Odds and Ends from a Busy Week; Health Care Reform Part Five

(I forgot my subhead on So, Canada. Oops.)

Lots going on, so this will be sort of a grab-bag summary of health reform stuff.

Let’s start with this recent Gallup poll on uninsured Americans (from July 22). Here’s the bottom line finding:

“The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index finds that while a large majority of Americans have health insurance, one in six in this country is without coverage. The current percentage of uninsured Americans (16.0%) represents a small, but measurable increase over last year. Hispanic Americans, at a rate approaching triple the national average, are the most likely subset of the population to be uninsured. Those making less than $36,000 per year are the second-most-likely group to be uninsured, with 18- to 29-year-olds following closely behind.”

This lines up with what my other research is showing, that uninsurance is disproportionately a problem for the young, poor, and non-Caucasian. Must be why all those rich old white men in Washington can’t see the need to change things any time soon.

This US News report attempts to give some basic facts about the reform efforts, and while I could quibble about some of the assertions about what the “plan” (there are several) would or wouldn’t do, I think the basic numbers here are helpful.

Here are the numbers that jumped out at me:
*Healthcare spending as a percentage of income, for those earning less than $20,000 per year: 15.5 percent
*For those earning between $55,000 and $70,000: 5.1 percent
*For those earning more than $70,000: 3 percent
*Average increase in employer-based health insurance premiums since 1999: 120 percent
*Average increase in wages since then: 29 percent
*Proportion of personal bankruptcies related to illness or medical bills: 62.1 percent
*Increase since 2001 in the proportion of personal bankruptcies caused by medical problems: 50 percent.

Cheerful stuff, I know.

To make you feel better I recommend two reports from the Commonwealth Fund, one which begins, “The individual health insurance market is not a viable option for the majority of uninsured adults…”

The other says “including both private and public insurance choices in a new insurance exchange would save the United States as much as $265 billion in administrative costs from 2010 to 2020.” One of the conundrums of this debate is reform opponents say that 1) health care reforms proposals will cost too much, and 2) a public plan is a very, very bad idea. Turns out, though, that most analysts (including the CBO) are finding one of the major ways to reduce costs is to have a public plan as part of the reform.

And then there was the IBD editorial the other day that claimed that the House reform bill would end all private insurance plans. I honestly don’t know what these guys were thinking. “Ah ha! If we hadn’t caught this, no one would’ve realized that Obama was wiping out an entire sector of the US economy!” I mean really, guys, does it make sense that they would try to make such a dramatic change and think they could sneak it by everyone?? All I know is, if I were an investor, I’d have to re-think my opinion of the publication’s analytical skills.

What seemed to trip them up was the idea of an insurance exchange, a fairly common industry reform idea that Gov. Tim Pawlenty—a Republican, by the way—has promoted for years. Yes, it would change the regulations a bit but it is not designed to do away with private plans!

OK, on a more positive note, I attended an Organizing for America (formerly Obama for America, so you know where they’re coming from) rally for health care reform. About 500 people showed up, stood in line for hamburgers and chicken sandwiches, and watched a few speakers call for passage of health care reform this year.

It just made me think of all the health care events I’ve covered in the past ten years where physicians and CEOs sit around and talk about how terrible the health care situation is in this country and politely exchange views on what should be done, and then they all go home and repeat the process in three or six or nine months. And nothing really changes. The thing that always strikes me about these industry events is how rarely patients are ever at the table. You know, everyday people who are actually affected by all this stuff.

There were lots of them at this event, and they were tired of being told that the health care system can’t be fixed.