Myths as barriers to health care reform in the United States.

The U.S. health care system is deteriorating in terms of decreasing access, increased costs, unacceptable quality, and poor system performance compared with health care systems in many other industrialized Western countries. Reform efforts to establish universal insurance coverage have been defeated on five occasions over the last century, largely through successful opposition by pro-market stakeholders in the status quo. Reform attempts have repeatedly been thwarted by myths perpetuated by stakeholders without regard for the public interest. Six myths are identified here and defused by evidence: (1) "Everyone gets care anyhow;" (2) "We don't ration care in the United States"; (3) "The free market can resolve our problems in health care"; (4) "The U.S. health care system is basically healthy, so incremental change will address its problems;" (5) "The United States has the best health care system in the world"; and (6) "National health insurance is so unfeasible for political reasons that it should not be given serious consideration as a policy alternative." Incremental changes of the existing health care system have failed to resolve its underlying problems. Pressure is building again for system reform, which may become more feasible if a national debate can be focused on the public interest without distortion by myths and disinformation fueled by defending stakeholders.     

Managed care in Latin America: transnationalization of the health sector in the context of reform

This article presents the results of the comparative research project "Managed Care in Latin America: Its Role in Health Reform". The project was conducted by teams in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and the United States. The study's objective was to analyze the process by which managed care is exported, especially from the United States, and how managed care is adopted in Latin American countries. Our research methods included qualitative and quantitative techniques. Adoption of managed care reflects transnationalization of the health sector. Our findings demonstrate the entrance of large multinational financial capital into the private insurance and health services sectors and their intention of participating in the administration of government institutions and medical/social security funds. We conclude that this basic change involving the slow adoption of managed care is facilitated by ideological changes with discourses accepting the inexorable nature of public sector reform.     

The pleasures and perils of prophetic advocacy: Henry E. Sigerist and the politics of medical reform.

Henry E. Sigerist, an internationally renowned medical historian, played a surprisingly important and visible role in American medical politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Paris of Swiss parents, he was professor in Leipzig, Germany, before coming to the United States in 1932 as professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Once in America. Sigerist became deeply involved in medical politics and the campaign for national health insurance. He argued that individualized medical practice was outdated and should gradually be superseded by state-run and state-financed health services. National health insurance was but one step in this historical progression. Sigerist thus lent the weight of history itself to the cause of medical care reform. The charming and erudite Sigerist was welcomed by the leaders of academic medicine in America. Soon, he emerged as a spokesman of the left wing of the medical profession, an effective and popular speaker and an impassioned advocate of socialized medicine. This paper traces Sigerist's political ideas and activities, and his contributions toward medical care reform in the United States.     

Policy challenges in US health care system reform

Once again, efforts are being made to overhaul the US health care system. Democrats and Republicans have conflicting views on how to repair this ailing system. However, this is not a new phenomenon. Reformers have long struggled to form a universal health care system only to find themselves in conflict with groups whose financial stake is threatened as well as numerous labor associations who are concerned about a loss of power. This struggle is also caused by differences in ideologies. This article surveys social movements for national health insurance (NHI) that occurred in the United States and will examine features that prevented NHI policy formation.     

Myths and memes about single-payer health insurance in the United States: a rebuttal to conservative claims.

Recent years have seen the rapid growth of private think tanks within the neoconservative movement that conduct "policy research" biased to their own agenda. This article provides an evidence-based rebuttal to a 2002 report by one such think tank, the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), which was intended to discredit 20 alleged myths about single-payer national health insurance as a policy option for the United States. Eleven "myths" are rebutted under eight categories: access, cost containment, quality, efficiency, single-payer as solution, control of drug prices, ability to compete abroad (the "business case"), and public support for a single-payer system. Six memes (self-replicating ideas that are promulgated without regard to their merits) are identified in the NCPA report. Myths and memes should have no place in the national debate now underway over the future of a failing health care system, and need to be recognized as such and countered by experience and unbiased evidence.     

Congress and the emergence of public health policy

Significant changes are occurring in the health care system in the United States, but the direction of change is unclear. This article examines public health policy and argues that Congress may revive national health insurance plans to ensure equal access to care, while achieving more control over government expenditures.     

Insurance coverage and access: implications for health policy.

Data are presented from a recent survey of the United States population comparing the characteristics and levels of access to medical care of persons under 65 years who have group or individual private health insurance, public health insurance, or no third-party coverage. The uninsured group appeared to fall between the privately insured and publicly insured groups on measures of social and economic status. Persons with publicly subsidized forms of insurance coverage utilized services at the highest rates, and uninsured persons used them at the lowest rates. Neither of these groups was as satisfied with the convenience or the quality of the care it obtained as the privately insured group. Implications of these findings for national health insurance and other health policy initiatives are discussed.     

Managed care in Latin America: the new common sense in health policy reform

This article presents the results of the comparative research project, "Managed Care in Latin America: Its Role in Health System Reform." Conducted by teams in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and the United States, the study focused on the exportation of managed care, especially from the United States, and its adoption in Latin American countries. Our research methods included qualitative and quantitative techniques. The adoption of managed care reflects the process of transnationalization in the health sector. Our findings demonstrate the entrance of the main multinational corporations of finance capital into the private sector of insurance and health services, and these corporations' intention to assume administrative responsibilities for state institutions and to secure access to medical social security funds. International lending agencies, especially the World Bank, support the corporatization and privatization of health care services, as a condition of further loans to Latin American countries. We conclude that this process of change, which involves the gradual adoption of managed care as an officially favored policy, reflects ideologically based discourses that accept the inexorable nature of managed care reforms.     

The development of the U.S. Health Care System and the contemporary role of the public health department

The absence of national health care reform and the growing number of uninsured individuals in the United States have prompted states to develop plans to provide medical care for the low income and the indigent. Many local health departments are not only responsible for the core public health functions; but they are increasingly called upon to provide person health care services for those who cannot afford it. This article chronicles the development of the health care system in the United States and describes the contemporary role of the local public health department.     

我国医保支付方式改革的有效性边界研究

从理论角度阐述我国医保支付方式改革对医疗服务结果影响的作用机制,并分析医保支付方式在医改中的功能定位及该项改革工作在实现预期效果方面的有效前提。结果表明,支付方式改革可视作公立医院改革的重要抓手,但不是改革的核心。我国医保支付方式改革要实现预期目标,需要同时满足内外部多个传导前提:(1)区域内公共医疗保障程度需达到一定水平;(2)医疗服务供方的筹资体系相对处于封闭状态;(3)需要辅以取消药品加成政策;(4)需要与医院分配制度改革相衔接。按病种支付可以缓解当前医疗费用过快增长的压力,但无法从根本上避免公立医院的逐利倾向。同时改革过程中警惕异地就医可能带来的跨域性医保财政逆向转移的陷阱。     

The German health care system: a model for hospital reform in the United States?

Experience in Germany illustrates that the United States could potentially achieve universal access, comprehensive and high-quality services, and value for the money expended with what is often referred to as a "quasi-private and quasi-public" health care system. The German hospital system is analyzed from a number of perspectives, and it is concluded that this approach has some advantages over a single-payer, monolithic-type national health insurance model. This is primarily because of its pluralistic prepayment system and because the commencement of reimbursement negotiations are without direct governmental intervention. The adoption of the German design in the United States, it is concluded, would result in a sharp change in policy direction from a conceptually procompetitive, market-driven hospital environment to a highly federally regulated, state-administered one. The implementation of the German approach in this country would also require a shift from managed care plans and other third party payers having to micromanage the use of health care services for individual patients to tightly centralized national and state fiscal controls (e.g., institutional global capital and operating budgets) targeted at providers.     

美国医疗改革及对我国的启示

医疗费用持续高涨、卫生可及性和卫生公平性等问题一直困扰着美国政府,2009年的金融危机更是使美国的医疗体制雪上加霜,这也进一步坚定了奥巴马政府实施医疗改革的决心。美国医疗改革的主要措施为:扩大医疗保险的覆盖面,制订有利于弱势群体的医疗保险政策;扩大筹资范围,缩减不必要的医疗费用开支;提高医疗服务质量等。然而,在经济环境的恶化以及来自利益集团的多重压力下,美国的医疗改革不可能解决医疗体制中存在的根本性问题。美国的经验告诉我们,一个国家的经济发展水平不是卫生公平的必要条件,构建一个医疗资源分配合理、医疗保险制度完善、医疗服务质量与效率高、医疗费用合理的公共医疗服务体系才是公民平等享有健康权利的关键。     

对我国卫生体制改革的思考与建议

医疗保障体制不健全,服务效率低、费用高和质量差是卫生体制问题的主要表现;我国公共卫生的问题是疾病预防控制功能的弱化。为此,应给所有医疗机构相同的政策和法律环境,人为地划分为营利性和非营利性、实行不同的法律和政策是不合适的;"以大病为主"的医疗保障原则是对的,但参保对象应该扩大至以家庭为单位;在卫生领域,政府的职责是搞好保险和管好服务提供。在未来的改革中,建议:公私立机构都可以提供基本医疗服务,要一视同仁;对公立医疗机构,不应过分强调参照行政机构的方式管理,强调政府的责任不等于政府包办一切;要发挥地方政府政策研究的主动性问题;要按照社会公平原则,建立覆盖城乡全民的医疗保障体系。     

The Oregon Health Plan and public health

The Oregon Health Plan would provide all Oregonians with health insurance through a combination of Medicaid expansion, employer mandates and high-risk coverage, with services delivered largely through managed care. The role of public health in a managed care environment is an important national issue, and one which has received much attention in Oregon. "Cultural" differences between Medicaid and public health have arisen over issues such as whether eligibility assures access, whether the private medical model will provide integrated care, the potential for exploitation of vulnerable populations in a capitated system, and the loss of cost-based Medicaid reimbursement to public clinics. In 1991, legislation required that Oregon's Medicaid managed care plans enter agreements with local health departments to assure their continued participation in providing certain public health services; these agreements are now being implemented. Oregon's experience suggests that any national health system will require a continuum of community and individual health services, with an important role for public health departments.     

荷兰医改及对我国构建整合型健康服务体系的启示

本文介绍了荷兰卫生服务体系概况,重点阐述了荷兰新医改后的全科医生首诊制度、"有管理的竞争模型"健康保险体系、长期照护体系典型政策范例。借鉴荷兰改革经验,提出推进我国卫生服务体系整合实践的策略。建议:以提高全科医生职业吸引力作为改革起点,全科医生队伍建设先行,筑牢改革根基;立法先行、以市场机制作为改革抓手,搭建公共政策规制与市场激励相容的改革框架,形成一套富有管理的、有竞争性、有活力的中国健康保险体系;在积极健康老龄化背景下,以整合理念建设适合我国国情的老年人长期照护体系;承接我国移动互联领域的资源基础,依托智慧治理破解医改难题。     

Parity for mental health and substance abuse care under managed care

BACKGROUND: Parity in insurance coverage for mental health and substance abuse has been a key goal of mental health and substance abuse care advocates in the United States during most of the past 20 years. The push for parity began during the era of indemnity insurance and fee for service payment when benefit design was the main rationing device in health care. The central economic argument for enacting legislation aimed at regulating the insurance benefit was to address market failure stemming from adverse selection. The case against parity was based on inefficiency related to moral hazard. Empirical analyses provided evidence that ambulatory mental health services were considerably more responsive to the terms of insurance than were ambulatory medical services. AIMS: Our goal in this research is to reexamine the economics of parity in the light of recent changes in the delivery of health care in the United States. Specifically managed care has fundamentally altered the way in which health services are rationed. Benefit design is now only one mechanism among many that are used to allocate health care resources and control costs. We examine the implication of these changes for policies aimed at achieving parity in insurance coverage. METHOD: We develop a theoretical approach to characterizing rationing under managed care. We then analyze the traditional efficiency concerns in insurance, adverse selection and moral hazard in the context of policy aimed at regulating health and mental health benefits under private insurance. RESULTS: We show that since managed care controls costs and utilization in new ways parity in benefit design no longer implies equal access to and quality of mental health and substance abuse care. Because costs are controlled by management under managed care and not primarily by out of pocket prices paid by consumers, demand response recedes as an efficiency argument against parity. At the same time parity in benefit design may accomplish less with respect to providing a remedy to problems related to adverse selection.     

Will health reform provide for the needs of vulnerable populations?

States are increasingly turning to managed care as a means of coping with exploding Medicaid costs (see Emily Friedman's article in the March 16 JAMA, pp. 875-78). Many managed care proposals depend on employer-based insurance as the primary source of financing health care reform. Debates continue, however, over the ability of both to provide adequate care for the diverse sets of populations in the United States.     

Physician payment reform in the United States

With the recent strengthening of the physician expenditure cost control mechanisms of the “Gesundheitsstrukturgesetz” of 1993, Germany has again affirmed its belief in the need for and success of global budgeting for physician payments. In 1992 Medicare, the U. S. government-run health insurance program for the elderly, first implemented the new Medicare Fee Schedule based on a point value system, known as the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS), which is very similar to the German “Einheitlichen Bewertungsmaßstab” (EBM) and uses a similar system for budgeting physician payments. Although this policy has only been in place in the United States for two years, many policy makers are considering expanding the payment mechanism to all payers, private and public, in an effort to control costs. In order to inform German health policy makers of this trend in the United States, both the historical and analytical framework of physician payment reform in the United States are described, as well as some insight into its future direction is provided. The first section is on the pressures during thel980’s that led to the new Medicare Fee Schedule and the implementation of the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale on which it is based. Second the analytical methodology and budget considerations are dealt with that were used to implement the Medicare Fee Schedule. Third, the potential affects of the resulting reform on costs, quality, access and individual physician payment are analyzed. Lastly, the role of physician payment in the debate on U. S. health care reform is examined, as well as, the Medicare Fee Schedule’s applicability to other payers     

"Health for three-thirds of the nation": public health advocacy of universal access to medical care in the United States

The public health community has made important, original contributions to the debate over universal access to health services in the United States. Well before the decision of the American Public Health Association in 1944 to endorse a health plan encompassing virtually the entire populace, prominent public health practitioners and scholars embraced universality as an essential principle of health policy. Influenced by Arthur Newsholme, C.-E. A. Winslow began to promote this principle in the 1920s. Many others came to justify universal medical care as a corollary of the traditional ideal of all-inclusive public health services. By the 1940s, most leaders in the field saw national health insurance as the best way to attain universal access. For the past 30 years, advocates of universalism have asserted a social right to health services.     

Who Will Have Health Insurance in the Future? An Updated Projection

The passage of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in the United States put the issues of health care reform and health care costs back in the national spotlight. DeVoe and colleagues previously estimated that the cost of a family health insurance premium would equal the median household income by the year 2025. A slowdown in health care spending tied to the recent economic downturn and the passage of the PPACA occurred after this model was published. In this updated model, we estimate that this threshold will be crossed in 2033, and under favorable assumptions the PPACA may extend this date only to 2037. Continuing to make incremental changes in US health policy will likely not bend the cost curve, which has eluded policy makers for the past 50 years. Private health insurance will become increasingly unaffordable to low-to-middle-income Americans unless major changes are made in the US health care system.