This Week in Healthcare: Week of January 15-21, 2007
Hello and Welcome to This Week in Healthcare…
Today we look at the people, policies, and politicians impacting the healthcare debate, and help you understand it all.
Our stories this week….
An unlikely alliance pushing for heathcare reform, a bipartisan healthcare bill, a court ruling for Wal-Mart, the optimistic financial projections of an insurance giant, and an editorial on reform.
First, in a move that startled health policy experts, three unlikely allies joined forces to create a public relations campaign to push politicians to take action on healthcare reform.
The Service Employess Union International, Business Roundtable, and the AARP, joined together to announce a new campaign entitled Divided We Fail. The campaign aims to put a spotlight on rising healthcare costs, and the growing number of uninsured Americans.
Sara Howard, spokeswoman for the Service Employee Union said this was the first time business, labor, and consumer groups stood together to address healthcare.
Diane Rowland of the Kaiser Foundation, a leading healthcare policy organization said Massachusetts universal healthcare program along with the newly elected democratic majority in congress have given healthcare advocates reason to push for healthcare reform as a priority issue leading into the 2008 presidential elections.
Mark Kitchens, spokesperson for the AARP, said the group intends to hold town hall meetings and make TV appearances in key presidential primary states.
According to recent polls, healthcare is a leading concern among a majority of Americans voters.
In politics this week, a bipartisan group of U.S. congress members drafted legislation intended to assist states find new solutions to their own healthcare problems.
Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio helped draft the measure. The senators were joined by congress members Tammy Baldwin, a democrat from Wisconsin, and Tom Price, Republican from Georgia.
The bill intends to encourage the federal government to do more to assist states find solutions to healthcare problems. The legislation would encouraged states to find new ways to cover the uninsured, improve healthcare quality, and utilize health information technology.
According to Senator Voinovich, the bill provides a platform for the debate on comprehensive healthcare reform in Washington.
In business this week, retail giant Wal-Mart will not have to provide health insurance to its employees working in Maryland. The fourth circuit court of appeals upheld an earlier decision by a federal judge that threw out a Maryland law requiring companies with more than 10,000 employees to pay 8% of their payroll for employee healthcare.
In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court said the Maryland law, passed last year, could not supercede a federal law passed in 1974 that set minimum standards for health and benefits plans offered to employees.
On Wall Street, In a speak given at the 25th annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Wellpoint chief financial officer David Colby said 2007 profits will reach 9%. Wellpoint — which licenses the name Blue Cross, Blue Shield in 14 major insurance markets in the US — is the nation’s largest insurer representing over 34 million people.
Colby is optimistic about initial healthcare reform plans for California and foresees a push to increase the number of uninsured directly benefitting Wellpoint’s bottom line.
According to Colby, the healthcare business is growing faster than either retail or media and entertainment and is a good value for today’s investor.
And finally, an award-winning editorial cartoonist Ted Rall thinks insurance companies should be less concerned about profits, and more concerned about your health.
The unbridled greed of corporatized healthcare is breathtaking, he writes. United HealthGroup, currently listed as #37 on the Fortune 500, earned $3.3 billion in net profits in 2006–up 28 percent from the year before. Wellpoint made a whopping $2.5 billion, a 157 percent increase.
The solution is obvious: nationalize the healthcare system. Doctors and nurses should be federal employees. Hospitals should be healing centers, not for-profit corporations beholden to shareholders. If socialized medicine is too radical, however, there’s always the single-payer system. The key, in that case, is to put the insurance companies–which are squeezing doctors and patients alike–out of business.
That’s it for This Week in Healthcare. Tune in next week for more highlights, when we’ll look at the issues, politics, and people shaping the healthcare debate.
If you have healthcare news you’d like to contribute, please send us an email at this week at scribemedia dot org and we’ll be sure to include it.
I’m John Mikytuck, Thanks for watching, and stay healthy.
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