic drugs and vaccines, derived from living organisms.

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Wasner: The Five Dirty Words of Health Care Reform

Sept. 4, 2009

As a practicing physician for 30 years, I can readily testify that health care is in need of repair. It now appears that we as a society are finally ready to attack the problem in a meaningful way. I am fearful, however, of the way in which the present debate is being framed.

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Walker: It’s Time to Change Course

Sept. 3, 2009

Over the Aug. recess, many Members of Congress discovered the voters are not happy with the state of play back in Washington, D.C. But we cannot let this recent drama distract us from the real and legitimate concerns that Americans have about the costs behind the current plans.

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O’Grady: Congress Underestimating Savings From Treating Chronic Disease

Sept. 1, 2009

If Congress wants to find ways to curb the crushing costs of health care, it must modernize how it assesses the costs and savings of treating chronic disease, which accounts for 75 percent of our nation’s annual health spending.

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Proposed Medicare Cuts Put Seniors’ Care at Risk

Aug. 28, 2009

Despite the fact that we in the long-term care profession strongly support the broader effort by Congress and the administration to increase every Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality health care, it is essential we achieve this desirable objective in a fair and equitable manner.

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Santangelo: Modernizing Electronic Health Records Key to Unlocking Industry Efficiencies

Aug. 27, 2009

Health care is indisputably one of the most data-intensive industries in the U.S., yet modern dissemination and control of patient data consistently lags behind other industries such as banking, airlines, insurance and retail.

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Romeo: Food Safety a Vital Issue for Our Health and Our Economy

Aug. 25, 2009

When Congress resumes its work on health care reform this fall, another vital, but less-publicized effort will be under way on Capitol Hill to improve another critical dimension of public health: reducing the spread of food-borne illness.

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Kim, Kessler & Cowan: Don’t Pass on the ‘Next New Deal’

Aug. 24, 2009

As we move into the final make-or-break months of the health care debate, every progressive should, in the James Carville tradition, put a simple warning on the wall: Do not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Dietel: Save Flexible Spending Plans

Aug. 19, 2009

As Congress considers how to pay the hefty price tag for health care reform, one option under consideration is changing the structure of flexible spending accounts — a tool used by millions of hardworking Americans to manage and pay for health care costs not covered by insurance on a tax-advantaged basis. Limiting the amount of money that can be contributed into FSAs, as some in Congress have suggested, will reduce the value of the benefit and force plan participants to pay higher taxes and health care costs at a time when many can least afford it — an outcome inconsistent with the principles of health care reform.

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Lewin: Health Care System Must Reward Quality of Care, Outcomes

Aug. 13, 2009

Health care reform is imminent. Legislation is being introduced, and all parties with a vested interest are preparing to fight for their needs. But as our country and our leaders head down this path, do we know the destination?

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White: Getting the ‘IMAC’ Proposal Right: Some Health Care Homework for the Recess

Aug. 4, 2009

Members of Congress will hear and think a lot about health care reform over the recess. We can only hope that legislators will resolve the contradictions in some of their own positions and that the drumbeat of misinformation will not produce total panic.

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Darling: We Need to Address Obesity Now, Or Health Reform Will Fail

July 30, 2009

The president and Congress are right to continually link the nation’s economic recovery to our ability to control health care spending.

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Bayne: Why Don’t We First Do What Works?

July 30, 2009

President Barack Obama has stated that health reform should be guided by a simple principle: “Fix what’s broken and build on what works.” But the health reform bills to date have been criticized for adding costly health care programs that are laudable in isolation but unproven in widespread practice.

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Vladeck: Paralysis by Analysis

July 28, 2009

Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf stalled health care reform recently by questioning the fiscal impact of Congressional proposals already far down the legislative road. The CBO’s perceived authority and expertise reinforces the impact of such pronouncements. But if history is a guide, this emperor has no clothes.

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DeGette: What’s Needed to Protect Our Nation’s Food Supply

July 28, 2009

After years of neglect and countless recalls, both Congress and the White House are finally reforming and updating our food safety system.

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Johns & Grover: Do We Know What We Don’t Know?

July 27, 2009

The most significant discussion of health care reform in the United States in nearly two decades has reached a critical stage. Ensuring access to care through workable, comprehensive insurance reforms is indeed a worthy goal. But lost in the policy discussion is how best to improve the overall health of Americans.