Health Care

You're headed for a summer villa in the English Lake Country. You're packing the bags for a week at the beach. You're getting ready to introduce the children to Paris.Seasoned travelers always remember to bring toilet paper to Asia, detailed road maps to Cancun and an extra water supply for California's Mojave Desert. But has anybody thought about packing a health insurance card?In an era of managed care, when health maintenance organizations dictate who you see and when and what for, and refuse to pay up when you break the rules, now may be the time.

In this election year, America is embroiled in a critical debate. How do we maintain the quality of our health-care system while expanding coverage and reducing costs? How do we protect workers who lose their medical coverage when they change jobs because of pre-existing conditions? How do we provide health care for the millions of Americans who have no coverage?The bottom line is: Americans are afraid. They are afraid of changing jobs for fear of losing their health insurance. They are afraid of getting seriously ill with no medical coverage, cut adrift to shoulder astronomically high medical bills.

The phones have started ringing in the stately offices of Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, and the deluge of calls is not expected to let up until the General Assembly session ends in less than two weeks. The retiree organization AARP has set up a phone bank and plans to call 10,000 members who can then be patched directly to Miller's office to demand action on legislation that would extend medical coverage to uninsured residents. Miller opposes a bill, easily passed by the House of Delegates, that would fund expanded government health care through a $1-a-pack increase in the tobacco tax. No politician relishes calls from angry constituents, let alone calls from thousands of them who are coordinated and ready to talk legislative details.

If you are lamenting the cost and confusion of your Medicare or HMO health-care plan, just remember: It could be worse. You could be facing more difficulties in the Canadian health-care system. Its government-financed system is not the utopia it appears to be.Granted, Canada provides basic care and pays for everyone, no matter each citizen's employment status or income level. However, as I found out during a recent international conference on aging there, problems abound.An article in the National Post summed up the current struggle: "After five years of deep government cuts to health care that have affected every province and virtually every community, public confidence in government-financed medical care is faltering as more and more Canadians experience delays in receiving medical care and endure over-crowding in hospitals."

HEALTH CARE providers are under pressure to cut costs -- and then cut some more. From all directions, hospitals, nursing homes and physicians are feeling the fiscal squeeze, and worrying about their long-term ability to deliver quality care at a far lower price.In Maryland, the state's cost-control commission wants to lower hospital charges by 1 percent this year and more the next two years. This comes after stiff cuts in Medicare payments. More cuts will be needed through 2002 for Congress to stay within its budget caps.

For Maryland politicians with a need to fill their campaign coffers, there's no better source of wealth than health.Locked in annual battles in the General Assembly over managed care and professional turf, special-interest groups in the health-care field have poured millions of dollars into statewide political campaigns and legislative races in the four years since Maryland's last general election.Campaign finance reports at the state elections board show that health-care interests are well on their way to repeating their 1994 role as the leading industry sector for political contributions.

In your Jan. 25 editorial "A new health-care entitlement," you stated that ''Americans have yet to conclude that health care should be socialized. [W]e still believe health care should be a function of the private sector."I assume the accuracy of your polls about opinions of Americans, but you sure failed to talk to a lot of people I know.The key issue here is how we care for those in our community who cannot care for themselves. You do not question Americans' willingness to care for children, but only raise the question of how poor the children need to be before we share our "largess" with them.

YOU CAN'T take politics out of health-care issues. Too much money is involved -- for patients, insurers and the government.In Washington, Republicans are jockeying with Democrats to gain advantage in passing a "patients bill of rights." Initially, GOP conservatives opposed this notion, but pressure from voters propelled them to offer a limited plan to give consumers in managed-care situations greater medical choices.In Maryland, politicians are playing a similar game. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Eileen M. Rehrmann wants to punish medical directors of health-maintenance organizations for denying treatment to patients.

LAS VEGAS -- Sierra Health Services Inc. agreed to acquire Kaiser Permanente Group's Southwest division, a managed-health services business in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, bolster the managed-care company's Texas presence.Financial terms weren't disclosed for the transaction, which Kaiser said marks the first time the nonprofit organization has sold one of its operations.bTC The companies said they expect the acquisition, which needs to be approved by the two boards and by regulatory agencies, to be completed by Oct. 31.Kaiser's Southwest division includes 123,000 health plan members and 150 doctors.

CITING a grave and selfless concern for the safety of their 11.2 million precious customers, Prudential HealthCare and Humana Inc., two of the greatest names in health coverage, have decided not to pay for Viagra prescriptions.How touching that such mercenary, profit-driven behemoths should bother to care whether or not their clients copulate to death. I should have thought these stern-hearted bean counters would have encouraged Viagra usage as a way of saying good riddance to bad risks. Drooling old amorists who don't perish in ecstasy will now be condemned to live on -- and to die of some ghastly, lingering, expensive-to-treat illness the cost of which far exceeds the $10 it takes to pop a single Viagra.

If you don't have a wellness program yet at work, one likely will come your way soon. And if you do, count on your employer aggressively making sure you participate. Employers generally are still cutting benefits and shifting more health care costs onto you. But they are throwing more money into wellness programs, hoping you'll adopt a healthier lifestyle and that insurance costs will go down over time. "We have tried everything else. There is nothing left," says Sara Taylor with benefits consultant Hewitt Associates.

Warren E. "Libby" Mitzel, a retired physical-education instructor who taught in city public schools, died of cancer Oct. 22 at the Charlestown retirement community. She was 94. Warren Elizabeth "Libby" Mitzel, the daughter of a Pennsylvania Railroad freight conductor and a homemaker, was born at home on Keswick Road in Hampden. She was raised on a family farm in Baltimore County and in 1929 returned to Hampden with her family. To help support her family during the Depression, Miss Mitzel dropped out of school and went to work for Stieff Silver Co., where she became an engraver.

Health insurance covers treatment for the spinal cord disorder that has confined Amy Hunovice to a wheelchair. But Hunovice, who has no use of her legs and limited use of her arms, has to pay a home health care worker $13 an hour herself for help with simple daily tasks like bathing and dressing. Hunovice, a 61-year-old former teacher who lives in Pikesville, is one of an estimated 10 million people who now need long-term care in this country, care that Medicare and health insurance in large measure do not cover.

In what must be considered a monumental understatement, Attorney General Eric H. Holder told CBS News' "60 Minutes" that more oversight of Medicare funds is needed. I'll say, considering what we have learned about the scope and ease of stealing billions of dollars from the American taxpayer by means of fraudulent claims for care that never happened. To Mr. Holder's credit, his agency has been frantically cracking down on this thievery for some time now, resulting in the indictments of dozens of criminals in Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Health care advocates said Monday that they had met their goal of adding 10,000 Baltimore residents to Medicaid rolls since the state expanded coverage and lowered eligibility requirements last year. Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, said that statewide, 50,000 adults have benefited from the new state health care expansion since it took effect in July of last year, and that 50,000 more children who were eligible for insurance but not yet covered have been enrolled since 2007 because of the O'Malley administration's outreach program and efforts by health care advocates.

At a signing ceremony earlier this month, Gov. Martin O'Malley made official the first-ever contract between the state and family child care providers who participate in Maryland's child care subsidy program. I'm among the people who benefit from this agreement - so are the children in my care and their families. I am a family child care provider, a homeowner and a parent. There are days when I start work at 6 a.m.; some nights my last child isn't picked up until 11:30 p.m. This is the nature of family child care.

WASHINGTON - -President Barack Obama thanked Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown on Thursday for his service in Iraq during the White House signing of a bill to ensure health care for veterans. The Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of 2009 will change the way health care for veterans is funded by requiring it be requested and approved one year in advance. Brown was co-chairman of the Veterans Affairs Agency Review Team for the Obama-Biden transition. He is also the nation's highest-ranking elected official to have served in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Maryland may receive just half its expected supply of the swine flu vaccine for October, state health officials said Monday as they scrambled, along with hospitals and other providers, to confront a projected shortfall. As H1N1-related hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise, people have flocked to health department clinics to get inoculated, waiting in lines that stretched several hours. Meanwhile, in Baltimore County, officials have canceled several clinics because of a lack of vaccine.

The owner of a nonprofit organization who claimed to provide medications to needy Africans pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to altering the labels on donated drugs to sell them for roughly $10,000 to a Baltimore pharmacist, who is also charged in a separate case, . Joseph Egbe, 44, who ran e-Meditech out of his home in Gwynn Oak, faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Calls to e-Meditech, which "works to improve the health and lives of people living in developing countries and people victimized by diseases and poverty," according to its Web site, were not returned.

Bipartisan legislation known as the "Read the Bill" resolution would amend the rules of the House of Representatives to require the Internet posting of all nonemergency legislation for 72 hours before it can be considered on the House floor. This is not only necessary; it is common sense. An overwhelming majority of the American public agrees with the principles of this resolution. A new Zogby poll, commissioned by Let Freedom Ring, found that 91 percent of Americans - overwhelming majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike - want all nonemergency legislation to be posted on the Internet for at least 72 hours before Congress votes on it. Even President Barack Obama agrees; during his campaign, he stated that he would not sign any nonemergency legislation unless it had been posted online for five days to permit the public to read and comment on it. The August town hall gatherings proved that ordinary citizens can comprehend arcane legislative language, and they can ferret out egregious portions.