Health Reform

With the Supreme Court reviewing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is no shortage of legal analysis to handicap the decision. But unfortunately, not enough attention has been paid to the real value this law provides to millions of American families and businesses. As governor, I have heard from families unable to purchase coverage at any price because of pre-existing illness, from seniors forced to choose between medications and energy bills and from businesses required to drop employee coverage to stay afloat.

Maryland Health and Mental Hygiene Secretary Joshua M. Sharfstein and his co-authors were right on the money in their recent commentary regarding the importance of making health care more affordable as the state goes about implementing federal health reform ("Caring about costs, too," Sept. 27). We at the Maryland Health Care For All! Coalition applaud his vision and embrace the opportunity to transform Maryland's health care system to reduce costs, improve health outcomes and achieve health equity.

In recent testimony before the House Budget Committee, Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster, was asked whether President Barack Obama's new health care law would allow Americans to keep their existing coverage. His response? "Not true in all cases. " In fact, the health care law is not only causing many businesses to drop or scale back their insurance plans — it's also preventing them from creating jobs. A new National Association of Health Underwriters survey of nearly 2,400 insurance agents and brokers — who interact on a daily basis with employers who provide health insurance — hammers home the stark reality of the new law. More than half of brokers — 52 percent — report that some of their clients have dropped coverage altogether because of increased costs, which they attribute to health reform.

Seniors in Maryland have saved $56.5 million on prescription drug costs because of a provision under health care reform that has eased the Medicare donut hole, new government data has found. The savings were achieved with rebates and discounts to ease the burden of the donut hole, when patients reach certain limits that require them to pay 100 percent of their prescription drug costs. The $56.5 million in savings has occurred since health reform was adopted, according to The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Ready to start all over again on the abortion debate? Especially in places like Maryland, where a 1992 referendum provided a political settlement and mercifully enabled state officials to get beyond the issue, that prospect is not a happy one. But health care reform is presenting a new context for the debate. By opposing the inclusion of abortion services in any standard benefits package, abortion opponents could effectively deny millions of women access to abortion.Abortion has always loomed as a potential stumbling block to health care reform.

The nation's governors have sent Senate Republicans and Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee a useful reminder about health care reform realities. As officials who have to deal with the consequences not only of what they do but what Congress does to them, their message is, "Please, no more unfunded federal mandates."Senate minority leader Bob Dole is the most immediate target of gubernatorial criticism. His alternative to the Clinton health plan currently calls for a cap on federal spending for Medicaid, with added costs in this mushrooming program to be dumped on the states.

Senate moderates pushing health care reform that puts the emphasis on individuals, not employers, in purchasing insurance may be on to something. The fact is that in the end it will always be individuals -- not employers, not the government -- who have to pay the doctor (and the hospital and the pharmacist and the insurance peddler).When you have an "employer mandate," as Bill and Hillary Clinton propose, the cost is ostensibly covered by the boss. But employees inevitably feel the impact in the form of smallerpaychecks.

Washington. -- Health-care reform is dead and buried on Capitol Hill. But the cost-shaving part of it is alive and rampaging across the American landscape as insurers and employers dig in against rising bills.The thrift rebellion is personally felt in the highest-paid medical specialties, where for the first time ever, annual incomes nosed down last year. The decline in fiscal fortunes does not warrant public mourning. The median annual take for cardiologists, for example, dropped from $499,401 in 1992 to $446,990, while diagnostic radiologists went from $271,723 to $257,414.

Medicare recipients in Maryland saved $46.2 million in prescription drug costs because of health care reform, the Obama Administration said today. The savings were achieved with rebates and discounts to ease the burden of the donut hole, when patients reach certain limits that require them to pay 100 percent of their prescription drug costs. The announcement was made as health care reform celebrates its second anniversary this week. In Maryland, 73,269 Medicare beneficiaries have saved an average of $630.19 onprescription drugs costs.  The savings came from a one-time $250 rebate check to seniors who hit the “donut hole” coverage gap in 2010 and a 50 percent discount on covered brand-name drugs in the donut hole in 2011.

Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore has received a $858,333 federal grant that will allow it to treat 750 more patients. The money is part of $128.6 million in grants the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was giving out Wednesday to expand community health centers across the country under health care reform. Health Care for the Homeless is the only Maryland organization to recieve money. The funding is expected to create 5,640 jobs by creating new health centers, the government said.