How the Media Covers Health Care

Sometimes health care reporters remind me of the financial journalists who helped hype the bull market of the 1980s and 1990s. I began my career as a journalist at Money magazine, and I remember sitting in an editorial meeting where we talked about an upcoming cover story: “The Ten Best Mutual Funds NOW.”  One intrepid reporter asked: “What if there aren’t ten great mutual funds that you really should invest in right now?”

“Let the fact-checker worry about that,” someone else quipped, referring to the person who would be double-checking the details of the story just before it went to press. Almost everyone sitting around the table laughed.

And Money was generally a pretty responsible magazine that tried to warn investors against the risks of the market. Still, “good news” cover stories sold magazines—just as “breakthrough” medical stories on the local evening news keep viewers from changing the channel.

Gary Schwitzer, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, recently published a provocative piece about how the media covers health care in the American Editor. Schwitzer begins his piece by asking his reader to “Imagine a reporter filing a story from the Detroit Auto Show. She writes about one car maker’s hot new model as if it is the best thing since the ’57 Corvette. But in the excitement over the chrome and style, she doesn’t mention the cost of the new model, doesn’t compare it with other manufacturers’ offerings in the same class, and doesn’t mention anything about performance (fuel efficiency, handling, braking, safety issues, etc.)

“An editor would certainly raise questions about this kind of puffery.

“But over on the health care beat,” Schwitzer observes, “the majority of stories on new products, procedures, treatments and tests are published without including comparable information. Claims that would never be accepted unchallenged from a politician are accepted unquestioningly from physicians and researchers and company spokespersons.”

Schwitzer, who publishes HealthNewsReview.org, a website that grades health care news stories for accuracy, balance, and completeness, has evidence to back up his claim.  Below I’ve re-posted some of his data on some 400 stories from almost 60 major news organizations (available at his website) to demonstrate how many health care stories “provide a kid-in-the-candy-store portrayal of the health care system that leaves readers with the impression that most products or procedures in health care are amazing, harmless and without a price tag”:

The Best Health Care Posts

Check out this week's Health Wonk Review, highlighting the best stories that have appeared on health care blogs in the past two weeks--including a post about “the sorts of people some pharmaceutical companies hire to perform clinical research . . . including one physician-researcher who managed to personally give two of his patients genital herpes . . .”

Health Wonk Review also throws a spotlight on Managed Care Matters, where Joe Paduda recently examined how US universal coverage plans could deal with illegal immigrants, but noted that meanwhile, Mexico may come up with a universal coverage system before the US does.

And on the Agonist Ian Welsh commented on John Edwards’ pledge that if Congress doesn’t pass universal health care by July 2009, “I’m going to use my power as president to take your [legislator’s]  health care away from you.” Time magazine’s Joe Klein was appalled, calling Edwards’ statement “demagogic nonsense.” Welsh disagrees. ( I would be interested in what Health Beat’s readers think.)

This week, Dr. Roy Poses picked the posts for Health Wonk Review.  The editor of Health Care Renewal, Poses specializes in “addressing threats to health care's core values, especially those stemming from concentration and abuse of power.”  I began talking to Poses before I started this blog, and I have the greatest respect for his work. He pulls no punches, and backs up his pieces on conflict of interest and fraud with excellent research.  Honest physicians know, better than anyone, what is going on in our health care system, and Poses is one of the guys carrying a torch.

Is State-Level Health Care Reform Doomed?

It’s a waste of breath to say that health reform is a big issue in the states. But is it also the case that health reform in the states is a waste of time?

With health reform experimentation popping up across the nation, conventional wisdom has become, as Massachusetts State Senator Richard T. Moore put it in a blog post for the Commonwealth Fund, that states are “critical laboratories for quality and innovation.”

Yet while Moore is right to say that “common elements of success will serve as a useful learning experience for other states and national leaders in considering more comprehensive health care reform,” there’s another side of the issue to consider: there may be some states that can’t sustain universal coverage without more comprehensive federal reform—no matter how insurance programs are designed. There’s also a danger that failure at the state level could be used to argue that comprehensive health reform is simply an impossible goal.

Among the biggest problems with universal coverage is cost: how can we afford to insure everybody? One answer is to require that everyone buy coverage.  By mandating insurance, a state can spread the cost across a larger pool of people that includes low-risk individuals who can help share the burden of insuring high-risk individuals.

Without a mandate, no one would buy insurance until they were sick or elderly; the pool would be made up of people who are expensive to insure, and soon coverage would become unaffordable. The only alternative would be to pass laws saying that if you don’t sign up before you become sick, insurers have the right to refuse to cover you –or to charge you five times what they would charge a healthy person. This is what happens in many states today, which is why one serious illness can send a family into bankruptcy. If we want to say that insurers can’t leave anyone out in the cold—even if they are very sick –then we also have to say that everyone must participate in the system.

The question remains:  will mandates work at the state level?

Consider Maine. In 2005, Maine launched the nation’s first experiment in universal health coverage through the “Dirigo Health Act,” named after Maine’s state motto, “Dirigo,” Latin for “I lead.” Dirigo is entirely voluntary, and as a result only 18,800 people (most of which already had private sector insurance) have signed up for DirigoChoice, the main arm of the program devoted to small businesses and individuals. Meanwhile, some 130,000 Maine residents remain uninsured.

The Unhappy Legacy of Medicaid

In September, the non-profit organization Public Citizen (PC) issued a report comparing Medicaid and Medicare payments to doctors in 10 states and Washington D.C. The results underline the fact that Medicaid has been designed, from day one, to give states an easy  cop-out when it comes to health care for the poor.

The study highlights cases where the disparities between what different states pay a doctor to care for a Medicaid patient are greatest: “In New York, doctors are paid $20 for an hour-long consultation with a Medicaid patient, while in higher-paying states, doctors receive an average of $157.92 for the same service – a difference of greater than sevenfold. The difference within a state between what Medicaid pays [a physician to treat a patient who is poor enough to qualify for Medicaid] and what Medicare [pays a doctor to care for an elderly patient] is just as dramatic. For this hour-long consultation, a physician in New York could earn $196.47 from Medicare, almost 10 times more than from Medicaid.”

Last month the AMA posted a chart of these and other disparities on its medical news website, and seen side-by-side, the comparisons are startling: a physician in New Jersey or Pennsylvania gets, on average, about one quarter as much for seeing a Medicaid patient as a Medicare patient; in New York and Rhode Island, less than a third; and in the nation’s capital less than half as much. Other states lie at the other end of the spectrum. Alaska, Wyoming, Delaware, and North Carolina all pay more for Medicaid than Medicare.

Is there any rhyme or reason to how states reimburse Medicaid care? Looking at Alaska (which pays more for Medicaid, relative to Medicare, than any other state) and New Jersey (which pays the least) it initially seems that poverty rates may factor into disparities. Alaska’s poverty rate is the 7th highest in the nation, so it would make sense that it would want to encourage health care for the poor. New Jersey, on the other hand, is almost last in the nation when it comes to poverty rates (no. 47 on the list) so the state may not feel as strongly about the need to ensure care for the poor.

The New York Times “Gets Cracking” on Rising Health Care Costs

On Sunday the New York Times published an editorial that set out to analyze “The High Cost of Health Care.” The result might best be described as “muddled.”

What is exasperating is that about 85 percent of the facts in the editorial are true. But a good 15 percent are simply wrong.  And the Times’ editors managed to weave truth and error together in such a way that it would take a knitting needle to separate the two. As Matthew Holt put it on The Health Care Blog: “the piece looks entirely as though it was written by a committee that couldn't agree with itself.”

As you read the editorial, you can almost see the editors sitting around a table, negotiating. “Okay,  we’ll let that sentence about the value we’re getting for our dollars stand—as long as well keep this sentence about  ‘skin in the game.’”  The result, a mix of propaganda and analysis, is far more dangerous than outright lies because the many true facts make the whole thing sound credible.   

Because I hate to see our paper of record disseminate disinformation, I am going to try to separate the wheat from the chaff. Begin with the truth: Near the top of the story, under a sub-head that reads “Varied and Deep-Rooted,”  the Times provides a nice summary of the main reasons why we lay out roughly twice as much as the average developed nation, without getting care that is twice as good:

“we pay hospitals and doctors more than most other countries do. We rely more on costly specialists, who overuse advanced technologies, like CT scans and M.R.I. machines, and who resort to costly surgical or medical procedures a lot more than doctors in other countries do. Perverse insurance incentives entice doctors and patients to use expensive medical services more than is warranted. And our fragmented array of insurers and providers eats up a lot of money in administrative costs, marketing expenses and profits that do not afflict government-run systems abroad.”

Spot on. If only this section of the editorial had not begun with a casual half-truth: “Contrary to popular beliefs, this is not a problem driven mainly by the aging of the baby boom generation, or the high cost of prescription drugs, or medical malpractice litigation that spawns defensive medicine.”

They first part of the sentence is correct: the aging of the boomers is not a major cause of health care inflation.  The last clause of the sentence is debatable, though probably true.
What’s troubling is the middle clause:  Why does the Times feel obliged to declare that the “high cost of prescription drugs” is not an important factor behind soaring medical bills?

Health Care Reform: What Do Americans Want? (Or Think They Want?)

On the surface, it seems that American voters have made their will clear.  Poll after poll shows that they are calling for a major overhaul of our health care system.

But when you look closer, their responses bristle with contradictions, contradictions that I think the reform-minded presidential candidates will have to consider when deciding how to approach health care reform. 

In a poll reported in Health Affairs at the end of last year, sixty-nine percent of respondents rated the US system as “fair” or “poor.” Yet in the same survey, when asked about their own experience with receiving medical services or with their own physician, 80 percent who had received care in the last year ranked their care as “excellent” or ”good.”

Other polls reveal the same pattern.

According to a survey released by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner in July, voters express doubts about the quality of the American health care system (with 49 percent dissatisfied), while 74 percent were dissatisfied with the cost.   Yet, “at another, more personal level,” the pollsters note, “a slightly different picture emerges. Fully eight in ten (82 percent) describe themselves as satisfied with the quality of the health care they receive personally. This number jumps to 90 percent among seniors (64 percent very satisfied), but includes impressive majorities of nearly all groups…”

Nevertheless, when the pollsters asked the same group about health care reform, three-quarters called for “major changes” or “completely rebuilding” the system. 

If they are satisfied with the care they are receiving, why would they want radical change? Because they don’t feel secure that they will be able to keep what they have:  “There’s a precariousness to Americans’ contentment with their own health insurance coverage,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reported after looking at a number of polls at the end of last year.  “Among the insured, six in ten are at least somewhat worried about being able to afford the cost of their health insurance over the next few years, and nearly as many (56 percent) said they worry that by losing a job, they or their family might be left without coverage.”

This, then, is why so many Americans want universal health care: it would guarantee that they and their families would always be covered.

Conditional Cash Transfers: An Interim Model for Health Care Reform?

This past September, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg welcomed 5,000 families into the pilot program of Opportunity NYC-- the nation’s first conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. Based on a Mexican program called Oportunidades, CCT programs like Opportunity NYC (ONYC) provide financial incentives for poor households to “meet specific targets” in three areas: education, employment/training, and health.

I recently spoke with Héctor Salazar-Salame, Advisor to the Center for Economic Opportunity, which operates ONYC, about the health components of the program. I wanted to get an idea of the aims and strategy behind ONYC—and also to learn more about CCT as a potential model for thinking strategically about health care reform. 

According to the city’s press release, ONYC’s health incentives will be offered “to maintain adequate health coverage for all children and adults in participant households as well as age-appropriate medical and dental visits for each family member.” In terms of coverage, families can earn “$20 or $50 per adult per month for maintaining health insurance and $20 or $50 for maintaining health insurance for all the children in the family.”

The point is to encourage low-income families to enroll in health insurance plans. “Many families work for employers that offer insurance,” Salazar-Salame explains, but “many times the necessary employee contribution is quite high for low-income families. We’re providing an incentive for families to opt into their work-based, private health plan—and hoping that the incentives will help them offset the cost of the employee contribution.”

If parents are unemployed—or work for employers that don’t offer coverage—the family can still be eligible for health incentive rewards that keep them enrolled in Medicaid. “We know that to recertify for Medicaid can be a challenging yearly process that takes a lot of time,” says Salazar-Salame. (It’s worth keeping in mind that roughly 30 percent of parents who don’t manage to enroll or re-enroll their children in Medicaid have less than a high school education).  “We’re hoping the incentive will help them maintain the insurance that they’re eligible for,” Salazar-Salame explains.

Maintaining insurance is harder than it sounds. In October, Maggie wrote about  just how difficult it can be to stay enrolled in Medicaid and SCHIP, pointing to a Health Affairs article titled "Why Millions of Children Eligible for Medicaid and S-Chip Are Uninsured."

How Wall Street Reacts to Fraud in Our Health Care Industry

This appeared on Bloomberg News today:

“WellCare Shares Jump After Analyst Calls Fraud Probe `Limited'

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) – WellCare Health Plans Inc., the U.S. health insurer under investigation for possible government overpayments, rose the most in two weeks in New York trading after an analyst upgraded the company.

“The analyst, Carl McDonald of CIBC World Markets in New York, called the probe ‘limited’ and raised his rating of WellCare to ‘sector outperform-speculative' from ‘sector perform.' WellCare rose $2.38, or 6.8 percent, to $37.39 at 9:40 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading after touching $38.14.

“A U.S. government raid of WellCare's Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Oct. 24 yielded thousands of records, including papers pulled from a shredder bin and files on offshore bank accounts, according to court filings. McDonald said the filings suggest the probe is focused on Florida's Medicaid program for the poor.

“’It's possible that the Florida Medicaid investigation spreads into other areas, but the document seems to rule out widespread, systemic fraud,’ the analyst said in a note to clients today.”

Bloomberg also reveals that: “The agents seized records from the desks of Chief Executive Officer Todd Farha and Chief Financial Officer Paul Behrens, according to the court records. From Behrens' desk, agents grabbed a document called the ‘Stairway to Heaven Plan,' according to the inventory.

“Also taken were wire transfers, tax returns, bank accounts in the Grand Cayman Islands, a calendar of political visitors and contributions, and phone lists. One seized document was labeled ‘Re: Possible Kickback,’ according to the court records”.

Yet none of this seems to bother the analyst who upgraded the stock or the many investors who followed his upgrade--pushing the share price up 6.8 percent this morning.  The analyst predicts that “that WellCare [will] settle, pay a fine, but remain in all its businesses, rather than being put out of business.”

Herzlinger’s Meme on Switzerland and Consumer Driven Medicine

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger offers an upside-down account of what’s right and what’s wrong with Switzerland’s health care system.  A leading advocate of “consumer driven” health care, Herzlinger assumes that because the Swiss pay for so much of their care out of their own pockets, consumer choice drives their system. 

But the truth is that Swiss patients have relatively little say over either the cost or the quality of the care they receive. Prices are regulated by the government, which also tries to make sure that consumers are getting value for their health care dollars by selecting which drugs, devices and tests insurance will cover. In fact, it is the very visible hand of a smart, largely efficient government that accounts for Switzerland’s relative success.

Before explaining how Herzlinger gets so much so wrong, let’s look at what she gets right. “The Swiss have achieved universal coverage,” Herzlinger points out “at a far lower cost than the U.S.”  In 2003 Switzerland spent 12 percent of GDP on health care while we laid out “a staggering 15 percent of GDP” while leaving roughly 14 percent of our population uncovered. Switzerland also has “far better health outcomes than the U.S., even when Switzerland is compared to socio-demographically similar U.S. states such as Connecticut and Massachusetts,” Herzlinger acknowledges. Moreover, while U.S. insurers in most states can shun sick customers, either by refusing to cover them—or by charging them astronomical premiums—in Switzerland you are not penalized for having cancer. The sick “can afford health insurance and pay the same price” as everyone else.

Finally, while the cost of care continues to snowball in both countries, the Swiss seem to have a better handle on health care inflation. From 1996 to 2003 health care spending in Switzerland rose by an average of 2.8 percent a year, Herzlinger says, versus 4.1 percent in the U.S.  Meanwhile “Switzerland boasts substantially more in the way of health-care resources and . . . tops the world in most measures of user satisfaction.”

Does the U.S. Have Too Many Doctors?

On the Buckeye Surgeon blog, a general surgeon from Cleveland, Ohio, questions what he calls “the almost dogmatic assumption that the United States is facing a physician shortage is the coming years…We're always reading that we need to train more doctors, that with the aging population there won't be enough physicians to satisfy demand. But then I was waiting for the elevator the other day, reading the names of all the doctors on the peg board who practice at one of my hospitals. The board is 4x4 feet and just crammed with names, names, names. It's unbelievable how many doctors there are.”

“There's two large GI groups,” Buckeye Surgeon continues. “There's three general surgery groups. There's three separate pulmonary groups. The ID group has 7 doctors. (Don't get me started on ID again). And on and on. What we have isn't a physician shortage, but rather a physician overabundance. And I don't think it's too different at most suburban hospitals across the country. The scenario isn't one of overworked doctors struggling to keep up with the demands of patients waiting in line for care. Rather, it's a hyper-competitive world of doctors in the same specialty fighting over a limited supply of patients.”  (Thanks to Kevin, M.D. for calling my attention to Buck Eye’s post.)

Buck Eye Surgeon is offering an anecdotal view of physician supply, but rational research backs up his claim. When the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) warns that we need to train more physicians to meet the demands of aging baby boomers, the Council assumes that the current national physician-to-population ratio is optimal.  Those who call for more physicians “never examine the relationship between physician supply and the health of patients and population” notes Dartmouth’s Dr. David Goodman in a 2005 Health Affairs article, “The Physician Workforce Crisis: Where Is the Evidence?” (For more about Dr. Goodman, his background and his evidence, see "David Goodman, M.D.: Counting All Doctors" in Dartmouth Medicine )

Take a look at the evidence, and it’s clear that the conventional wisdom is wrong. As I’ve discussed in the past, in areas of the country that boast more specialists, patient outcomes are worse—even after adjusting for differences in age, race and the overall health of the population. (I have written about this for both Health Beat and Dartmouth) A greater supply of primary care physicians, on the other hand, leads to better outcomes. So, Goodman quite sensibly concludes: “If improving the health and well-being of the population remains our goal we need more generalists and fewer specialists, today and in the future.”