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A festival where uninsured artists and musicians exchange work for  medical attention is attracting interest from organizers and physicians across  the country looking to replicate the model.  

A group of artists and physicians in the Hudson Valley conceived of the  gathering. About 40 doctors, dentists, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and  others donated 232 hours of service, valued at more than $38,000, to the bands  and artists who played or created sculptures or paintings. "It really is  about...helping artists and musicians who are contributing to society find  health care at affordable rates," says Arthur Chandler, a doctor at Columbia  Memorial Hospital in Hudson, N.Y., and an organizer of O+ (pronounced  O-positive).

 

Chandler and other organizers are incorporating O+ as a nonprofit and want to  put on art-for-health-care festivals in Kingston and other cities next year.  Like-minded artists, musicians, and physicians from Philadelphia, Minneapolis,  Nashville, Berkeley, and Lowell, Mass., have contacted O+ looking to replicate  the model. "It seems like something that should be everywhere and could  definitely be everywhere," says Julia Henderson, a 32-year-old writer and  development coordinator at a San Francisco theater who hopes to bring O+ to  Berkeley. A transplant from Brooklyn, Henderson says she hasn't had insurance  for six years.

A study  in Family Medicine reported the disturbing data that, on average, a patient  was able to speak uninterrupted for only 12 seconds! On the other hand, Dr.  Sanders noted that the average patient will get their story out in two minutes.  Doctors do not listen and it interferes with the quality of care and the ability  to make a diagnosis. Most of the time, if we take the time to listen, you are  telling us what we need to do to help you. Even worse, after the visit was over,  patients and doctors couldn't agree on the purpose of the visit. No one was  listening!

You can't manage your doctor's practice, but here are some things you can do  to manage your time.

• Find out when the doctor starts and get the first appointment of the  morning or afternoon
• Call 30 minutes before your appointment and find out  if the doctor is running on time. If not ask if it is OK if you come later?
•  Always bring work or a book, as the magazines in the office are outdated and at  least you will be productive
• If your doctor is chronically late, find  another doctor.

This week the National Comprehensive Cancer Network — a group of leading  cancer centers — reaffirmed its existing recommendation that the drug be used  for women with advanced breast cancer. The group strongly believes that women  with breast cancer enjoy a better quality of life while on the drug. But if  supporters of ObamaCare have their way, breast cancer patients will be denied  insurance coverage for the drug and will be forced to pay out of pocket for its  benefits.

BigGovernment.com was the first to alert readers to an ominous proposal  working its way through the bowels of the FDA. The proposal would change the  objective standard for drug approval to a subjective standard that could take  the price of the drug into account.

The new “risk-benefit” ratio but begs the question – benefit to whom — the  patient or the government bean counters charged by the president to bend the  cost curve?

Mrs Hogg was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer - an aggressive form  of the disease which affects just four per cent of sufferers - and underwent six  months of chemotherapy and a mastectomy.

Her husband, an IT project manager, considered taking legal action against  the NHS, for what he believes was a 'long summer of misdiagnosis' after a lump,  initially discovered by his wife in around 2007, was dismissed as harmless  breast tissue, then mastitis, and was later treated as a cyst.

In his brilliant exposition of why sweeping policy changes often have unintended consequences, the late sociologist Robert K. Merton wrote that leaders get things wrong when their "paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes the consideration of further or other consequences" of their proposals. This leads policy makers to assert things that are false, wishing them to be true.

Which brings us to President Obama's many claims about his health-care reform. Take his oft-expressed statement that if you like the coverage you have, you can keep it. That sounds good—but perverse incentives in his new law will cause most Americans to lose their existing insurance.

This was brought home to me when I asked the CEO of a major restaurant chain about health reform's effect on his company, which now spends $25 million a year on employee health insurance. That will jump to at least $90 million a year once the new law is phased in. It will be cheaper, he told me, for the company to dump its coverage and pay a fine—$2,000 for each full-time worker—and make sure that no part-time employee accidentally worked 31 hours and thereby incurred the fine.

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Associated Press

This reality is settling in at businesses across America. A Midwestern contractor told me he pays $588,000 for health insurance for 70 employees, contributing up to $8,400 a year for a family's coverage. If he stops providing health insurance, he'll pay $2,000 per employee in fines, and the first 40 employees are exempt from fines altogether.

It's also dawning on employees that they will lose their coverage. Some will blame management; many more will blame those who wrote this terrible legislation.

Either Mr. Obama was stunningly blind to these perverse effects when he promised people could keep their coverage, or he felt that admitting his plan would collapse employer-provided health coverage could keep it from passing. Either way—self-deception or deliberate deceit—health reform is going to turn out far differently than was promised. And because more workers will be dumped into subsidized coverage, taxpayers are likely to pay much more than the $1 trillion-plus price tag claimed by ObamaCare advocates for its first 10 years.

Today, the cost of providing insurance is about $8500 per employee.  And, the employee does not pay any income tax on the value of that insurance.  Should AT&T drop their group coverage, and, should they decide to use the savings to increase salaries, each employee would receive approximately $6400 in increased wages.  However, unlike insurance benefits, increased wages are taxable.  When the Bush tax cuts expire at the beginning of 2011, the lowest income tax bracket will rise from 10% to 15%.  So, of the $6400 pay raise you get, approximately $950 will have to be used to pay federal income taxes.  This will leave you with approximately $5450 in your pocket to buy insurance.  Not only will you not be able to afford the type of coverage AT&T provided without digging further into your own pocket, but, the CBO estimates that by 2016, as a result of Obamacare, the yearly premium for health insurance will rise to approximately $15,000 for a family of four.

Of course, no employer would use the entire “savings” on employee wage increases.  So, the  picture becomes even bleaker.  Once again, this administration is encouraging the wrong behavior.  And, as in the past, it’s middle class America that will have to pay for it.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some major health insurance companies will no longer issue certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said several big insurers in his state will stop issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state are doing likewise.

In Florida, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna, and Golden Rule -- a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare -- notified the insurance commissioner that they will stop issuing individual policies for children, said Jack McDermott, a spokesman for McCarty.

The major types of coverage for children -- employer plans and government programs -- are not be affected by the disruption. But a subset of policies -- those that cover children as individuals -- may run into problems. Even so, insurers are not canceling children's coverage already issued, but refusing to write new policies.

The administration reacted sharply to the pullback. "We're disappointed that a small number of insurance companies are taking this unwarranted and unnecessary step," said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services department.

ike the man said, this is a big f***ing deal.

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

 

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

 

However, if a child is accepted for coverage, or is already covered, the insurer cannot exclude payment for treating a particular illness, as sometimes happens now.

House Republican Leader John Boehner said: “The House of Representatives should not vote blindly on an issue that is so important to every American.  We deserve to have all the facts about how much this bill raise health care costs before we vote.  The decision to press ahead and jam this bill down the throats of the American people is just one more example of arrogance and irresponsibility from Washington Democrats.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said: “Americans deserve to have a full analysis of this bill, but won’t because of the mad dash forced by the Democrat leaders in the House. We now know that even the Obama administration’s chief actuary predicts more government spending, more price increases for consumers and less care for low-income patients. This debate was supposed about lowering costs for Americans not making things worse.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional budget scorekeepers say a Medicare fix that Democrats included in earlier versions of their health care bill would push it into the red.

The Congressional Budget Office said Friday that rolling back a programmed cut in Medicare fees to doctors would cost $208 billion over 10 years. If added back to the health care overhaul bill, it would wipe out all the deficit reduction, leaving the legislation $59 billion in the red.

The so-called doc fix was part of the original House bill. Because of its high cost, Democrats decided to pursue it separately. Republicans say the cost should not be ignored. Congress has usually waived the cuts to doctors year by year.