Victor R. Fuchs of Stanford University concludes, however, that the dismal economy might be playing a much larger role. In a recent report published in The New England Journal of Medicine, he points to a tight relationship between health spending and economic growth: over most of the last six decades, health spending per person has grown roughly 2.4 percentage points faster than the economy. (Eduardo Porter)
In the past 30 years, the percentage of American adults who are obese has doubled, driving a sharp rise in such chronic conditions as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.
The ramifications for health spending are significant. Annual health costs for obese individuals are more than $2,700 higher than for non-obese people. That adds up to about $190 billion every year. And many of these costs are borne by Medicare, which will spend a half-trillion dollars over the next decade on preventable hospital readmissions alone.
Ken Thorpe and Tommy Thompson in USA Today.
Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt relate the problem:
Over the past decade, the number of reimbursed eyelid-lift procedures has tripled. The cost to taxpayers has quadrupled, to $80 million from $20 million.
Medicare traditionally avoids coverage for cosmetic procedures such as Botox or breast augmentation (except after medically necessary breast removal). So why cover eyelid lifts? It’s possible that more of the elderly are suffering real vision problems in need of corrective surgery.
But is it likely that a disproportionate number of these patients live in one state? More than half of the 20 highest-billing physicians were in Florida, where one doctor submitted for 2,200 eyelid lifts in 2008 alone.
Their solution: better Medicare oversight.
My solution: Get Medicare completely out of the business of eyelid lifts. Let patients pay for all such procedures from their Health Savings Accounts.
When you think about a typical mother on Medicaid, what image comes to mind?
The first post comes from Bill Garner at The Incidental Economist, commenting on an NBER working paper, finding that an increase of $1000 in Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) income is associated with a 6.7 to 10.8 percent reduction in the low birth weight rate:
Low birth weight is likely a proxy for prematurity, which is much harder to measure. Premature infants are at risk for pulmonary, vision, and neurological problems. These problems can persist through childhood and adulthood. Premature infants can require expensive hospitalizations in neonatal intensive care units…The bottom line is that redistributing income to poor families improves the health of their infants. It is, in effect, a form of prenatal care.
The second post appeared as a comment by Mark Kellen on our cosmetic surgery health alert:
As an anesthesiologist, I have conducted anesthetics for hundreds of purely cosmetic procedures. With apologies to Dr. McCanne for my lack of hard research to document my observations, about 10% of our procedures (costing $6000-$10000) were women who were on Medicaid, but somehow could come up with a large cash payment.
The world is complex.
And how it controls costs:
In an office decorated with Chinese art and diagrams of body parts, Dr. George Ma cares for more than 4,000 patients. Nearly three-quarters are covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s public insurance program for low-income Californians, and Ma said he receives $10 a month to treat most of them. This summer, when California makes a controversial 10% cut to Medi-Cal rates, he could get paid less…
State officials argue the 10% decrease is necessary to keep healthcare spending under control, but medical providers fear it will devastate an already shrinking workforce and jeopardize patient care. (LA Times)
Is a college degree worth what it costs?
How much would we save if every doctor worked for free?
For ex-Yazuka members: prosthetics to replace severed fingers. HT: Tyler Cowen
Henderson on Keynes. Unusual and interesting.
Rick Ungar (Forbes) attacks Avik Roy (Forbes) over his use of eHealth data. EHealth responds to Ungar.
Roy weighs in with round two.
