Americans strongly support what the new health care law does. But a new poll out today shows we still have ways to go in fully informing the public about the law — particularly on the "individual mandate" in the face of continued right-wing attacks on health reform. Here’s how to talk about it.

The new health care law simply makes sure everyone takes charge of their own care and gets affordable insurance — because when people without it get sick, the costs get passed down to the rest of us. You can keep the coverage you have. Or if you don’t like your plan or don’t have one, you can pick an affordable insurance option to take personal responsibility for yourself and your family.

Having everyone take responsibility for their own care started as a Republican idea and Americans strongly support what the new health care law does.Everyone can take charge of their own care OR the rest of us can keep paying more when people with no health insurance get sick.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Over 60% of Americans support the individual responsibility provision after they are informed most Americans would still get their health coverage through their employers and thus wouldn’t be affected by the mandate.
• Americans’ support for the individual responsibility provision also goes up when they learn that:
  • Without it, people might wait until they are seriously ill to obtain coverage, driving up insurance costs for everyone.
  • Without it, insurers could refuse to cover sick people.
  • People would be excused from having to buy insurance if the cost would consume too large a share of their income.
  • For health insurance to work, it’s necessary to include people who are healthy to help pay for those are sick.
• What’s unpopular is the health care system we had before — Americans overwhelmingly agreed it was broken.
• On health care, the American people trust President Obama more than Republicans in Congress by a 9 point margin.
• The Affordable Care Act is already helping millions of American families and businesses, including:
  • Nearly 90 million Americans who took advantage of the new health law’s prevention benefits last year.
  • Nearly 3 million seniors with Medicare who saved $1.5 billion on their medicines and 24 million who took advantage of the new preventive care benefit last year;
  • 4 million small businesses that can now claim tax credits for providing health coverage to their employees; and
  • Up to 17 million children with pre-existing conditions who now cannot be denied coverage.
  • 2.5 million more young adults who are now covered through their parents’ health insurance as they finish school or look for a job.
    

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Electronic Medical Records is the future. We have been in  the computer dominated world for the last several decades. What has been necessary for a long time is the alliance between computers, Medical Records Software, and their symbiotic ability to increase efficiencies in our medical deliver services.

Picture a Nursing Home Software of today. A company like Optimus EMR has the resources and knowledge base with their software to make it an efficient enterprise. With the baby boomers now retiring and filling these nursing homes and with limited budgets, then efficiency is of essence. The ability to automate records and establishing complete databases on all medical information is where these efficiencies would be realized from.

Make no mistake. The only solution our medical efficiency problem is computer medical software. OptimusEMR as a leader in the electronic medical records (EMR) industry has the preferred solution.  They develop software for hospitals that provides assistance in helping to organize information about patients, in order to allow other hospitals to have easily accessible information about them and thus preventing and ensuring that no information will be lost.

As the deadline nears for health insurance companies to return nearly $1.4 billion to consumers for wasting our money, the lobbyists have moved in to stop it.

Two bills have surfaced in Congress to undermine our rebates, putting most of the money we deserve right back into insurance company pockets!

We’re not going to let the lobbyists have their way. And we need you, and anyone you know who’s concerned about skyrocketing health insurance costs, to join us.

Tell Congress: Hold the health insurance companies accountable. It’s our money!

One of the most pro-consumer rules in the national health reform law is aimed squarely at how insurance companies spend our money. If an insurance company spends more than 20 percent of our premium dollars on their CEO salaries, paperwork, marketing and sales costs, we get a rebate, or lower rates.

The deadline for the first round of rebate checks is August 1. And it’s estimated insurers owe 9 million Americans nearly $1.4 billion! That’s a REAL incentive for companies to tighten their belts and get costs under control – just like the rest of us are having to do. 

We’re launching a nationwide campaign to support this common-sense rule in health reform and prevent it from being gutted by lobbyists and others. If you’ve ever been frustrated by a health insurance company that seems accountable to no one, now is the time to speak out.

Send your message now! It’s time consumer voices drown out the lobbyists!

This is shaping up as an epic battle, because we know the insurance companies don’t want to give our money back. Please take action, and stay engaged with us as we continue to fight for value in health insurance.

DeAnn Friedholm, PrescriptionforChange.org
Consumers Union, Policy and Action from Consumer Reports
1101 17th Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036

Thanks for the post from Nora Mccoy

I truly could not remember the last time our family needed a break like we did this week. Our lives have been non-stop for almost two weeks now and we were all to the point of collapse. I just hate it when life takes a sharp turn suddenly out of nowhere and you’re left wondering what the heck just happened. We had spent loads of time out of town due to an ill family member and the kids had loads of work to make up. The house was beyond recognition and I worked my tail off to get our lives back where it belonged. By the time Friday rolled around, I had had it. This entire crew needed some rest and relaxation and I needed to make it happen. I had the idea to go to http://www.expertsatellite.com/direct-tv/direct-tv-saint-petersburg-florida.html and order a movie for my family and I to enjoy later in the evening. It was going to be great to take a break and catch our breaths together for the first time in weeks. To top it off, the pizza I ordered kept me out of the kitchen and in the same room with my family.

The Swiss Government’s Remarkable Report on Homeopathic Medicine

Dana Ullman Evidence Based Homeopath

Posted: 02/15/2012 8:56 am

The Swiss government has a long and widely-respected history of neutrality, and therefore, reports from this government on controversial subjects need to be taken more seriously than other reports from countries that are more strongly influenced by present economic and political constituencies. When one considers that two of the top five largest drug companies in the world have their headquarters in Switzerland, one might assume that this country would have a heavy interest in and bias toward conventional medicine, but such assumptions would be wrong.

In late 2011, the Swiss government’s report on homeopathic medicine represents the most comprehensive evaluation of homeopathic medicine ever written by a government and was just published in book form in English (Bornhoft and Matthiessen, 2011). This breakthrough report affirmed that homeopathic treatment is both effective and cost-effective and that homeopathic treatment should be reimbursed by Switzerland’s national health insurance program.
The Swiss government’s inquiry into homeopathy and complementary and alternative (CAM) treatments resulted from the high demand and widespread use of alternatives to conventional medicine in Switzerland, not only from consumers but from physicians as well. Approximately half of the Swiss population have used CAM treatments and value them. Further, about half of Swiss physicians consider CAM treatments to be effective. Perhaps most significantly, 85 percent of the Swiss population wants CAM therapies to be a part of their country’s health insurance program.

It is therefore not surprising that more than 50 percent of the Swiss population surveyed prefer a hospital that provides CAM treatments rather to one that is limited to conventional medical care.

Beginning in 1998, the government of Switzerland decided to broaden its national health insurance to include certain complementary and alternative medicines, including homeopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, anthroposophic medicine, and neural therapy. This reimbursement was provisional while the Swiss government commissioned an extensive study on these treatments to determine if they were effective and cost-effective. The provisional reimbursement for these alternative treatments ended in 2005, but as a result of this new study, the Swiss government’s health insurance program once again began to reimburse for homeopathy and select alternative treatments. In fact, as a result of a national referendum in which more than two-thirds of voters supported the inclusion of homeopathic and select alternative medicines in Switzerland’s national health care insurance program, the field of complementary and alternative medicine has become a part of this government’s constitution (Dacey, 2009; Rist, Schwabl, 2009).

Dana Ullman: The Swiss Government’s Remarkable Report on Homeopathic Medicine

Health Care Fraud Judgments: Federal Authorities Recovered $4.1 Billion In 2011

By By KELLI KENNEDY 02/13/12 06:37 PM ET

MIAMI — Federal authorities say they recovered $4.1 billion in health care fraud judgments last year, a record high which officials on Monday credited to new tools for cracking down on deceitful Medicare claims.

The recovered funds are up roughly 50 percent from 2009. Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were expected to make the announcement at a news conference Tuesday.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services told The Associated Press that agencies are doing a better job of screening providers before they get in the system and have beefed up enrollment requirements. Now investigators are conducting site visits to make sure moderate risk providers have a legitimate office. Higher risk providers are also subject to fingerprint and criminal background checks.

Authorities have long said the solution to solving the nation’s estimated $60 billion to $90 billion a year Medicare fraud problem lies in vigorously screening providers and stopping payment to suspicious ones.

They also say it is important to end the antiquated system of paying the claims then chasing suspicious ones. By the time officials catch on to bogus billing patterns, crooks typically dump that provider ID and open a new one, or flee the country. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has come under fire for lax screening as violent criminals and mobsters are also getting involved, seeing the fraud as more lucrative than dealing drugs and having less severe criminal penalties.

Halting Medicare fraud has become even more paramount as the scams that once bilked $1 million or $2 million a decade ago have morphed into sophisticated multimillion dollar networks involving doctors, patient recruiters and patients.

"Fighting fraud is one of our top priorities and we have recovered an unprecedented number of taxpayer dollars," Sebelius said in a statement. "Our efforts strengthen the integrity of our health care programs, and meet the president’s call for a return to American values that ensure everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules."

Federal health officials said Monday they are also doing a better job of sharing data with other agencies.

Officials credited the spike in recovered funds in part to strike force teams set up in fraud hot spots around the country, including Miami, Detroit and Los Angeles.

Health Care Fraud Judgments: Federal Authorities Recovered $4.1 Billion In 2011