Blumenthal on Kennedy and Changes at Commonhealth

Commonhealth, WBUR’s group blog on health care, has a new editor — former WSJ reporter Rachel Zimmerman.  

 I’ll be expanding the list of guest contributors, so if you have strong opinions about cost, delivery, access or quality of care in this state, please contact me at zimmerman08@gmail.com. (And if your opinions include photos, charts, or documents, all the better.)

Also, lots of post-Kennedy health reform speculation via Kaiser Health News.

And, one last Kennedy link from me. I knew that Boston doc and Obama advisor David Blumenthal worked for Kennedy. I didn’t know that part of his job was to be on hand in case someone tried to shoot the senator. Blumenthal remembers his boss on the Health Affairs blog.

BHN Exclusive: Kennedy — Saying Goodbye and Talking Health Reform

People gathered in Boston’s North End on Thursday to see Ted Kennedy’s body pass through on the way out to the Kennedy Library.

BHN talked to some of them about Kennedy and health reform. Here’s a rough cut.   Thanks to — in order of appearance –Mary Gilbert, Johanna Collins, Jeanne Pagano, Mitch Zimmer, Amir El Shami and Jason Williams.   

Ted Kennedy Saying goodbye and talking reform

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Kennedy’s legacy and health reform

I’m still on deadline but my 11-year-old son and I rode our bikes across the bridge to see the procession go through the North End  today. (BHN is actually based in Cambridge.)  I was about my son’s age when Robert Kennedy was shot.  

For more, see the Globe special Kennedy section. I covered Kennedy’s Senate committee in the late 1980s. He was a forceful voice on the Hill, even during his rough patch.

 For more on the impact of his death – and life –on the health reform effort see:

The Washington Post 

As Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s death suddenly quieted the national debate over health-care reform, some Democratic lawmakers suggested Wednesday that the passing of such a prominent advocate for universal health coverage may represent an opportunity to hit the reset button on that issue.

But whether that would improve the odds of passing a health-care bill was much less clear. Leading Republican senators hinted that no Democrat seemed ready to assume Kennedy’s traditional role both in crafting a political compromise and in selling it to the Democratic base.

The Globe:

Hardly a day has gone by in the last several months when some key figure in the health care talks has not invoked Kennedy, recalling aloud that this was his fight, resolving to persist despite mounting obstacles – or fretting about how to move forward without him.

This summer, as the Senate missed deadlines and negotiations slid off course, and as conservative anger exploded in town hall meetings across the country, unanswerable questions hovered. Would Kennedy have found a way to bring a bill to the floor earlier, when goodwill toward the new president was stronger?

Kaiser Health News offers a roundup

Today’s news: Speculation begins regarding the impact Sen. Kennedy’s death will have on the health reform debate and the Democrat’s prospects for success. 

Bye Teddy North End

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Teddy Kennedy, 1932-2009

Woke up to a huge headline in my morning paper annoucing Kennedy’s death. Feels like the end of an era. Is there any other health news in Boston today?

Here are some links:

• The future of health reform without Kennedy. NY Times
• Globe coverage. From the editorial : “The state already feels smaller without him.” Reaction from Boston hosptials and other Kennedy health news via Globe. Globe front.
• Boston Herald
• New England Cable News
• Universal Hub
• Cape Cod Times
• Manchester (NH) Union Leader
• WBUR
• Commonhealth
• NYTimes
• Senate  page
• CNN
• Fox News
• MSNBC
• Kaiser Health News
• Washington Post
• Politico
• WSJ health blog
• Worldwide reaction via Global Post
• The Guardian, UK
• Health Care for All
• You Tube
• “Cause of my life“  statement via Newsweek.

For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it’s always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.

From Richard Kirsch, Health Care for America Now

“Health Care for America Now joins the nation in mourning the passing of Senator Kennedy, for whom our mission – winning a guarantee of good health care for all – was his life’s work. We dedicate ourselves in the next few weeks to realizing the vision, passion, and hopes of this great American, firmly in the knowledge that enacting health care reform will rightly be seen as Ted Kennedy’s legacy.”

 

NYTimes: Tom Daschle and his evil twin

The NY Times had a schizophrenic moment this weekend. On Sunday, one story suggested that unofficial Obama health advisor Tom Daschle was inappropriately pushing reforms that will benefit his private clients. Another said his absence is one reason health reform is stalling.  They ran right next to each other.

Having worked at a newspaper or two, I know these things happen. Your colleague on another desk is working on the same story and you don’t know about it. But, BHN found it  amusing, and would link to it but  could not find the blog post on the NYTimes web page. Either we’re missing it, it never ran online or they took it down. (I’ll ask.)

 Here’s how it went.

 The front page story on troubling conflicts of interest for Daschle continued on an inside page devoted to the health care debate. The left column featured entries from the “Prescriptions”  blog, leading with this one:  

 “Any death watch for health care overhaul may be premature…If it does fail, here may be some of the commonly cited causes.” The first one is “The absence of Former Sen. Tom Daschle, Democrat deeply knowledgeable about health care and the Senate.” 

 Lobbyist or thwarted champion of reform? Can he be both?

Who makes money on the current health care system?

Harvard Med School lecturer and author, Dr. Marcia Angell, explains on The Huffinton Post

 In sum, the answer to the question, “Where is all that money going?” is that much of it is diverted to profits and overhead, and to exorbitantly priced and medically unnecessary tests and procedures. Any reform that has a prayer of containing costs, hence being sustainable, must deal with these two massive drains.

 Yet, most reform proposals would leave the present profit-driven and inflationary system essentially unchanged, and simply pour more money into it.

 

Does the Mass model make Bay Staters healthier?

From the Wall St. Journal health blog

We’ve written a lot about Massachusetts and its push to expand health insurance coverage to almost everyone in the state.

Recently, we sat down with John Auerbach, the commissioner of Massachusetts’s Department of Public Health, to get his take on a fundamental question that seems to be buried below talk of how to pay for health reform: Does expanded coverage actually improve peoples’ health?

From the evidence he’s seen so far from the state, Auerbach argues that the answer is yes. In particular, he cites three pieces of data as short-term indicators: smoking rates, flu shots, and colonoscopies.

We’re #1 and that’s not a good thing

Health care think tank, The Commonwealth Fund, has a new report on health insurance costs. Massachusetts has the highest costs in the nation but , as the Globe points out:

The report did not break out how much premiums have increased in Massachusetts since the 2006 changes went into effect, so it does not show whether the law affected the rate of price increases. Still, with the state’s law often cited as a model for a national health care overhaul, advocates on various sides of the issue said the report underscores the urgency of including cost controls in any large-scale federal or state overhaul.

 Still, the news is bad from everyone — except the people and companies that make money on health care. From the report:

The rapid rise in health insurance premiums has severely strained U.S. families and employers in recent years. This analysis of federal data finds that if premiums for employer-sponsored insurance grow in each state at the projected national rate of increase, then the average premium for family coverage would rise from $12,298 (the 2008 average) to $23,842 by 2020—a 94 percent increase. However, if health system reforms were able to slow premium growth by 1 percentage point in all states, by 2020 employers and families together would save $2,571 per premium for family coverage, compared with projected trends.

 

Health policy blog review and mellow Vermont town hall meeting

The latest issue of Health Wonk Review – that super-timely digest of health policy blog  postings — is up. This week’s host is fellow Bay Stater Dave E.Williams, who runs the Health Business Blog.  His entry includes links to run-downs of the different reform proposals and poetry about the rowdy Town Hall meetings. (More on HWR here.) 

 Speaking of town hall, CBS News correspondent Dr. John LaPook was on vacation in Vermont when Sen. Bernie Sanders held his town meeting. LaPook filed this video report.

Is health reform immoral?

First death panels, now this. I’m on deadline for a project, but this was so odd, I had to post it. From a press release I just got from a conservative group on the morality of health reform.  

A consumer driven approach comes closest to meeting the leading ethical principle guiding medicine today, while at the same time addressing the issues that most concern a consequentialist.  Not only is the president’s plan not the moral thing to do, his approach is positively immoral,” said (Merrill) Matthews of a group called the Institute of Policy Innovation, described as ”an independent, nonprofit public policy organization based in Dallas, Texas.” 

Or, is it immoral not to push health reform? 

Who knew the health reform debate would get so strange? BHN is getting tons of hits from people searching on the term “Obama Hitler moustache.”