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- Maryland /
Regional
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Prescription
cards provide discount
(SoMoNews.com)
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- National /
International
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Democrats unveil
health plan
(Baltimore Sun)
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CDC: Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas continue to lead nation
in swine flu cases
(Baltimore Sun)
-
California environmental regulators rule marijuana smoke
causes cancer
(Baltimore Sun)
-
- Opinion
-
Thumbs up
(Carroll County Times
Editorial)
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Viewpoint: Can medicine again be a 'calling'?
(Baltimore Sun
Commentary)
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- Maryland /
Regional
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Prescription
cards provide discount
- Program available to all county residents
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- By Jeff Newman
- SoMoNews.com
- Friday, June 19, 2009
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- Beginning July 1, Calvert County residents will have
access to prescription drug discount cards that will offer
an average savings of 22 percent, according to a press
release.
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- The program, sponsored by the National Association of
Counties (NACo), has no conditions - it will be available to
people of any age and whether they have health insurance or
not. The cards will be accepted at 17 county pharmacies and
more than 59,000 nationwide.
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- "Calvert County is proud to be one of the counties
nationwide participating with NACo," said Maureen Hoffman,
director of the Calvert County Department of Community
Resources, in a press release. "The NACo prescription
discount card offers significant savings for the uninsured
and underinsured residents of our county, and even those
fortunate to have prescription coverage can use the card to
save money on drugs that are not covered by their health
plan."
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- The program, which was passed by a 3-1 vote by the
Calvert County Board of County Commissioners on April 7,
will cost nothing to taxpayers. All discounts are negotiated
directly between CVS Caremark and participating pharmacies.
Entire families can use one card and almost all common
prescriptions are covered, according to NACo's Web site.
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- The program was first conceived in 2000 when NACo,
searching for services that might help its member counties,
kept hearing about the need for prescription assistance.
Years of research eventually led to a trial program in late
2004, which was extremely successful, according to Andrew
Goldschmidt of NACo. More than 1,200 counties are now
enrolled.
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- "It's been a tremendous program and helped a lot of
folks," Goldschmidt said. "Anyone who has a prescription
that isn't covered should pick up a card and carry it
around. You never know when you might need it."
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- Hoffman said the program might be a greater help than
most people realize. For instance, people enrolled in
Medicare Part D, a federal program that subsidizes drug
costs, are presented with various lists of drugs they can
choose to have covered. But people with lengthy prescription
lists might not be able to match every one of their drugs to
those on the lists, forcing them to choose which drugs are
subsidized. Under the program, residents will be able to get
all their drugs for less money.
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- "We have a lot of people in Calvert County that do not
have health insurance or prescription coverage," said Nancy
Porter, coordinator of adult services at the Core Service
Agency, which plans and monitors the county's mental health
services.
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- Cards can be picked up at all county libraries, senior
centers, the Calvert County Health Department and Department
of Community Resources Building in Prince Frederick. There
are no enrollment forms, fees or restrictions on frequency
of use. Residents can call 1-877-321-2652 or go to
www.caremark.com/naco
for more information.
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- Copyright ©, 2009 Southern Maryland Newspapers - ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED.
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- National / International
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Democrats unveil
health plan
- Bill would widen coverage, but few details on payment
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- Associated Press
- Baltimore Sun
- Saturday, June 20, 2009
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- WASHINGTON — Democrats got a sobering glimpse of what it
would look like if their ambitious health care overhaul ran
into a wall - and quickly pulled back to regroup and get
moving again.
-
- Trying to regain the initiative, House Democrats
unveiled draft legislation Friday that they said would cover
virtually all of the nation's nearly 50 million uninsured as
President Barack Obama has promised. However, they offered
few details on how to pay for it.
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- The president welcomed their action as "a major step
toward our goal of fixing what is broken about health care
while building on what works."
-
- But in the Senate, two committees were getting bogged
down, struggling to cope with a trillion-dollar-plus price
tag over 10 years. Their House colleagues simply steered
away from costs and focused on the promised benefits of the
legislation.
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- Republicans sharpened criticism. "I fear this plan will
force tens of millions of Americans to lose their current
health care coverage," said Michigan Rep. David Camp, a top
GOP lawmaker on health.
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- The White House played down the turmoil. "We continue to
put one foot in front of the other in the march toward
health care reform," said press secretary Robert Gibbs.
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- Major provisions of the 850-page House bill would impose
new responsibilities on individuals and employers to get
coverage, end insurance company practices that deny coverage
to the sick and create a new government-sponsored plan to
compete with private companies.
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- The insurance industry said it had major problems with
the proposal for a government plan but stopped short of
declaring outright opposition to the overhaul.
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- House Democrats say they won't reveal how they intend to
pay for their plan until later. Higher taxes on upper-income
households appear likely, but broad levies - even a federal
sales tax - are under discussion. Democrats say spending
more now to revamp health care will save money later.
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- "Is this going to bring down the cost of health
insurance? You bet your sweet life," said Rep. Charles B.
Rangel of New York, chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee, one of three panels working on the House bill.
-
- The House leaders' news conference capped a week in
which the health care overhaul effort seemed to stumble at
the starting line.
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- A $1.6 trillion cost estimate forced the Senate Finance
Committee to delay introduction of its bill as members
sought ways to scale it back. The Senate Health, Education,
Labor and Pensions Committee made little progress as it
considered amendments to an incomplete bill.
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- The whole enterprise is "basically a gridlock," said
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican. "This is not
reform."
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- Despite the heightened anxiety, the shape of the debate
was growing clearer.
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- On one side is the House Democrats' sweeping health care
bill. It would require all individuals to obtain health
insurance and force employers to offer coverage to workers,
with exemptions for small businesses. A new public health
insurance plan, strongly opposed by Republicans, would
compete with private companies within a new health care
purchasing "exchange" where people could shop for coverage.
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- Government subsidies would help the poor buy care, and
seniors in the Medicare program would pay less for their
prescription drugs.
-
- To pay for it, House Democrats are considering
everything from taxing soda to raising income taxes on
people earning more than $200,000 to imposing a federal
sales tax.
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- Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun.
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-
CDC: Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas continue to lead nation
in swine flu cases
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- By Associated Press
- Baltimore Sun
- Tuesday, June 20, 2009
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- ATLANTA (AP) — The national count of swine flu cases has
risen to 21,449 cases and the number of deaths have nearly
doubled to 87.
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- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
released the number of confirmed and probable cases Friday
morning. The tally is up from the last week's count of
18,000 cases and 44 deaths.
-
- Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas have had the most reported
illnesses, and the Illinois count rose more than 500 since
the last report. But CDC officials say much of the most
recent flu activity has been in the Northeast. A quarter of
the new deaths were in New York.
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- Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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California environmental regulators rule marijuana smoke
causes cancer
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- By Associated Press
- Baltimore Sun
- Saturday, June 20, 2009
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- SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Marijuana smoke has joined tobacco
smoke and hundreds of other chemicals on a list of
substances California regulators say cause cancer.
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- The ruling Friday by the Office of Environmental Health
Hazard Assessment likely will force pot shops with 10 or
more employees to post warnings. Final guidelines are
expected by the time warning requirements take effect in a
year.
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- The listing only applies to marijuana smoke, not the
plant itself.
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- Spokesman Sam Delson says the state agency found
marijuana smoke contains 33 of the same harmful chemicals as
tobacco smoke.
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- Delson says the findings came from a review of more than
30 scientific papers.
-
- California's Proposition 65 requires businesses to warn
consumers of chemicals that cause cancer or reproductive
harm.
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- Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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- Opinion
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Thumbs up
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- Carroll County Times Editorial
- Saturday, June 20, 2009
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- Carroll County’s emergency food and shelter program will
be receiving more than $37,000 in federal stimulus money to
help the county’s needy. The money will be divided among
selected agencies that apply for the funding by June 26.
Carroll County has received yearly funds from the federal
government for emergency food and shelter programs since
1996.
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- Members of the Venturing Crew 202 envirothon team won
the state competition for the first time after routinely
placing first at the county level since 2001. The team, made
up of former and current Westminster High School students
Eric Spioch, Ranson Leland Baldwin VII, Rebecca Baldwin,
Eric Kazyak, Reed Portney and Kelly Habicht, will travel to
North Carolina later this summer to represent Maryland in
the Canon Envirothon, the nation’s largest environmental
education competition. While subject matters will be the
same, the students will have to familiarize themselves with
species from all over the continent.
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- More than 20 Carroll schools and educational facilities
have been certified as Maryland Green Schools, placing the
county near the top of Maryland’s list in environmental
education. Schools must use their site and curricular
instruction to help students understand and act on
environmental changes, and must also model environmental
best-management practices to qualify. Examples of these
practices include anything from constructing a rain garden
to switching to energy-efficient light bulbs.
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- Thumbs down
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- Scams that take advantage of people’s generosity, like
the one allegedly perpetrated by a man soliciting businesses
to contribute $300 to be on a discount card to be
distributed to hospital employees, are frustrating. Carroll
Hospital Center sent an e-mail last week stating it is not
affiliated with anyone doing discount cards and asked that
people contacted by Lloyd James asking for money to call the
hospital at 410-871-6979. These types of schemes seem to
become more prevalent when times are tough. The best advice
from police is to be skeptical of anyone soliciting money up
front. People who think they’ve been a victim of a scam
should save any documentation and contact their local police
agency immediately.
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- Thumbs up
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- The Arc of Carroll County recently helped one of the
former patients of the Rosewood Center in Owings Mills move
to an apartment in Manchester and is helping her get
acclimated. Mary Francis Smith, 58, who is developmentally
disabled, had been at Rosewood since she was 9. Rosewood
closed in June after numerous reports of abuse, neglect and
mistreatment in the past. With The Arc as Smith’s care
provider, the Maryland Disabilities Administration pays for
her 24-hour care and the Department of Housing and Urban
Development and the Department of Human Services have
offered financial assistance to place Smith in the
apartment. Since moving May 18, Smith has been to a
carnival, a picnic and the mall.
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- Copyright 2009 Carroll County Times.
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-
Viewpoint: Can medicine again be a 'calling'?
-
- By Ellen Goodman
- Baltimore Sun Commentary
- Saturday, June 20, 2009
-
- BOSTON - There will be time to talk about costs and
coverage, about public and private plans, about reasoning
and rationing in health care reform. So the president began
this week speaking to the workers in the system: doctors.
-
- At the meeting of the American Medical Association,
Barack Obama tackled the model "that has taken the pursuit
of medicine from a profession - a calling - to a business."
He reminded doctors: "You didn't enter this profession to
become bean counters and paper pushers. You entered this
profession to be healers. And that's what our health care
system should let you be."
-
- Listening to him, I thought of one small tale from the
annals of medicine. A few days earlier, a friend had an
appointment to consider a rather serious heart procedure.
After 15 minutes, the cardiologist stood up to leave. My
friend was startled. "I have more questions," she said. He
answered, "I have another patient," and walked away.
-
- I am sure that he didn't become a cardiologist to treat
patients like travelers in a revolving door. I am also sure
that no rational system would allot minimum time and payment
for an office visit to decide on a procedure that will cost,
on average, $35,000. But there we are.
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- Somewhere along the way, with the help of insurers and
incentives, by paying for procedures rather than patient
care, we have created a culture of medicine that pushes
doctors away from the "calling."
-
- In his speech, Mr. Obama mentioned McAllen, Texas. This
little-known city has become the infamous poster town for
runaway health care costs since Atul Gawande wrote about it
in The New Yorker.
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- McAllen has the second-highest per capita health care
costs in the nation, a fact it doesn't post on its Web site.
Costs are twice as high as those in its demographic twin, El
Paso. Not because the people are sicker. Not because they
are kept healthier. And not because of malpractice suits.
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- "The primary cause of McAllen's extreme costs was, very
simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine," wrote Mr.
Gawande. It was reminiscent of other high-cost areas where
people "got more of the stuff that cost more, but not more
of what they needed."
-
- In McAllen, Mr. Gawande unhappily concluded that this
overuse came because too many doctors saw their practice
"primarily as a revenue stream." It wasn't just some
aberrant character, it was the system that pays doctors for
quantity, not quality - and pays them as individuals rather
than as members of a team.
-
- He compares this failure to the success of places such
as the Mayo Clinic, with lower costs and higher quality.
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- When my friend, the patient of the 15-minute consult,
sent The New Yorker piece to her daughter, one of the most
dedicated primary care doctors I know, she got this e-mail
in return: "I can only speak for my friends/partners over
the years. I think all of us hate money being part of any
decision-making process. We love tight, up-to-date,
data-driven, life-saving, critical thinking. We love talking
to people, touching them (literally and figuratively) and
feeling useful/important in our communities. We all hate
figuring out what drug is on the formulary, appealing a
refused claim ... seeing problems get worse because the
patient decides they cannot afford a medication."
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- She also hates thinking about medical school debts, not
to mention an income that has been flat for the last 10
years, while the public thinks doctors are money-grubbing.
"It's hard to keep up an altruistic head of steam," she
continued. "The truth is, I'm not encouraging my kids to go
into medicine. ... That feels sad and ominous."
-
- Ominous indeed. Doctors are sick of hoops and hurdles,
wary of more regulations saying which procedures are useful
and which are "overuse." But the message from McAllen is
that doctors need to reform their culture in tune with their
calling.
-
- At the recent Harvard Medical School commencement, Steve
Bergman - known to generations of medical students as Samuel
Shem, author of The House of God, the satirical novel about
medical training - told the new doctors:
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- "Has anyone ever heard, in a crowded theater when
someone collapses, the call go out: 'Is there an insurance
executive in the house?' We do the work. We have the power.
Without us, there's no health care. If we stick together, we
can take action and change things."
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- That's something to be written - legibly, please - on
the prescription pad for health care reform.
-
- Ellen Goodman is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
Her e-mail is
ellengoodman1@me.com.
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- Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun.
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