Tag: Preventive care

What Zeke Missed on an Annual Physical

Mar 18, 2015• 46

By ALI KHAN, MD and LEAH MARCOTTE, MD

In January, Ezekiel Emanuel – one of the country’s foremost health experts – threw a presumptive grenade into the national discourse: the annual physical is worthless. As we watched the initial burst of reactionary fervor following hisNew York Times opinion piece, we weren’t quite sure what to think.

Then we realized why: in our training and burgeoning careers in primary care, neither of us has ever scheduled an “annual physical” for a patient. To us, the notion of such a visit – for scheduled, non-urgent care, and one not specifically for chronic disease management – is already dated. Given current trends in American health care delivery and professional training, we argue it is one that may well soon be obsolete.

But does that obsolescence change the value of that time – whether 15 minutes or 60 – with a patient, on a regular interval? Our perspective from medicine’s emerging front line offers a resounding no.

The most obvious argument for regular primary care visits is preventive care. Dr. Emanuel bases much of his argument on the validity (or lack thereof) of annual physicals. Drawing off that same evidence base, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force sets recommendations for evidence-based screening in various populations. Even the young and healthy benefit from cervical cancer screening, initiated at 21 years of age and continued every three years provided negative results until the age of 30 (when the recommendations change slightly). Patients with higher risk earn further screenings, based on whether they smoke, their weight, their age and their family history.

Five Things Obamacare Got Right-and What Experts Would Fix

Mar 20, 2013• 83

By Dan Diamond

It was one of the most notorious quotes that emerged from the battle over the Affordable Care Act.

We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it. – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 9, 2010.

The line was taken out-of-context, as Pelosi’s office has continued to protest. But more than three years after her quote — and nearly three years after the ACA passed Congress — Pelosi’s accidental gaffe seems pretty apropos.

The law continues to delight supporters with what they see as positive surprises; for example, some backers say Obamacare deserves credit for the unexpected slowdown in national health spending. But critics warn that the law’s perverse effects on premiums are just beginning to be felt.

And there still are “vast parts of the bill you never hear about,” notes Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington & Lee. “I wonder if they’re [even] being implemented.”

Jost and a half-dozen other health policy experts spoke with me, ahead of Obamacare’s third birthday on Saturday, to discuss how the law’s been implemented and what lawmakers could have done better.

Could Wasteful Healthcare Spending Be Good for the Economy?

Jan 31, 2013• 25

By John Goodman

Suppose I throw a rock through a store owner’s window. You admonish me for this act of vandalism. But I reply that I have actually done a good deed.

The store owner will now have to employ someone to haul the broken glass away and someone else, perhaps, to clean up afterward. Then, the order of a new glass pane will create work and wages for the glassmaker. Plus, someone will have to install it. In short, my act of vandalism created jobs and income for others.

The French economist, Frédéric Bastiat called this type of reasoning the “fallacy of the broken window.” All the resources employed to remove the broken glass and install a new pane, he said, could have been employed to produce something else. Now they will not be. So society is not better off from my act of vandalism. It is worse off — by one pane of glass.

But there is a new type of Keynesian (to be distinguished from Keynes himself) that rejects the economist’s answer. Wasteful spending can actually be good, they argue. If so, they will love what happens in health care.

By some estimates one of every three dollars spent on health care is unnecessary and therefore wasteful. ObamaCare’s “wellness exams” for Medicare enrollees — so touted during the last election — is an example. Millions of taxpayer dollars will be spent on this service, yet there is no known medical benefit. Similarly, ObamaCare is encouraging all manner of preventive care — by requiring no deductibles or copayments — which is not cost effective.

Did the Election Save ObamaCare?

Nov 12, 2012• 34

By John Goodman

The morning after Tuesday’s vote, there is one thing every commentator agreed on. The election of Barack Obama guaranteed that his signature piece of legislation — health reform — can now go forward. Republicans are powerless to stop it.

Yet there is something all these commentators are overlooking. There are six major flaws in ObamaCare. They are so serious that the Democrats are going to have to perform major surgery on the legislation in the next few years, even if all the Republicans do is stand by and twiddle their thumbs.

Here is a brief overview.

ObamaCare is not paid for. At least it’s not paid for in any politically realistic way. As is by now well known, the legislation will lower Medicare spending over the next 10 years by $716 billion in order to fund health insurance for young people. This reduction will primarily consist of lower payments to physicians, hospitals and other providers — reductions that are so severe that they will seriously impair access to care for senior citizens.

The Wrong Way to Save Money on Health Care

Sep 14, 2012• 40

By Robert Reich

Employer outlays for workers’ health insurance slowed from a 9 percent jump last year to less than half that — 4 percent — this year, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Foundation. Good news?

Our political class believes it is. The Obama administration attributes the drop to the new Affordable Care Act, which, among other things, gives states funding to review insurance rate increases.

Republicans agree it’s good news but blame Obamacare for the fact that employer health-care costs continue to rise faster than inflation. “The new mandates contained in the health care law are significantly increasing the cost of insurance” says Wyoming senator Mike Enzi, top Republican on the Senate health committee.

But both sides ignore one big reason for the drop: Employers are shifting healthcare costs to their workers. (The survey shows workers contributing an average of $4,316 toward the cost of family health plans this year, up from $4,129 last year. Many are receiving little or no employer-provided coverage at all.)

Score another win for American corporations — whose profits continue to be robust despite the anemic recovery — and another loss for American workers.

Those profits aren’t due to a surge in sales. Exports are down (Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese are all pulling in their belts) and American consumers don’t have the dough to buy more.

If You Feel OK, Maybe You Are OK

Mar 2, 2012• 6

By H. Gilbert Welch

Early diagnosis has become one of the most fundamental precepts of modern medicine. It goes something like this: The best way to keep people healthy is to find out if they have (pick one) heart disease, autism, glaucoma, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or, of course, cancer — early. And the way to find these conditions early is through screening.

It is a precept that resonates with the intuition of the general public: obviously it’s better to catch and deal with problems as soon as possible. A study published with much fanfare in The New England Journal of Medicine last week contained what researchers called the best evidence yet that colonoscopies reduce deaths from colon cancer.

Recently, however, there have been rumblings within the medical profession that suggest that the enthusiasm for early diagnosis may be waning. Most prominent are recommendations against prostate cancer screening for healthy men and for reducing the frequency of breast and cervical cancer screening. Some experts even cautioned against the recent colonoscopy results, pointing out that the study participants were probably much healthier than the general population, which would make them less likely to die of colon cancer. In addition there is a concern about too much detection and treatment of early diabetes, a growing appreciation that autism has been too broadly defined and skepticism toward new guidelines for universal cholesterol screening of children.

The basic strategy behind early diagnosis is to encourage the well to get examined — to determine if they are not, in fact, sick. But is looking hard for things to be wrong a good way to promote health? The truth is, the fastest way to get heart disease, autism, glaucoma, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or cancer … is to be screened for it. In other words, the problem is overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Does Medicare Have it Right in 2011?

Jan 3, 2011• 3

By ED PULLEN, MD

Starting in 2011 with the regulations required by the PPACA Medicare will mandate copay and deductible free preventative services for our older Americans. This is great news for primary care physicians. I’m a family physician, and have struggled for years with the fact that just about every private insurance plan covers an annual physical exam, but Medicare did not. What this anti-intuitive dichotomy accomplished was bringing in my relatively healthy 30-something patients for a physical exam each year, while for my 70 year old for whom far more preventative services were recommended by the United States Preventative Services Task Force was not covered for a preventative exam ever. Not annually, not every 3 years, just once at age 65 to last their lifetime.

As primary care physicians we tried to our best to squeeze preventative care into visits primarily for other complaints. At a visit of my diabetes patients every 3 months I’d try to focus on the diabetes and save enough time to review immunization status, assure breast and colon cancer screening was up to date, help med decide if they wanted prostate cancer screening, …. I’m looking forward to being able to ask my seniors to schedule a preventative care visit annually now and being able to focus on these issues without having to eke out time in a problem oriented visit.

Still I have to say if the goal is to provide incentive to older Americans to go to their physicians for services that will really make a difference in the health of the Medicare population problems I think congress has it wrong. If we want to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations and expensive complications from neglected medical problems, and have the biggest impact to reduce the burden of expensive medical complications and I believe the most efficacious preventative services we can offer in health care are secondary prevention and disease management. I’d love to think that by primary prevention, education, and physical exams I can help patients improve their health and subsequently reduce costs and get better outcomes. The problem is that there is little evidence that this is the case. This new regulation, offering a free once annual preventative care visit may find some early cancers, improve immunization rates and make us feel like we are being proactive.