Tag: Lobbying

Congress’ Drug Addiction

Posted 2/26/16 on Employee Benefit News.

The Congressional committee that recently demanded Martin Shkreli’s appearance must have hoped to spotlight a smug jerk responsible for the outrageous prescription drug pricing that we’re all up against. Of course there are lots of Shkrelis running drug companies, but most are shrewder and less brash, and might not make for such good theater.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), one of the Committee’s questioners, seemed to think that his witness could move healthcare forward by disclosing the machinery of the drug sector’s excesses. “The way I see it, you could go down in history as the poster boy for greedy drug company executives or you could change the system. Yeah, you.” Continue reading “Congress’ Drug Addiction” →

Would A Single Payer System Be Good For America?

Brian Klepper

ALP_H_BK_0010berwick_donOn Vox, the vivacious new topical news site, staffed in part by former writers at the Washington Post Wonk Blog, Sarah Kliff writes how Donald Berwick, MD, the recent former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Founder of the prestigious Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has concluded that a single payer health system would answer many of the US’ health care woes. Dr. Berwick is running for Governor of Massachusetts and this is an important plank of his platform. Of course, it is easy to show that single payer systems in other developed nations provide comparable or better quality care at about half the cost that we do in the US.

All else being equal, I might be inclined to agree with Dr. Berwick’s assessment. But the US is special in two ways that make a single payer system unlikely to produce anything but even higher health care costs than we already have.

Continue reading “Would A Single Payer System Be Good For America?” →

The RUC Is Bad Medicine: It Has To Go

Brian Klepper

Posted 8/12/13 on Medscape Business of Medicine

BK 711“One of the biggest mistakes we made … is that we took the RUC … back in 1992 and gave it to the AMA. … It’s incredibly political, and it’s just human nature…the specialists that spend more money and have more time have a bigger impact.”

This was Tom Scully, former Bush II Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), previously the Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA). He was a panelist in a May 10, 2012 Senate Finance Committee RoundTable discussion by former HCFA/CMS Administrators and has become one of the RUC’s most outspoken critics. He was explaining how the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC), a group that asked if it could help the government by overseeing a valuation process for medical services, came to dominate and distort the pricing used in Medicare, Medicaid and commercial health plans.

Mr. Scully echoed this sentiment recently.

“The idea that $100 billion in federal spending is based on fixed prices that go through an industry trade association in a process that is not open to the public is pretty wild. … Having the AMA run the process of fixing prices for Medicare was crazy from the beginning.”

Gail Wilensky, HCFA Administrator under Bush I, was wistful. “It happened innocently enough.”

It is remarkable and compelling to hear these federal health program ex-stewards express regret about a fiasco they had a hand in. Their “mea culpas” are almost palpable. Mr. Scully, in a recent Washington Post video interview, gave a quick aside, “It’s partially my fault.”

Continue reading “The RUC Is Bad Medicine: It Has To Go” →

Hurtling Down the Road to Ruin

Brian Klepper and David C. Kibbe

Posted 6/21/13 on Medscape Internal Medicine

BK 711dckibbeA recent New York Times article that focused on colonoscopies highlighted the questionable science, predatory unit pricing, and overutilization that characterize this procedure and much of US healthcare. Patients get routine screenings that, in other industrialized countries, cost one half to one thirtieth of what they do here, then are gobsmacked by bills equivalent to the cost of a good used car. Reporters and healthcare writers have covered this topic in all its intricacies thousands of times.

But Elizabeth Rosenthal, the Times reporter, zeroed in on the root of the crisis, which is how healthcare interests have shaped market and policy forces to their own ends. “The high price paid for colonoscopies mostly results not from top-notch patient care, according to interviews with health care experts and economists, but from business plans seeking to maximize revenue; haggling between hospitals and insurers that have no relation to the actual costs of performing the procedure; and lobbying, marketing and turf battles among specialists that increase patient fees.”

One result is that healthcare’s cost drivers are a multiheaded monster, frustrating simplistic solutions. Many physicians own a financial stake in the care they deliver, rather than being paid to manage the care process well. Pricing is typically unrelated to cost or quality, varies wildly among providers, and often comprises dozens of components that are impossible to understand beforehand. Insurance companies may make a percentage of total cost and so are incentivized to allow healthcare to cost more. Every level of the system is rigged.

Why Only Business Can Save America From Health Care

Brian Klepper

Posted 3/24/13 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog

BK 711For a large and growing number of us with meager or no coverage, health care is the ultimate “gotcha.” Events conspire, we receive care and then are on the hook for a car- or house-sized bill. There are few alternatives except going without or going broke.

Steven Brill’s recent Time cover story clearly detailed the predatory health care pricing that has been ruinous for many rank-and-file Americans. In Brill’s report, a key mechanism, the hospital chargemaster, with pricing “devoid of any calculation related to cost,” facilitated US health care’s rise to become the nation’s largest and wealthiest industry. His recommendations, like Medicare for all with price controls, seem sensible and compelling.

But efforts to implement Brill’s ideas, on their own, would likely fail, just as many others have, because he does not fully acknowledge the deeper roots of health care’s power. He does not adequately follow the money, question how the industry came to operate a core social function in such a self-interested fashion or pursue why it has been so difficult to dislodge its abuses. For that, we need to turn our attention to a far more intractable and frightening problem: lobbying and the capture of regulation that dictates how American health care works.

Continue reading “Why Only Business Can Save America From Health Care” →

Arriving at the Beginning

Brian Klepper

Posted 11/12/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care & Cost Blog

The most striking aspect of the election was that it decisively clarified the philosophical preferences of most Americans. And because the outcome was largely determined by minorities, women, and the young, it appeared to be a much broader and more independently-minded vision than most pundits have given the electorate credit for. That unexpectedly portends big changes.

Peggy Noonan’s analysis in the Wall Street Journal quotes a brutal summation by conservative activist Heather Higgins:

A majority of the American people believe that the one good point about Republicans is they won’t raise taxes. However they also believe Republicans caused the economic mess in the first place and might do it again, cannot be trusted to care about cutting spending in a way that is remotely concerned about who it hurts, and are retrograde to the point of caricature on everything else.

Continue reading “Arriving at the Beginning” →

Primary Care’s Dilemma

Brian Klepper

Posted 9/12/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog

Early in the new documentary, Escape Fire, which provides detailed portraits of US health care’s craziness, we meet Erin Martin MD, a young primary care physician in The Dalles, OR, who ultimately abandons her practice with low income patients. Time and financial constraints have frustrated her efforts to provide the care she believes is necessary to make a difference in people’s lives. Later, we see her in a business meeting with other primary care physicians in her new practice, reviewing financials. To maintain the practice’s revenues, they’ll need to see more patients, which means shorter patient visits. The defeat is palpable to her, to her colleagues and to the audience.

A few days ago, Rob Lamberts MD, 18 years into his practice, announced on The Health Care Blog that he was dropping out, leaving to go solo in a Direct Primary Care (DPC) practice catering to patients who can pay out-of-pocket rather than through insurance. Dr. Lamberts, a regular and characteristically sunny columnist, is workmanlike but chilly in his explanation.

Continue reading “Primary Care’s Dilemma” →

Who Will Speak For Physicians and Their Patients?

Brian Klepper

Posted 8/29/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog

Dr. George Lundberg has an important article on Medpage Today that deserves the thoughtful consideration of every American physician. He argues that the American Medical Association, a successful and representative organization for many decades, more recently “fails on both fronts” to fight for doctors and for the health of the American people. It has become, he says, “unsalvageable.”

In a companion piece earlier this month, he called on all physicians to become lifelong members of the AMA, as a way to gain professional impact and to make the AMA more reflective of American physicians’ concerns. “If you are an American physician and you don’t like what the AMA has done and is doing, if you are not a member, shut your mouth, you have no right to complain.”

Continue reading “Who Will Speak For Physicians and Their Patients?” →

The Game’s Not Over, and It May Not Even Be The Real Game

Brian Klepper

Posted 6/29/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog

ImageLike most health law watchers, I was surprised by yesterday’s decision. I’m sure that on this issue, as with everything else, zealous responses will rationalize the result and split the country down the middle.

I expected the Court to be purely partisan, but apparently Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged the gravity of his role and saw his way clear to support the law with some constraints. Here’s the comment from SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) Blog: 

Salvaging the idea that Congress did have the power to try to expand health care to virtually all Americans, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld the constitutionality of the crucial – and most controversial – feature of the Affordable Care Act. By a vote of 5-4, however, the Court did not sustain it as a command for Americans to buy insurance, but as a tax if they don’t. That is the way Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., was willing to vote for it, and his view prevailed. The other Justices split 4-4, with four wanting to uphold it as a mandate, and four opposed to it in any form.

Continue reading “The Game’s Not Over, and It May Not Even Be The Real Game” →

Galvanizing Primary Care’s Power: A Call For A New Society

Brian Klepper

Posted 6/25/12 on Medscape’s Care & Cost Blog

The dream of reason did not take power into account – modern medicine is one of those extraordinary works of reason – but medicine is also a world of power.

Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 1984

How can primary care’s position be reasserted as a policy leader rather than follower? Even though it is a linchpin discipline within America’s health system and its larger economy – a mass of evidence compellingly demonstrates that empowered primary care is associated with better health outcomes and lower costs – primary care has been overwhelmed and outmaneuvered by a health care industry intent on freeing access to lucrative downstream services and revenues. That compromise has produced a cascade of undesirable impacts that reach far beyond health care. Bringing American health care back into homeostasis will require a approach that appreciates and leverages power in ways that are different than in the past.

But primary care also has complicity in its own decline. It has been largely ineffective in communicating and advocating for its value, and in recruiting allies who share its interests. Equally important, it has failed to appreciate and protect primary care’s foundational role in US health care and the larger economy, as well as the advocacy demands of competing in a power-based policy environment.

Continue reading “Galvanizing Primary Care’s Power: A Call For A New Society” →

The Right Rx for Better Health Care: Rise Up to Challenge the Industry’s Lobbying Power

Brian Klepper and Shannon Brownlee

Published 3/29/12 in the New York Daily News

Obamacare had its days in the Supreme Court this week, and the justices’ decision could have sweeping consequences for the individual mandate provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and maybe even for the fate of the law itself.

Yet whatever the court decides, we will still be stuck with a problem that this contentious law was not likely to solve on its own: an out of control health care industry that threatens the stability of the U.S. economy and the federal government’s ability to deal with our long-term debt.

Continue reading “The Right Rx for Better Health Care: Rise Up to Challenge the Industry’s Lobbying Power” →

How the Medical Device Industry Lobbies

Merrill Goozner

Posted 2/29/12 on Public Citizen

“I think it’s important for members (of Congress) to hear from industry.” So said Carrie Hartgen, a vice-president at AdvaMed, the medical device industry association, discussing another coordinated lobby effort before Congress. Her comment seems insincere because the fact is, Congress is already hearing a lot from the medical device industry. In fact, the industry’s lobbying is particularly acute right now because Congress is scheduled to pass a law reauthorizing user fees that funds review of applications for devices before they can be sold to the public. Lobbyists are arguing for changes that would speed up approval of medical devices in a system that in fact needs to be strengthened to protect patients from defective devices, instead of being weakened to pad profits. While AdvaMedcontinues to put its foot forward in Washington, below are 30 facts that its industry lobbyists will probably neglect to tell Congress.

* All of the facts below and additional information are compiled in the Public Citizen report, Substantially Unsafe.

Continue reading “How the Medical Device Industry Lobbies” →

Connecting the Dots: How Anticompetitive Contracting Practices, Kickbacks, and Self-dealing by Hospital Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) Caused the U. S. Drug Shortage

Brian’s Note: This piece found its way to me yesterday and, with the author’s permission, I’m republishing it in its entirety. It is a very long but worthwhile read, mostly because it clarifies what we’re up against. Kudos to Ms. Earl and Mr. Zweig for having the courage and tenacity to document this.

Patricia Earl and Phillip L. Zweig

Authors Note: Because of widespread misinformation on the causes of this public health emergency and the extreme urgency of resolving it, we have written this paper in a timeline format. We thank Bill Bandy, retired CEO and founder of United Medical Supply, a Dallas-based medical supplies distribution firm, for his invaluable research assistance.

COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Patricia Earl and Phillip L. Zweig

Abstract:
Recent reports by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)1, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)2 and other sources on the acute shortage of generic drugs have attributed the shortages to everything from raw materials shortages and manufacturing problems to the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, and FDA drug approval delays. Based on these analyses, President Obama on October 31 issued an Executive Order instructing the FDA to require manufacturers to notify the agency of impending shortages, to expedite regulatory reviews, and to increase staff in its drug shortages program.

In this white paper, the authors argue that these explanations, and President Obama’s Executive Order, miss the point entirely. These reasons are ancillary to the root causes of this crisis. In fact, it is the direct result of the anticompetitive, exclusionary contracting practices, self-dealing, collusion, kickbacks and conflicts of interests of giant hospital group purchasing organizations (GPOs), which have undermined free market competition in drugs, medical devices, and supplies in the U. S. These purchasing cartels, which contract for $200 billion+ in hospital goods each year for about 5,000 non-profit, acute care hospitals, have rigged this market in favor of a handful of dominant suppliers and distributors, thereby making it unprofitable for other companies to make or sell these inexpensive, hard-to-manufacture drugs.

Continue reading “Connecting the Dots: How Anticompetitive Contracting Practices, Kickbacks, and Self-dealing by Hospital Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) Caused the U. S. Drug Shortage” →

Why Only Non-Health Care Business Can Save America From The Health Care Industry

Brian Klepper

The attached PP deck is a presentation I’ve given several times that has received an overwhelmingly positive, if frightened, reception.

It is, perhaps, the most disturbing public argument of my career (which is going some), because it tries to document the health care industry’s “capture” of health care regulatory processes, particularly those that govern payment. The result, as many people understand, is that the health care industry, in its rapaciousness, is effectively driving the larger US economy off a cliff.

Only one group, the non-health care business community, has the heft, influence and motivation to save us, though health care has done a good job dividing and conquering this sector as well, insinuating itself into many of the most powerful institutions (e.g., the Chambers of Commerce). It remains very unclear that the business community can be galvanized/mobilized from its malaise to turn this problem around.

The argument goes like this:

  • The data are clear that the US’ health care economy is absorbing most gains in the larger economy, and driving the US economy toward collapse. For example, nearly all increases in total compensation have been directed at increasing health costs, which in turn flows into the health industry.

Physician Dispensing in Florida – Can Money Buy Bad Policy?

Joe Paduda

Posted 1/24/12 on Managed Care Matters

One of the most powerful firms in the physician dispensing business is sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elected officials in Florida. [sub req] The donations, to individual politicians and their affiliated organizations, come as the Florida Senate is considering a bill that would limit reimbursement of physician-dispensed drugs to the cost of the underlying (non-repackaged) drug.

This morning Mike Whitely of WorkCompCentral reported Automated Healthcare Solutions “gave more than $32,500 to Florida state lawmakers and more than $500,000 to committees associated with conservative causes and candidates in 2011…”, most of it in the last three months of 2011.

Continue reading “Physician Dispensing in Florida – Can Money Buy Bad Policy?” →