Health Care Reform Ideas

Spiritual Ministries Mind Spirit Body Vibrational Medicine Research, Healing and Education Center.
June 04, 2009
Rev. Tonie C. Wallace Dream-Founder and Director
Jada Stone, Associate and Contributing Editor

Dear All One Family:
I know that I have been missing in action...for a brief interlude simply due to my putting together two vibration medicine reports for two attorney firms...both a wanting to bring to a head the cases of my two clients.

Simply because my world flows as I bring it into manifestation...these two news stories came into viewing...so if you missed them...now is your chance to get caught up in the news brief...for things are a changing, simply because the old way isn't any longer a working...

Please be blessed
Love, Light and Peace
Tonie

Enjoy!

Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies: study


By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor – 2 hrs 53 mins ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the researchers wrote.
"Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations."
The researchers, whose work was paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on medical problems rose by 50 percent from 2001 to 2007.
"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said in a statement.
"For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection," he added.
The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare system, which is now a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the population -- 46 million people -- with no coverage.
About 170 million people get health insurance through an employer but President Barack Obama says soaring healthcare costs are hurting the economy and forcing businesses to drop medical insurance for their workers.
CANCELED COVERAGE
"Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year," the report reads.
Obama told Congress on Wednesday he was open to making mandatory health insurance part of the overhaul but only with exemptions for the poor and for small businesses.
Neither Congress nor Obama are considering the kind of single-payer plan advocated by Himmelstein and his colleague Dr. Steffie Woolhandler.
"We need to rethink health reform," Woolhandler said. "Covering the uninsured isn't enough.
"Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy."
The researchers surveyed 2,134 random families who filed for bankruptcy between January and April in 2007, before the current recession began.
They used public bankruptcy court records and survey 1,032 respondents by telephone.
While only 29 percent directly blamed medical bills for their bankruptcy, 62 percent had medical bills that totaled more than 10 percent of family income, said an illness was responsible, had lost income due to illness or some other medical factor.
"Among common diagnoses, nonstroke neurologic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis were associated with the highest out-of-pocket expenditures (mean $34,167), followed by diabetes ($26,971), injuries ($25,096), stroke ($23,380), mental illnesses ($23,178), and heart disease ($21,955)," the researchers wrote.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
By Christina Romer

Op-Ed Contributor: Health care reform is an economic necessity

Washington, DC – Health care reform is more than a social imperative – it is an economic necessity. A new study by the President's Council of Economic Advisers demonstrates that the current American health care system is on an unsustainable path. Without health care reform, American workers and families will continue to experience eroding health care benefits and stagnating wages caused by the pressure of escalating health insurance premiums. And without reform, rising spending on Medicare and Medicaid will lead to massive and unsustainable Federal budget deficits.
Years of diagnosis on the ills of the U.S. health system have produced no cure. Health care expenditures in this country are currently 18 percent of GDP and, without change, will keep rising, until they account for nearly one-third of our total output by 2040. Even with this exorbitant bill, about 46 million Americans lack health insurance coverage today, and this number is predicted to rise to 72 million over the next three decades.
The President has articulated his goal of health care reform that slows the growth rate of health care costs, preserves choice of doctors and plans, and assures quality, affordable health care for all Americans. Over the long term, heeding President Obama's call for change will lead to faster economic growth, higher take-home pay for workers, greater employment opportunities, a more level playing field between small and large businesses, and deficit control.
The administration and health industry leaders have pledged to work toward a goal of reducing health care cost growth by 1.5 percentage points per year. And, the Administration is committed to working toward ensuring that all Americans have access to health insurance coverage. If we can achieve and sustain this ambitious rate of cost containment and expand coverage, the results would be significant. For example:
• Impact on income: For a typical family of four, income would be higher than it otherwise would have been by approximately $2,600 in 2020 (in 2009 dollars) and by nearly $10,000 in 2030.
• Impact on GDP: Real GDP would be 2 percent higher in 2020 than it otherwise would have been, nearly 8 percent higher in 2030, and nearly 16 percent higher in 2040. The key source of this improved growth would be increased efficiency in the health sector and increased investment stimulated by a reduction in the government budget deficit.
• Impact on the budget deficit: CEA estimates that slowing the growth of health care costs by 1.5 percentage points would reduce the budget deficit in 2030 by 3 percent of GDP relative to the no-reform baseline.
• Impact on unemployment: Controlling health care cost growth would allow lower unemployment in the short and medium run, without putting pressure on inflation. Employment could be 500,000 higher for a number of years.
• Improvements in economic well-being from greater coverage: We use the best estimates available to quantify the costs and benefits of expanding coverage. Among the benefits we attempt to put a dollar value on are the increased life expectancy that results from access to health care and the decreased chance of financial ruin from high medical bills. We find that the net benefits – the benefits minus the costs – are on the order of $100 billion each year.
• Labor market improvements: By increasing access to insurance coverage and removing limitations on coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, health care reform is likely to increase the labor supply and make it easier for workers to switch jobs and feel confident of their coverage no matter what happens. It will also improve the competitiveness of small businesses by lessening the disadvantage they face in competing with large firms that have lower insurance costs.
As we know from past failures, the process of achieving comprehensive health care reform will not be easy. Controlling cost growth cannot just be a lofty goal, it must become a hard reality. To do this, we will need reforms that emphasize quality over quantity, patient involvement, and reward prevention and wellness. The evidence suggests that up to 30 percent of health care costs, or about 5 percent of GDP, could be saved without compromising health outcomes in the United States.
The bottom line of the CEA report is that doing health care reform right is incredibly important. If we can put in place reforms that slow cost growth significantly and expand coverage, the benefits to American families, firms, and government budgets would be enormous. To put it simply, good health care reform is good economic policy.
"Christina Romer is chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. Op-Eds by contributors do not reflect the editorial views of the Yahoo! News staff.
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Op-Ed Contributor: Health care reform is an economic necessity