Surgery News - August 2008 - (Page 4) 4 S U R G E R Y NEWS • A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 THE VISION Evolutionary Changes in Surgical Practice Obama Plan Would Leave Employer System Intact B Y M A RY E L L E N S C H N E I D E R 20/20 Else vier Global Medical Ne ws Editor’s Note: SURGERY NEWS previously published a synopsis of the health care plan proposed by Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. ith Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) set to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee this month, health care experts are once again scrutinizing his plans to reform the health care system. The centerpiece of his plan is a publicprivate system that would allow people to remain in their employer-sponsored health plans while offering the uninsured the chance to purchase either a private or government-sponsored plan. For the government-sponsored plan, the proposal uses as a model the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program—the system available to federal employees and members of Congress. For individuals and families who want to purchase insurance on the private market, Sen. Obama is proposing to create a National Health Insurance Exchange through which they could enroll in either the new governmentsponsored plan or purchase a private plan. All plans offered through the exchange would have to offer at least the same coverage as the government-sponsored plan and adhere to the same standards for quality and efficiency. Sen. Barack Obama says his plan would save the average family $2,500 a year. more costly to store and process than are electronic ones, according to the Obama campaign. The plan also seeks to control costs through greater regulation of insurance companies and by allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices. The Obama campaign estimates that, if implemented, the reforms they are proposing would save the average family about $2,500 a year in medical expenses. “I want to wake up and know that every single American has health care when they need it, that every senior has prescription drugs they can afford, and that no parents are going to bed at night worrying about how they’ll afford medicine for a sick child,” Sen. Obama said in June during a health care town hall meeting in Bristol, Va. Strive to be the best. Seek accreditation from the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons. Has your facility’s cancer program reached its full potential? When your facility’s cancer program is accredited by the CoC, it demonstrates its commitment to offering cancer patients the highest standard in quality treatment and care. Plus, the Commission on Cancer helps you strengthen your cancer program through its standard-setting, educational, and research initiatives. Even more, CoC accreditation offers a model for managing your facility’s cancer program by: Setting Standards to promote high-quality, multidisciplinary patient care Facilitating ongoing assessment of your program’s activities Providing real-time access to National Cancer Data Base data to evaluate and improve your delivery of care Take the challenge, build a bet ter cancer program for your facilit y and for your patients, and become accredited by the Commission on Cancer. Visit the Commission’s Web site at: www.facs.org/cancerprograms/mh08 Or send an E-mail query to: CoC@facs.org HTTP://MY.BARACKOBAMA.COM W Under the Obama plan, employers that either do not offer or do not contribute to employee health coverage would have to pay a percentage of their payroll toward the cost of the government health plan. Some small employers would be exempt. The Obama proposal also would expand eligibility for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program: the government would offer subsidies to individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still needed financial assistance to purchase health insurance. Sen. Obama also would guarantee that no American could be turned down for health insurance because of illness or a preexisting condition. But his proposal stops short of requiring all Americans to purchase coverage. Instead, the plan mandates coverage for children only. The other half of Sen. Obama’s plan is aimed at reducing premiums and decreasing overall health system costs. Under his plan, the federal government would reimburse employer-sponsored health plans for a portion of the cost of catastrophic health events above a certain threshold. In exchange, the plans would have to use the savings to reduce the cost of premiums. Cost control also is addressed, with electronic health records playing a big role. He proposes to spend $10 billion a year for the next 5 years to encourage widespread adoption of EHRs. The idea is that the investment would reap savings through increased efficiencies since paper records are If elected, he has pledged to implement his health care proposal by the end of his first term as president. But the plan continues to face critics on the left and the right. Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, an organization that favors free-market approaches to health care, said she is concerned that the government-sponsored program would be underpriced and crowd out the private insurance options the same way that Medicare has crowded out private insurance in the over-65 market. “That is not a level playing field,” said Ms. Turner, who also is an adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Sen. Obama’s approach is a “back door” to getting everyone on a government-funded health plan, she said. Ms. Turner also criticized Sen. Obama’s plan to have the federal government take on a portion of the costs of catastrophic health expenses in employer-sponsored health plans. This approach would heavily involve the government in auditing health care expenditures, she said. Sen. Obama’s plan also faced criticism from the left. Dr. Don McCanne, a senior health policy fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program, said the plan “falls far, far, short.” Dr. McCanne said he objects to the plan because it continues to use the private health insurance industry as part of the structure. His organization favors eliminating private plans and creating a single public health care program. The concern with providing a government-sponsored plan in competition with private plans is that it would be subjected to adverse selection and the premiums would become unaffordable, Dr. McCanne said. The only way around that would be to provide additional funding with taxes or to have a method of risk pool transfer, in which the private plans with healthier beneficiaries would shift funds to pay for the higher risk individuals, he said. But Dr. Jack Lewin, CEO of the American College of Cardiology, said that maintaining the private system is politically smart. A drawback of Sen. McCain’s plan is that it has the potential to destabilize the existing employer-based coverage system, he said. While in the long-term it might be a good idea to move away from that system, that should be a gradual process, he said. “Employer coverage isn’t really broken,” Dr. Lewin said. “But we can improve upon it.” ■ http://www.facs.org/cancerprograms/mh08 http://www.facs.org/cancerprograms/mh08
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Surgery News - August 2008 Surgery News - August 2008 Contents The 20/20 Vision: Making Amends News From the College: Dedicated Effort Opinion: NOTESworthy? Pediatric Surgery: Burn Remedy Surgery News - August 2008 Surgery News - August 2008 - Contents (Page 1) Surgery News - August 2008 - Contents (Page 2) Surgery News - August 2008 - Contents (Page 3) Surgery News - August 2008 - Contents (Page 4) Surgery News - August 2008 - Contents (Page 5) Surgery News - August 2008 - The 20/20 Vision: Making Amends (Page 6) Surgery News - August 2008 - The 20/20 Vision: Making Amends (Page 7) Surgery News - August 2008 - News From the College: Dedicated Effort (Page 8) Surgery News - August 2008 - News From the College: Dedicated Effort (Page 9) Surgery News - August 2008 - News From the College: Dedicated Effort (Page 10) Surgery News - August 2008 - News From the College: Dedicated Effort (Page 11) Surgery News - August 2008 - Opinion: NOTESworthy? (Page 12) Surgery News - August 2008 - Pediatric Surgery: Burn Remedy (Page 13) Surgery News - August 2008 - Pediatric Surgery: Burn Remedy (Page 14) Surgery News - August 2008 - Pediatric Surgery: Burn Remedy (Page 15) Surgery News - August 2008 - Pediatric Surgery: Burn Remedy (Page 16)
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