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Five Health Issues Presidential Candidates Aren’t Talking About — But Should Be
http://khn.org/news/five-health-issues-presidential-candidates-arent-talking-about-but-should-be/
References to the Affordable Care Act — sometimes called Obamacare — have been a regular feature of the current presidential campaign season.
For months, Republican candidates have pledged to repeal it, while Democrat Hillary Clinton wants to build on it and Democrat Bernie Sanders wants to replace it with a government-funded “Medicare for All” program.
But much of the policy discussion stops there. Yet the nation in the next few years faces many important decisions about health care — most of which have little to do with the controversial federal health law. Here are five issues candidates should be discussing, but largely are not:
Hospital Finance Measure On California Ballot May Stump Voters
http://khn.org/news/hospital-finance-measure-on-california-ballot-may-stump-voters/
California voters will be asked to weigh in this November on a hospital financing measure so politically and financially complicated that they might be tempted to avoid it altogether.
The initiative, Proposition 52, would make permanent the “Hospital Quality Assurance Fee,” which the state collects from private hospitals to bring in additional federal dollars for Medi-Cal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid health care program for the poor. The federal government matches money that California puts up to fund Medi-Cal services.
The dollars generated by the fee are used to fund hospital services and children’s health care under Medi-Cal, and the ballot measure would help ensure the money is not diverted by lawmakers for other uses.
Hospitals like the fee, which has been in place since 2009, because it gives them a big financial boost in what they say is an underfunded government health program. In the 2015-2016 fiscal year, hospitals received an additional $3.5 billion to pay for services they provided to Medi-Cal patients, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Two Washington State hospitals liable for failure to provide charity care
Cleveland Clinic CEO: Affordable Care Act is here to stay
The Republican National Convention pulled up stakes after it concluded yesterday, but a visitor to the convention floor says that the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.
In an interview with CBS This Morning, Cleveland Clinic Chief Executive Officer Toby Cosgrove, M.D., said that it was unlikely that the ACA would be uprooted, even if Republican Donald J. Drumpf is elected President and there are GOP majorities in both houses of Congress.
“I don’t think you will see something now six years into the process totally dismantled,” Cosgrove said, adding that the healthcare reform law has led to insurance coverage for 20 million more Americans. Cosgrove suggested that it was more likely that the ACA would undergo continuing improvements such as “more wellness activities.”
4 BEHAVIORS ACCOUNT FOR 89% OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS
Mckinsey research* suggests 4 leadership behaviors make the difference between strong and weak leadership.
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The Digital Snake Oil of the Early 21st Century
Sticks and stones and snake oil: What will inform next chapter of healthcare IT development?
Name calling often gets attention, but it rarely solves problems. So when the CEO of the American Medical Association, Dr. James Madara, recently called healthcare IT “the digital snake oil of the early 21st century,” his words were widely reported, though not uniformly praised.
His inflammatory analogy aside, Dr. Madara had a valid point: many physicians are indeed incredibly frustrated with the majority of healthcare IT solutions. What’s more, the usability improvements that Dr. Madara called for are completely reasonable and appropriate.
No other industry on Earth has accepted lower productivity and efficiency as a result of computerization. Do accountants spend more time doing a company’s books using computers than they did by hand? Of course not. Or imagine Netflix subscribers spending twice the amount of time trying to navigate the on-screen interface than it would take to simply pop in a DVD or drive to the local theater. Consumers simply wouldn’t deal with it.
