healthcare – Page 5 – MyWellness Network

Republican calls for patient-centered wellness

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By Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter (R-Mich.)

Washington, DC — Throughout the health care debate, the majority of Americans have expressed their opposition and frustration with the president and his Democratic Congress’ radical proposals. The public is opposed to the scheme’s practical harm; frustrated by the Democrats’ arrogant refusal to listen; and justified in its concern that willful Washington politicians will impose these unhelpful proposals despite the American people’s objections.

This is not how the sovereign citizens’ servant government is supposed to enact laws in our free republic. Especially when there is a far more sensible, affordable and contemporary path: patient-centered wellness for our people powered world.

Emulating the failure of their trillion dollar stimulus bill’s “wealth redistribution” that they assured Americans would stop unemployment from rising over 8.5%, the Democrats’ radical, nearly trillion dollar “health redistribution” will not work. For months, the case has been made and the public has concurred: government-run medicine’s cost, higher taxes, surcharges on employer provided benefits, Medicare cuts, rationing boards (such as the stimulus bill’s already appointed Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research) and personal mandates, will only increase the costs, decrease the quality and reduce the choices of Americans’ health care. Given such overwhelming and intense public opposition, why do the Democrats insist on imposing this scheme on the American people?

Ideologically, the Democrats are bent on governmentally reducing the supply of health care to “control” costs. This is patently absurd. According to the time-tested law of supply and demand, if the government reduces the supply of health care while the demand for it increases from demographic pressures and medical advances, the costs will spiral upward; and the government will increasingly intrude into your personal decisions and savings.

Believing their complete control of Washington provides a “once in a generational chance” to pass their radical health care scheme, Democrats bull ahead regardless of Americans’ opposition. Cynically, the Democrats feel the law, once passed, will prove immune to repeal. Accordingly, affronted Americans understand the Democrats’ health redistribution scheme is a threat to their wellness, prosperity and liberty.

Consequently, Americans have tirelessly sought to be heard and heeded by the president and his Congress. The response has been worse than silence. Confronted with public dissent, the administration and Democrats have sought to silence opposition by establishing a taxpayer-funded White House cyber “snitch site”; attacks on the messengers of unwelcome facts and statistics; smears against citizens peaceably assembling to petition this government for the redress of grievances; demonizing and investigating private sector entities; and assaults against a cable television network (and, thereby, the First Amendment). No wonder the American people’s disapproval of the president, his Democratic Congress and their health redistribution scheme is plummeting.

We live in a people-powered world, one which is finally catching up to America’s revolutionary experiment in human freedom and self-government. Therefore, in opposing the Democrats’ fossilized model of government-run health care that usurps self-government, the public and Republicans embrace the communications revolution and a globalized marketplace that disdains and decentralizes massive, bureaucratic entities and empowers people as citizens and consumers. Consequently, we understand health care reform must match – not resist – these economic and communications advances by decentralizing government to provide the sensible, affordable reforms that foster patient-centered wellness, which empowers American citizens to be consumers of health care through transparency and free market forces.

The heart of patient-centered wellness for our people-powered world is prudent, targeted, multi-track reforms that reduces costs by leveraging the communications revolution and market forces to increase the supply of health care amid rising demand. Immediate, obvious measures include reforming medical liability laws; ending exclusions for pre-existing conditions; expanding health savings accounts; providing tax credits for purchasing private health insurance; allowing association health plans; permitting health insurance purchases across state lines; encouraging individuals to insure against changes in health status; incentivizing preventative health care; and applying information technology to enhance transparency and increase efficiencies. All this can be achieved without trillions in new spending, taxes and government-dictated, radical changes to Americans’ current health care.

For the less fortunate and most vulnerable amongst us, there must be an expansion of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), which will provide patients with preventive and routine treatment; and end underserved people’s use of emergency rooms for primary health-care treatments. Doctors and other health care professionals can be incentivized to provide their services at these clinics for either immediate or future considerations; and a “Patient Navigator” program attached to each FQHC can assist the underserved in accessing the health care system. This approach will build true, community-based health care and increase the power of economically disadvantaged patients to control their own health care. Finally, people suffering from “orphan diseases” – rare afflictions requiring a lifetime of special care – should be compassionately assisted through our nation’s social safety net.

Unfortunately, trapped in the past of a big government ideology and purblind to the people-empowering wonders of our globalized world, the president and his Democratic majority cavalierly dismiss such sensible, affordable approaches and determinedly toil behind closed doors to impose their radical health redistribution scheme on unwilling Americans. If they prevail, their health redistribution will impel higher costs, lower quality, fewer choices and – yes – lost jobs during this painful recession. There is a better way – patient-centered wellness for our people powered world.

More insurers are paying for alternative remedies

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By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione, Ap Medical Writer – 23 mins ago

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional Associated Press series on their use and potential risks.

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Acupuncture, not pain pills that “make me loopy,” is what Cynde Durnford-Branecki wants for her aching back, and a treatment costs her only a $20 copayment.

“If I didn’t have insurance, there’s no way I could afford to go,” said the 51-year-old graphic designer who lives in San Diego.

After years of being lobbied for more choice, insurers and employers increasingly are covering alternative therapies. There are even alternative “HMOs” — networks of nontraditional providers that sell services to big employers and individuals.

It is one of the last frontiers for moving alternative medicine into the mainstream, fans say. Some are pushing to require or expand coverage as part of health care reform.

Choice may sound like a good idea, but it can lead more people to use remedies they may not realize are of unproven value. It also can mean the people who use those treatments will wind up paying for them, rather than have their insurer pay for proven remedies. Here’s how:

_Insurers only cover a narrow range of alternative services for specific conditions where there is evidence of value, such as chiropractors for some types of back pain. But these services are marketed for many other uses that lack such proof, such as chiropractic treatments for asthma or ear infections, and acupuncture for high blood pressure or insomnia. Patients can be stuck with the tab, even though the provider is in their insurer’s network.

_Most insurers do not pay for herbals and dietary supplements because they are of unproven safety and worth. Yet some insurers, such as Aetna, let sellers advertise supplements to members, which can imply a benefit and coverage. Kaiser Permanente’s HMO carries many supplements in its pharmacies and allows its network doctors to “prescribe” ones that it then sells to members, who pay the full cost.

The result: Consumers who choose alternatives can wind up paying a greater share of their health care. Every person who chooses St. John’s wort instead of Prozac for depression, red yeast rice instead of Lipitor for lowering cholesterol, or an unproven therapy instead of a visit to a medical doctor, pays out of pocket and saves the insurer money.

Insurers insist that saving money is not their motivation for offering or promoting alternative remedies.

“In no way would it benefit Aetna to have our members using harmful things,” said Aetna spokeswoman Wendy Morphew.

Instead, these companies say they are offering the choice that consumers have long demanded, and a safer way to get supplements that people already are buying from sources of dubious quality.

“We’re not suggesting you buy this. But if you buy this, here is a place to get it safely,” said R. Douglas Metz, a chiropractor who is chief health services officer of American Specialty Health Inc., of San Diego.

It is the largest of about half a dozen firms that provide complementary and alternative medicine services to insurers, employers and individuals. Like an HMO, it has 15,000 chiropractors, 6,000 acupuncturists, 6,000 massage therapists and others in its network.

About 13 million Americans are covered or eligible to use its services, including Durnford-Branecki, who works for the firm.

Aetna became one of its customers two years ago. A recent Aetna newsletter told members they could get at least a 15 percent discount and free shipping on more than 2,400 health and wellness products offered through American Specialty, including vitamin and herbal supplements, aromatherapy products and homeopathic remedies.

“They offered a great program,” credentialing providers in their network and finding good supplement suppliers, said Robin Downey, head of product development for Aetna.

“We have members who come to us and ask us for these services. When we can get a discount for them, that’s something we are able to pass on,” although Aetna also recommends that members talk with their primary doctors about anything they plan to try, she said.

The discount program is “an offering,” not a recommendation to use a product, said Dr. Robert McDonough, who develops clinical policies for Aetna.

Metz, of American Specialty Health, said: “We only sell products for which there is no known evidence of risk. Our rule is, if a healthy person can safely take the product we will sell it.”

However, he sees great danger in people diagnosing and treating their own ailments, a mindset he described as “I’ve got a headache and I’m going to go on the Internet and see if there’s a dietary supplement that can help me.”

Metz also does not use any of these remedies himself.

“The sense that dietary supplements are safe because they’re natural is not something that I believe,” he said.

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

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Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees’ Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.