VermontSkylinewithTitle.jpg

Healthcare - Shumlin's War on Doctors

Home | Issues and Solutions Summary | Healthcare - Shumlin's War on Doctors | Healthcare -Devastating Diagnosis - 2017 | Energy - Troubled Wind ! | Unemployment - "The Numbers Game!" | Education - Not Just Change...Improvement! | Vermont's Hapless Pitchman! | Voting Rights and Responsibilities | Who the Heck is H. Brooke Paige?
Shumlin's War on Doctors and their Patients !

by H. Brooke Paige

Peter Shumlin's Single Payer Partners?
StoogesDoctorsShumlinCareTEXT.jpg
With the first phase of Peter Shumlin’s death march toward “single payer” healthcare now behind us, it is time to take stock of what has been achieved and the costs of the achievement. First of all it is beyond dispute that not one person has been or will ever be treated by Vermont Health Connect or Green Mountain Care, these are merely political vehicles to achieve political objective of seizing command of the medical resources currently under the control of independent organizations. The goal is achieved by removing the insurers and employers from the healthcare financing equation and inserting the state government and the Green Mountain Care Board’s actuaries and payment clerks between the patient and their physician as if these functionaries are better prepared to choose the best patient treatment than the medical profession with eight or more years of medical schooling, years of experience and has actually examined the patient.
 .
The real battle is not over providing the highest and best healthcare outcomes for all the citizens of Vermont that is alluded to by the “universal care” label. True “universal care” is a fantasy that is impossible to accomplish without unlimited resources and the “single payer” label only identifies a system devoid of competition. This is exactly what Shumlin and his social architects desire to achieve. Shumlin-care is based upon the federal legislation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) passed in 2010, here I assume that Shumlin and his minions are aware of the numerous parts of the PPACA and their implications and impositions on the medical profession that we will now examine.For years the federal and state governments have interfered with the medical “marketplace” restricting competition between medical institutions and professionals as well a prohibiting interstate competition in the healthcare insurance business.. In Vermont, Certificates of Need (CON) are another regulation that inhibits competition and keeps cost artificially high.
 .
Additionally, government has placed significant financial burdens on healthcare providers through numerous regulations and mandating them to provide patient care without reimbursement. Finally the failure to implement tort reforms to reign in the out-of-control medical liability industry facilitated by a compliant judicial system which adds approximately twenty-five percent to healthcare costs.The threat of medical liabilities have pitted hospitals, nurses, surgeons, doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers and durable medical product providers against one another, in a bizarre adversarial relationship – each positioning themselves to be held blameless when  inevitable “errors and omissions” occur. One common example of this is “physician brownouts” where hospitals use peer review panels to shift liability to the physicians and away from nurses, assistants or systemic errors where the hospital would be found responsibility for its agents.  
 .
Politicians are keen on deflecting blame from themselves to the healthcare insurance providers – making them the straw man for uncontrollable healthcare costs. Frequently these are the same organizations that provide life, home, auto, business, workman’s compensation and personal liability coverage – yet they there is no criticism of these protections. All insurance is a pooling of risks with the insurer administering the premiums and claim disbursements with a reserve to cover administrative costs. There is no difference between health insurance and auto insurance – it is the politicians that have vilified the industry as a devious distraction. 
Beyond the vilification of insurers and the burdens of frivolous litigation, both the state and federal governments have imposed an “alphabet” stew of requirements and regulations upon medical providers – these procedures and protocols have failed to meaningfully improve patient care or outcomes, however the have significantly increased their financial and administrative encumbrances.Here are just a few of these legal requirements that provide little in improved care but greatly burden medical providers:
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Several years ago the medical profession was compelled to implement a comprehensive system of recordkeeping under the pretext of cost savings. After five years, the system has proven of little benefit to patient care and all providers have found it necessary to maintain extensive physical documentation (paperwork) to efficiently review and evaluate patient diagnosis and outcomes. Physicians invested between $50,000 and $100,000 to implement their EMR systems and continue to experience ongoing costs for computer maintenance and routine “upgrades”.
Emergency Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) Enacted in 1986, to ensure public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. Section 1867 of the Social Security Act imposes specific obligations on Medicare-participating hospitals that offer emergency services to provide a medical screening examination (MSE) when a request is made for examination or treatment for an emergency medical condition (EMC), including active labor, regardless of an individual's ability to pay. Hospitals are then required to provide stabilizing treatment for patients with EMCs.  Hospitals that accept Medicare/Medicaid patients are compelled to provide universal care.
Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986  (HCQIA)  The act was passed to, ostensibly, protect the public from incompetent physicians by allowing those physicians on peer review committees to communicate in an open and honest environment and thus weed out incompetent physicians, without the specter of a retaliatory lawsuit by the reviewed physician. However, over time the provisions have been transformed into a vehicle that promotes an environment that protects those physicians on a peer review committee who choose to distort the review process for their own gain, by maliciously disciplining physicians that may be in political or economic competition.
 .
Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (HIPDB) This information base was established under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), acting through the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the United States Attorney General (USAG) HIPDB was created to combat fraud and abuse in health insurance and health care delivery. The database contains information regarding civil judgments, criminal convictions, or actions by federal or state licensing agencies against a health care provider, supplier, or practitioner related to the delivery of a health care item or service. In 2013, the National Practitioner Data Base (NPDB) and the information services of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) were consolidated into HIPDB eliminating substantial overlaps among the systems. Formerly the NPDB had been proprietary information for the healthcare industry however the consolidation made the information more widely available HIPDB acts as a clearinghouse for information related to the professional conduct and competence of physicians, nurses, dentists and other health care practitioner  to support professional peer review by encouraging hospitals, state licensing boards, professional societies, and other health care entities to identify and discipline health care practitioners who engage in unprofessional conduct and contains information about health care practitioners’ malpractice payments, adverse licensure actions, restrictions on professional membership, and negative privileging actions by hospitals.
 .
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Enacted in 1996, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. The act gives the right to privacy to individuals under 18, but at or above 12. The provider must have a signed disclosure from the affected before giving out any information on provided health care to anyone, including parents. This portion of the act has caused significant problem during emergencies and impeded in identifying lost and injured patients who are unable to identify themselves. HIPPA standards are intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's health care system by encouraging the widespread use of the data base while maintaining security and privacy.
Healthcare Common Procedure Code System (HCPCS), originally the Common Procedure Coding System (HCFA) administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).The system was established in 1978 to provide a standardized coding system for describing the specific items and services provided in the delivery of health care reimbursement for Medicare, Medicaid and other health insurance programs to ensure that insurance claims are processed in an orderly and consistent manner. Initially, use of the codes was voluntary, but with the implementation of HIPAA) the use of  HCPCS for transactions involving health care information became mandatory. International Classification of Diseases (ICD) established by the World Health Organization (WHO) was designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of mortality statistics  and provides a format for reporting causes of death on the death certificate. The coding supposedly improves the usefulness of mortality statistics by giving preference to certain categories, by consolidating conditions, and by systematically selecting a single cause of death from a reported sequence of conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and DHSS have mandated that the ICD will replace the HCPIC codes to identify illnesses and injuries for administrative and billing purposes. Currently ICD-9, a system of 13,000 identifiers, is used throughout the U.S. medical field. Unless rescinded ICD-10CM/PCs, a wholly new and different system of 70,000 identifiers, will replace ICD-9 in October of 2014. Most in the medical community believe that the new system will “dramatically slow doctors work due to the unnecessary complexity” and volume of different codes and subsets that must be learned and used.
 .
Saving the worst for last!
Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MPAC) This congressional committee is responsible for setting reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid patient treatment. It is also used as a base line by the healthcare insurance industry and others to calculate their allowable reimbursements. Green Mountain Care has adopted a reimbursement schedule pegged at 105% of the Medicare, MPAC rate. On April 21, 2014; proposed $500 billion in Medicare cuts to be accomplished through rate reductions of 25% for general practitioners and 50% for specialists implemented in steps over the next five years. The current Medicare rates barely cover providers out of pocket (variable) cost and fail to contribute to overhead and investment (fixed) costs – the revised rates are untenable and will result in the blanket refusal of Medicare, Medicaid and GMC patients.
Conclusion If Shumlin or Obama truly sought to reduce healthcare costs and improve the delivery of services, there were many areas that cried for change – from tort reform and eliminating ineffective regulation to increasing competition in both healthcare delivery and insurance. The free market complemented by charitable and governmental support for those unable to pay for healthcare on their own would have been far better plan than disrupting and destroying the quality system currently in place – the best healthcare in the world.
Shumlin’s Green Mountain Care like the PPACA are ill-conceived and have been poorly executed by individuals with little knowledge or experience in the healthcare delivery or insurance industries. Their failure is by design since their objective is not to provide a improved system to pay for care, but to take control of the healthcare delivery system, substituting socialized “single payer” with its necessary rationed care.They feign that they seek to reduce costs and provide universal coverage – their efforts will accomplish neither. Everyone who works in the medical field or relies on them for treatment will be injured – both financially and by reduced quality of care.
This is truly a War on Doctors and their Patients.

BrookeandBallotBoxFIX.jpg

H. Brooke Paige for Governor and Attorney General

P.O. Box #41, Washington, Vermont 05675-0041

This website is designed, scripted and paid for by the candidate.