Health Insurance

The United States wastes about $3,000 per person annually in health care spending - nearly $1 trillion a year. That's bad enough. Even more disturbing is who gets that trillion. The fact is, we cannot understand politics in the U.S. by watching mainstream media or following the arguments of Democrats and Republicans. That's because neither side is honestly addressing the main problem. In the U. S., according to Rick Kronick, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego, "health care costs [are]

Meet "Julia. " She is the star of an infographic created for President Barack Obama's re-election website to illustrate the policy differences between him and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The slide show follows Julia from the age of 3, when her parents enroll her in a Head Start program, through college, paid for by government-subsidized loans, through the birth of her own child, with lots of free maternity care, to a retirement cushioned by Medicare and Social Security.

Howard County's fledgling health access plan for the uninsured could change into a regional nonprofit health insurance co-op for limited-income working families, the plan's chief architect said. Under the recently passed federal law that requires everyone to have health insurance by 2014, Healthy Howard cannot survive in its current form, its creator, Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, said last week.. That is because the innovative health access plan for Howard County residents is not insurance, and it relies heavily on doctors and hospitals providing free care, he said.

For the second time in his six years in office, Gov.Martin O'Malleyfinds it necessary to call a special session of the legislature to raise taxes and fees ("Deal set to raise taxes," May 10). Mr. O'Malley says it's necessary to raise the taxes on those making over $100,000 to prevent cuts on education, health programs and state employees and to prevent cuts in state aid to Baltimore City and Prince George's and Montgomery counties. These three subdivisions already receive, through the Thornton funding formula, an unfair share of state aid for schools compared to the other subdivisions based on the revenue they send to the state.

About 200 people — or nearly half the workers — who handle dry goods at the Jessup distribution center that serves Giant Food regionally will lose their jobs under a new contract negotiated with the union local, labor leaders said Monday. But union leaders with Teamsters Local 730, which represents 430 dry-goods workers who serve the region's largest grocery store chain, said the employees would be offered buyouts and jobs in other parts of the company. The facility also employs 380 people in fresh produce and 200 truck drivers, as well as workers in recycling.

Listen carefully to the Republican debates and you get a view of the kind of society many Republicans seek. The last time we had it was in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. It was an era when the nation was mesmerized by the doctrine of free enterprise. It was also a time when the ideas of William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale, dominated American social thought. Sumner brought Charles Darwin to America and twisted him into a theory to fit the times.

I think the critics of Obamacare have a point that there is a difference between requiring health insurance and requiring car insurance because in the latter case one can simply refuse to drive. But I would rather analogize the requirement of having health insurance with military conscription. Conscription is certainly not voluntary. But people can be exempted from military service if they have a legitimate conscientious objection to military service. So why not let people similarly prove a philosophical, religious or moral objection to being insured in order to be exempted from having to obtain or purchase health insurance?

Vincent DeMarco's praise of Gov.Martin O'Malleyand the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) omitted several key facts and restated a few false impacts of the law ("Health exchanges benefit Md. families," Feb. 16). Twenty-seven states are opposed to the health care law because they do not want the federal government mandating health insurance in their states, and they cannot afford to add millions of new Medicaid recipients. In Maryland we do not see this as an issue because our Democratic legislature and governor will simply raise taxes (again!

Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s recent column on health care shows a talent for bending facts to fit ideology ("A blow to employer-based coverage," April 1). He quotes a 2011 analysis by McKinsey & Company that the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) would decrease the number of employers who offer health insurance. He failed to mention that this report was one outlier among a number of other economic reports done by independent think tanks (Rand, Urban), the Congressional Budget Office and a health benefits firm (Mercer)

Do you need a mandate to force you to buy something you want or need? This question isn't asked by those who support a health insurance mandate, such as Dr. Edward Miller and Scott A. Berkowitz of Johns Hopkins ("Hopkins leaders support health insurance mandate," Aug. 9). The reason we have so many uninsured Marylanders is that health insurance is either too unaffordable or it doesn't offer a good value to those who can afford it. A mandate won't solve either of those problems. Responding to self-interested lobbying groups, well-meaning legislators have mandated that any health insurance sold in Maryland must cover over 60 procedures, something that has dramatically raised the cost of insurance in this state.

If the Supreme Court has to decide whether it is constitutional for the states or the federal government to force people to buy health insurance, why doesn't it also have to decide whether it's constitutional to force taxpayers to pay to cover the uninsured? Charles H. Webster

Americans in almost every state are finding it harder to get basic health services, according to a report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Access to healthcare from 2000 to 2010 has declined in 42 states, especially for the uninsured the study found. Nationally, the share of adults who have not been able to meet medical needs because they can't afford care rose 6 percentage point to 18.7 percent. In Maryland, the number of people who found it too expensive to get care increased 5.1 percentage in the decade to 15.4 percent.

The federal program that offers health insurance to Marylanders with pre-existing conditions has made changes recently that will make some costs go up and others go down. The program was created under the federal health reform law and was intended as a bridge for those who could not buy commercial insurance until 2014 when new exchanges are slated to launch. The program could be terminated if the health care law is overturned by the Supreme Court. But for now, officials say the program operates at market rates and they must adjust premiums and benefits each year as other insurers do with their plans.

The agency that oversees the state's health plan for those uninsured because of preexisting conditions, paid a vendor nearly $367,000 for information technology services without proving that the contract was chosen through a competitive bidding process, a legislative audit has found. The audit also said The Maryland Health Insurance Plan did not perform routine reviews to make sure the insurer that manages the plan for the state, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, was complying with its contract.

I take exception to the illogic displayed in columnist Marta H. Mossburg's recent commentary ("Biology really is destiny," April 25). She clearly understands nothing about women who oppose restrictions on contraceptives. Some of us think a prescription drug package on our health insurance should cover this prescription drug even if our employer thinks it shouldn't. And since when is a prescription drug plan "free?" Since when did employers belong between patients and their doctors?

The Maryland medical society and attorney general's office launched a website Saturday aimed at helping doctors file complaints with the state when insurance companies refuse to cover patient care. "Essentially, our goal was to educate our patients and our physicians that there is an avenue for these complaints," said Gene Ransom III, CEO of MedChi, the state medical society. "We thought, 'Let's make it easier.'" The site, called Insurance Watch, is hosted on the Internet by the medical society.

Just 17 percent of Maryland's adult private sector workers went without health insurance in 2010, compared with 22 percent nationally, according to a report put out by the Maryland Health Care Commission . The commission looks at private employers biennially, and found more private sector employees were getting their insurance through work in Maryland though the employers weren't offering insurance more often than the national average --...

Of all the dubious claims made in the editorial "Maryland's health care imperative" (Jan. 27) the idea that the state should move forward on implementing the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in order to curb rising health care costs stands out as the most unsupportable. This legislation will not hold down health care costs and, in fact, where a similar plan has been tried in Massachusetts, costs to both health care consumers and the state government have increased dramatically.

As Mitt Romneycontinued to build his delegate count for the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night with five more primary victories, his new campaign slogan proclaimed: "A better America begins tonight. " The message seemed to announce that the November election was all over but the shouting, although he has yet to be nominated by a party still demonstrably cool to him, let alone anointed by the American voters as their next president. Actually, all that was beginning that night in Mr. Romney's upbeat speech in Manchester, N.H., the site of his first 2012 primary success, was the dead period that lies ahead until the Republican convention officially designates him, as matters now stand, as the GOP nominee.

With Mitt Romney essentially assured the Republican nomination for president, the time has arrived to compare his (supposedly) differing viewpoints on health reform with President Barack Obama's. As many commentators and policy analysts have recognized, Mr. Romney's Massachusetts health reform law served as the prototype for the federal law derided by Republicans (and now praised by Democrats) as Obamacare. The core of the Affordable Care Act - an individual mandate, guaranteed issuance of insurance, and public health insurance expansion - derived from Governor Romney's achievements.