Health Insurance

The op-ed by Drs. Joshua M. Sharfstein and Laura Herrera and Charles Milligan ("Caring about costs, too," Sept. 27) offers a compelling set of recommendations to improve the quality of health care while reducing costs. Unfortunately, they neglected to describe the best single evidence-based practice - eliminating private health insurance. Private health insurance adds only costs, but no value, to the delivery of health services. A Cambridge Medical Care Foundation study found that 31 percent of health care spending in the U.S. - equal to more than $600 billion annually - pays for administration, marketing, and the profits of private insurance.

Under national health care reform, insurance policies in Maryland will be required to cover acupuncture for pain management and chiropractic care in certain cases. The plans won't cover acupuncture for other treatments, such as infertility or stress, and will limit home health care to 120 visits per year and physical therapy for ailments such as sports injuries to 50 days a year. The state panel charged with implementing health care reform in Maryland voted Thursday to include these services among those insurers will be required to cover once reform is fully implemented in 2014.

Sensing, perhaps, that they are losing the public relations battle after Senate candidate Todd Akin's forehead-slapping views on "legitimate rape" and the female body's magical ability to guard against pregnancy, Republicans are trying now to focus on the "real" issues of the economy and jobs, which play to businessman Mitt Romney's strengths, rather than the "side issue" of reproductive rights. Birth control and abortion were non-topics at the recent Republican convention. The GOP argument, in the words of Florida attorney general Pat Bondi, is that women don't care about a party's stance on women's reproductive health: "What women care about are jobs, the economy, the unemployment rate.

After three years of increases, the nation's poverty rate held steady from 2010 to 2011, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau that also detailed trends in health insurance coverage and median income. Nationwide, 15 percent of people, or about 46.2 million individuals, lived below the poverty line in 2011, according to estimates in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. Last year, the Census Bureau considered a family of two adults and two children in poverty if its annual household income was under $22,811.

Americans are paying a little more for health coverage this year. Premiums rose modestly for single and family employer-sponsored coverage, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust. The average annual premium in 2012 was $5,615 for single coverage, a 3 percent increase from 2011, while family coverage was $15,745, a 4 percent increase.   Companies continued to offer insurance despite the country's sluggish economic environment.

I was not surprised that die hard Democrat Mel Mintz is supporting the re-election of President Obama ("Romney is this year's Dewey," Sept. 5), but the reasons he gives for his support are amusing. He must be living in some other country. First, he correctly states that Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is doing well. The military and intelligence people found this terrorist and killed him. All this president did was give the OK. Any rational American would have done the same. General Motors is still alive today only because the taxpayer has given the company billions of dollars of borrowed money.

Laid-off Sparrows Point workers and retirees from the steel mill should soon be able to sign up for health insurance through a plan set up in another steelmaking region. Mill owner RG Steel - which stopped benefits Aug. 31 - asked for court approval Thursday to allow the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation Retiree Benefits Plan to accept workers and retirees from Sparrows Point and its other facilities. The United Steelworkers union agreed to expand eligibility in the plan, and RG Steel said it doesn't think court approval is necessary, though it asked for it just in case.

Letter writer Bud Gibbs ("Romney is more qualified to be president than Obama," Sept. 4) contends that Mitt Romney is better due to a better resume. That is just a wee bit silly. If Mr. Gibbs would have been around, he surely would have voted for Thomas Dewey over Harry Truman. After all, Mr. Dewey was governor of New York, a successful businessman, and graduated form the finest schools. President Truman was just an unsuccessful haberdasher. However, Mr. Truman went on to become possibly one of the top 10 U.S. Presidents in history.

More than 700 people turned out for workshops Tuesday connecting laid-off Sparrows Point workers with information about health insurance, training and other aid. An even larger number is expected at additional sessions scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, both at the training center on the steel mill complex. Similar events in June drew much smaller crowds - employees were optimistic then that the idled Sparrows Point would be sold to a steelmaker and reopened.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Departing from an economic message that has dominated the Republican National Convention, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris used an address to state party leaders here today to focus instead on how to deal with federal budget deficits and government spending. That theme will play heavily in Tampa as Republicans work to fire up delegates for tonight's speech by vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who is chairman of the House Budget Committee. As part of that effort, Ryan's brother, Tobin, is also meeting with state delegations and spoke briefly to Maryland's.