White House Grills Anthem on Rate Hike
Published February 09, 2010 @ 11:41AM PT
Yesterday we noted that Anthem Blue Cross of California, the state's largest insurance firm, has announced that individual policyholders will see their premiums jump by as much as 39 percent starting March 1. This comes after the company raised some people's rates last year by up to 68 percent.
The California Department of Insurance pledged to investigate the "alarming" rate hike that affects almost a million people. State law does require insurance companies to spend at least 70 percent of their premiums on benefits. Unfortunately, if Anthem Blue Cross of California acts within those bounds, it's not accountable to anyone for anything else, unlike companies that insure cars and homes. Sign the petition to end monopoly protections for health insurers.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is peeved too. She fired off an angry letter to the company demanding to know why rates are increasing when more and more Americans are having trouble holding onto their coverage. She pointed out that Anthem Blue Cross's parent company, Wellpoint Inc., made record profits in the last quarter of 2009. It made $2.7 billion in that period alone on sales of $19 billion, up 26 percent from the same period in 2008. "You should make public information on the percent of your individual market premiums that is used for medical care versus the percent that is used for administrative costs," Sebelius wrote to company president Leslie Margolin. "Policyholders in the individual market deserve to know if their premium increases would be invested in better medical care or insurance company overhead costs like salaries, profits and advertising."
Anthem, for its part, took the opportunity to criticize current health care reform efforts in a statement: "We regret the impact this [rate increase] has on our members. It highlights why we need sustainable healthcare reform to manage the steadily rising costs of hospitals, drugs and doctors. As such, it is important to go back to the beginning and get healthcare reform done right." Ballsy.
Photo credit: Muffet
Pfizer to Distribute Discount Card in Emerging Markets
Published February 08, 2010 @ 03:18PM PT
Pfizer, the pharmaceutical powerhouse behind drugs like Lipitor and Viagra, plans to launch a new service in Russia this month that provides customers with a discount card like many people use at the grocery store that will allow the company to collect information on patient behavior.
The company hopes that its eCard program will reach half a million Russian patients over the next year and has plans to roll out a similar program in the "emerging markets" of Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela. On the surface, this program seems largely positive. It will allow patients in underserved countries, where a higher proportion of people pay for drugs out of pocket, to buy medication they would have previously gone without.
Pfizer's goal is to increase the number of prescriptions written for its drugs in markets where they aren't established. It amounts to less money per patient, but a whole lot more patients. While any new opportunities for needy patients to fill their prescriptions should be applauded, it's suspicious that Pfizer is also using the cards to collect patient information. For example, the company tracks the time between when a prescription is filled and when it can be refilled. If a patient fails to order a refill promptly, their friendly neighborhood Big Pharma company will send along a reminder -- "Hello, this is Pfizer, we care about you, so please go spend money on our product." Yes, these cards have been used widely by American supermarkets to establish loyalty among shoppers (and to compile data on purchasing behavior), but has your grocery ever called because it knew you were running low on milk?
It's Not Tort Reform, Stupid
Published February 08, 2010 @ 08:31AM PT
How long do the Republicans plan to whine about how they weren't included in the current health care reform process? Democrats bent over backwards last year to appease the Republicans and still they didn't play ball. A recent editorial in McClatchy News nicely sums up how far House and Senate Democrats watered down the health reform bills to woo Republican support.
Republicans made it clear that they didn't want any type of government-sponsored plan. The Democrats obliged, jettisoning the public option in the Senate bill, despite the fact that most favored a public plan of some sort. The Republicans balked at lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 55. So the Democrats nixed the idea. Republicans insisted that health reform not add a penny extra to the deficit. Well, even without a public option, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the Senate bill could actually reduce the deficit by $132 billion over a 10-year period. And still the Republicans continue to call for health reform to be scrapped. Do they really believe their own propaganda, that the reform bills amount to a Bolshevik plot to undermine the capitalist foundation of American-style health care?
Hardly. Aetna, WellPoint and the other usual suspects in the health insurance industry will continue to do business. But not quite business as usual if Democrats manage to pass the comprehensive reforms promised by the Senate bill. Provided the Democrats don't capitulate further, the Senate bill will, if enacted, end insurance companies' practice of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and placing lifetime limits on the dollar-value of coverage for individual and group plans. The Senate bill will establish a review process and provide grants to help states halt unjustified premium increases. This would've come in handy when Anthem Blue Cross of California recently announced to its individual policy holders that it will be jacking up their premiums by as much as 39 percent come March 1st. This announcement comes on the heels of a hike last year that saw premium increases as high as 68 percent for individual policies. The state of California has no legal power to control health insurance rate increases. The California government can't regulate how health insurers determine their rates, which means they can raise rates by whatever amount they want whenever they please.
FDA Might Revise Unrealistic Serving Sizes
Published February 06, 2010 @ 03:47PM PT
In whose world does one muffin equal two serving sizes? Apparently in the world of processed food manufacturers and the FDA. But in an effort to get dangerously heavy Americans to think twice before overeating, the Food and Drug Administration is rethinking letting food companies get away with those preposterously unrealistic serving sizes listed on the sides of packages above the rest of the calories and other nutritional info.
The New York Times reports that in advance of a push to have companies put the nutritional info right on the front of their packaging, the FDA has realized that the info should be accurate in order to make an impact on consumers. For example, one ounce of potato chips is about 150 calories. If the front of a bag of chips said "Only 150 calories per serving!", many people would happily start munching. If the average person will actually eat three ounces of chips, though, it would be more appropriate to print on the front of the chip bag that each serving is 450 calories. (Or, alternately, to put food in smaller containers.) If people could see quickly that those chips would cost them almost a quarter of their recommended daily calories, they might decide to nibble on something else.
Likewise, a serving size of Frosted Flakes cereal is 3/4 of a cup, when experts predict that most people probably eat about two cups of cereal in a bowl. A serving of ice cream is half a cup, way less than I eat in a sitting and less than most ice cream parlors dish up as an individual serving. These laughable serving sizes were initially set based on self-reported surveys from the 1970s and 1980s; the problem with those is that people routinely underestimate how much they eat, and Americans are eating more these days than 30 years ago anyway. Which might be fine, if we weren't eating monosodium glutamate.
Photo credit: joelogon
Feuding Restaurants Want to Give You a Heart Attack
Published February 05, 2010 @ 04:06PM PT
C
an you imagine buying a model of car called the "Shattered Vertebre"? How about pain relievers called "Liver Damagers"? Weird, right? Are you any more likely to eat at a burger joint called the Heart Attack Grill? Or its supposed ripoff Heart Stoppers?
The Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona, which has been open for years and is often featured on TV, is suing Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Delray Beach, Florida, which opened in December. Apparently this country, where two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, just isn't big enough for two restaurants that joke about killing their customers while slowly killing their customers.
The owners of Heart Stoppers did inquire about a Heart Attack franchise before opening their own place, and the similarities are striking -- waitresses at both are dressed as sexy nurses and both offer free food to patrons over 350 pounds. (Is the humiliating public weigh-in worth saving $8?)
I wouldn't be surprised if the lawsuit was cooked up (ha!) in tandem in order to get publicity. The restaurants themselves are a lot more interesting than a cease and desist letter. The Heart Attack Grill's website declares "Taste Worth Dying For!" Menu offerings include "bypass burgers" -- the quadruple bypass burger has four beef patties. Burgers, of course, come with "flatliner fries." At Heart Stoppers, which is run by a former paramedic and is the more medical of the two, eaters can order chili chest pain fries at tables that look like wheelchairs. Salt and pepper comes out of prescription bottles. The menu declares, "Consumption of our food will definitely lead to obesity."
What do you think: refreshingly brazen or stupidly irresponsible?
Photo credit: HeartAttackGrill.com
Government Health Spending to Surpass Private Health Spending in 2012
Published February 05, 2010 @ 10:36AM PT
The "government takeover" that opponents of health care reform are so scared of is coming, whether the health care bill passes or not. According to a new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, by the year 2012, the government will outspend the private sector on health care.
Government actuaries began keeping track of spending trends in 1960. Since then, the federal share of the total cost of health care has been inching up steadily, as you can see in this interactive graph from Kaiser Health News. In 1960, the private sector accounted for a whopping 76 percent of all health care expenditures; by 1970 that number had fallen to 62 percent; by 1980 private health spending was at 58 percent; interestingly, 1990 saw it at 60 percent before it fell again in 2000 to 56 percent. In 2010, private and public health spending are tied at 50 percent of the total. Government spending will surpass private spending in 2012, the report says, and by 2019, will account for 52 percent of all health care spending in the United States.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project major spending increases from 2009 to 2019 due to lasting effects of the recession such as an increased number of uninsured and because of baby boomers aging into Medicare. Last year saw the largest single year increase in the portion of the GDP made up of health spending -- up 1.1 percent to 17.3 percent total. If this trend were happening in a more transparent industry, like grocery shopping, don't you think Americans would be pelting the White House with eggs and rotten tomatoes?
Photo credit: Photos8.com
Support Anti-Trust Regulations for the Insurance Industry
Published February 04, 2010 @ 02:43PM PT
Representatives Tom Perriello (D-Va.) and Betsy Markey (D-Colo.) will bring a bill to the House floor next week that would strip insurance companies of the anti-trust exemption they use to consolidate business and drive up prices. This stand-alone bill addresses an aspect of the stalled health care bill with bipartisan support. Case in point: Perriello voted for the health care bill last November while Markey voted against it.
Since 1945, the health insurance industry has been exempt from U.S. anti-trust laws designed to fight the unfair power of monopolies to control markets. The only other exemption is for Major League Baseball. Under this protection, the health insurance monopolies have been legally allowed to do what other industries can't: fix prices, collude behind closed doors and set their own markets without any fear of regulation. This bill will demand open and honest competition and a fair shake for consumers.
Perriello and Markey, both freshmen with tough reelection battles looming, wrote in a joint press release announcing the bill, "In the last 14 years, there have been 400 mergers among health care insurers so that 95 percent of health insurance markets are 'highly concentrated,' which means consumers have little or no choice between insurers. This non-competitive market has played a role in health insurance premiums having more than doubled in the past decade."
The Perriello-Markey bill aims to stop skyrocketing prices. You can help by signing the petition in support of trust-busting the insurance industry.
Photo credit: matthew_hull
