Meeting of interest
12th Annual Meeting of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved
Friday, Sept. 26, 2008
8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Red Lion Hotel
Denver Southeast
3200 S. Parker Road at I-225
"Keeping the Momentum"
The
12th Annual CCMU Conference will examine strategies from Colorado and
across the country to maintain progress in health care reform.
Invited
speakers include Governor Bill Ritter; Dr. Neal Halfon, Director, UCLA
Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities; Dr. Mark
Levine, Chief Medical Officer - Region VIII, Centers for Medicaid and
Medicare Services; aND others.
The Colorado Coalition for the
Medically Underserved is a coalition of public, private and non-profit
organizations committed to access to affordable, timely, quality health
care for everyone in Colorado.
Register for the event online starting Aug. 1.
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The Business Health Forum is funded by several foundations, including The Colorado Health Foundation and The Colorado Trust.
Stay tuned for info. about upcoming business health care forums in your community.
To learn more about the Forum, contact Renee' Mowers at rmowers@bizhealthforum.org or call 303-866-9658.
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Dear Amy,
As
health insurance premiums continue to soar and Colorado examines
wide-scale health care reform, there has never been a more important
time for the business community to engage in the debate. The Forum is a
new project to help you connect the dots and weigh in on solutions.
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Colo. business group releases diabetes report
The Colorado Business Group on Health (CBGH) has released its fourth
annual report on the prevalence, cost and quality of care for Type 2
diabetes patients in Colorado's largest markets. This report also
provides state and national benchmarks that can help employers identify
better ways to serve the needs of their employees.
New to this
year's publication is the addition of comparison data between diabetes
statistics in Denver and similar markets across the nation including
Boston, Seattle, Dallas and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Compared to
the national average, charges for patients are generally lower in
Colorado for inpatient, outpatient and emergency department visits.
Denver had lower average charges than Seattle, Dallas, and Minneapolis
for emergency and outpatient claims. Within Colorado, Pueblo charges
are higher than other metropolitan areas for patients who have
Medicaid, Medicare or commercial insurance.
The complete report will be available in electronic format and may be downloaded free of charge by clicking here.
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Top health care news
Health plan from Sen. Barack Obama spurs hot debate
In
speech after speech, Senator Barack Obama has vowed that he will lower
the country's health care costs enough to "bring down premiums by
$2,500 for the typical family." Moreover, Obama, the presumptive
Democratic nominee, has promised that his health plan will be in place
"by the end of my first term as president of the United States."
Whether Mr. Obama can deliver is a matter of considerable dispute among
health analysts and economists. While there is consensus that the
American health care system is bloated with waste, eliminating enough
to save $2,500 per family would require simultaneous and synergistic
solutions to a host of problems that have proved intractable for
decades.
Even if the next president and Congress can muster the
political will, analysts question whether significant savings would
materialize in as little as four years, or even in 10. But as Mr. Obama
confronts an electorate that is deeply unsettled by escalating health
costs, he is offering a precise "chicken in every pot" guarantee based
on numbers that are largely unknowable. Furthermore, it is not
completely clear what he is promising. New York Times
Trying to save money by paying physicians more
Cutting health costs by paying doctors more?
That is the premise of experiments under way by federal and state
government agencies and many insurers around the country. The idea is
that by paying family physicians, internists and pediatricians to
devote more time and attention to their patients, insurers and patients
can save thousands of dollars downstream on unnecessary tests, visits
to expensive specialists and avoidable trips to the hospital.
Nationally, Medicare and commercial insurers pay an average of only
about $60 a visit to the office of a primary-care doctor and rarely if
ever pay for telephone or e-mail consultations. Many health policy
experts say the payments are not enough to let the doctors spend more
than a few minutes with each patient.
Insurers are conducting
pilot projects in at least a half-dozen states, in experiments
involving thousands of doctors and nearly 2 million patients. Many more
are in the planning stages, at the urging of health policy experts and
employers that provide medical benefits.The big government health care
programs, Medicaid and Medicare, are also studying the concept. New York Times
Health insurance association launches national campaign
The health insurance industry wants you to know it feels your pain before the next president makes it feel some pain.
To get ahead of the election debate on health-care reform, the nation's
main health insurance trade group kicked off a nationwide grassroots
campaign Tuesday. America's Health Insurance Plans' campaign is
designed to "build support for workable health care reform based on
core principles shared by the American people: coverage, affordability,
quality, value, choice and portability," the organization said, CQ
HealthBeat reports.
Health-care reform ranks just behind the
economy and Iraq war as the most important issue to voters, according
to a nationwide poll released last week by Quinnipiac University.
Health care advocates believe the next president will make changes,
which is why, the Cleveland Plain Dealer says, the health-insurance
lobby wants to get a head start. Fifteen years ago, insurers helped
sink reforms proposed by President Clinton, but now the industry is
more conciliatory. Its first newspaper ads say: "Health care costs too
much. We agree." Cleveland Plain Dealer
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