By 2030, 42% of Americans will be obese and 11% of Americans will be severely obese, Duke University and CDC researchers predict.
These shocking numbers actually are conservative, note study researchers Eric A. Finkelstein, PhD, and colleagues.
Finkelstein’s team based its calculations on self-reportedweight and height from people participating in the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Obesity is defined by body mass index (BMI). People tend to underestimate their weight and overestimate their height. The researchers corrected for this. They also factored in state-by-state trends in factors affecting obesity, such as the number of fast-food restaurants per person and the cost of unhealthy, calorie-dense foods vs. healthy foods.
American sickcare is sick for a number of reasons. One is that it is highly profitable to manage chronic lifestyle diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, while it is essentially profitless to encourage healthy lifestyles based on diet, fitness and positive mental health practices.
As a result, sickcare has zero interest (other than lip-service) in fostering (or emphasizing) prevention or in providing an integrated system of health which starts with what we do and eat every day.
This chart describes a few of the causal factors:
It’s also highly profitable to turn people into couch-potato media addicts who are also hooked on sugary, fatty, salty snacks, fast food and packaged food. Convincing people a handful of pills is all they need to restore health is also highly profitable.
The U.S. has seemingly intractable lifestyle-related health issues that sickcare simply isn’t dealing with effectively; it can even be argued that sickcare is actively making the problems worse in a multitude of structural ways. 86% of Workers Are Obese or Have Other Health IssueJust 1 in 7 U.S. workers is of normal weight without a chronic health problem.
If you don’t think chronic ill-health and the 8% sickcare VAT is a threat to national security, please consider this slideshow map of the U.S. which depicts the obesity epidemic on a state-by-state basis:
Here’s the key question: what else could we do with the $1 trillion that we currently squander every year on fraud, paper-pushing, duplicate/useless tests, highly addicitive prescription drugs, etc.? That $1 trillion is the 8% sickcare VAT. That’s enough to reduce the Federal deficit to a manageable level.
The second question is: is there a more effective way to spend the other $1.5 trillion we spend on healthcare? Answer: obviously yes. We could start by understanding health is integrated with lifestyle, diet, fitness and our environment, and that relying on quasi-monopolistic cartels and Federal agencies to provide “solutions” is what got us in this quagmire in the first place.
Our national security and fiscal viability both depend on radically transforming sickcare before it brings down the nation.
From Yahoo News
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer – Mon Oct 18
WASHINGTON – Aerospace giant Boeing is joining the list of companies that say the new health care law could have a potential downside for their workers.
In a letter mailed to employees late last week, the company cited the overhaul as part of the reason it is asking some 90,000 nonunion workers to pay significantly more for their health plan next year. A copy of the letter was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
“The newly enacted health care reform legislation, while intended to expand access to care for millions of uninsured Americans, is also adding cost pressure as requirements of the new law are phased in over the next several years,” wrote Rick Stephens, Boeing’s senior vice president for human resources.
Boeing is the latest major employer to signal a shift for its workers as a result of the legislation, which expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people and ranks as President Barack Obama’s top domestic achievement. Earlier, McDonald’s had raised questions about whether a limited benefit plan that serves some 30,000 of its employees would remain viable under the law. That prompted the administration to issue McDonald’s a waiver from certain requirements under the law.
Spokeswoman Karen Forte said the Boeing plan is more generous than what its closest competitors offer, and the company was concerned it would get hit with a new tax under the law.
The tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans doesn’t take effect until 2018, but employers are already beginning to assess their exposure because it is hefty: at 40 percent of the value above $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for a family plan.
“We want to manage our costs so this tax doesn’t apply to our plan, but that’s down the road,” said Forte. “If this health care law hadn’t passed, would we be making changes to the health care benefit? Absolutely. For competitive reasons.”
In the letter to Boeing employees, Stephens said out-of-control health care inflation is hampering Boeing’s ability to compete with other manufacturers. Its major civilian aviation competitor, Airbus, is based in Europe, where governments shoulder the burden of health care costs.
Stephens also cited lifestyle issues, such as people who are overweight and do not adequately exercise, as the third major reason for the cost shift. The health care law ranked second among the three, ahead of lifestyle factors.
Boeing said annual deductibles and copayments will increase for all its plans next year.
Deductibles, the share of medical costs that employees pay annually before their plan kicks in, will go up to $300 for individuals, an increase of $100. For families, the new deductible will be $900, an increase of $300.
In addition, Boeing is instituting a copayment of 10 percent after the deductible has been met. The copayment will rise to 20 percent in 2012.
Those changes will reduce the value of the Boeing plan, but it’s unclear whether that will allow the company to escape the tax looming in 2018.
“It’s certainly going to help,” said Forte. But “we are still slightly above market in what we offer to our employees.”
With nothing else working, President Barack Obama is asking religious leaders to help him sell the public on health care reform.
POLITICO listened in to an Oval Office conference call Tuesday, where Obama and top administration officials, beseeched thousands of faith-based and community organizations to preach the gospel on new insurance reforms, chiefly the Patients’ Bill of Rights.
“Get out there and spread the word,” Obama told leaders from across the religious spectrum on the conference call, organized by the Health and Human Services Center for Faith-Based and Community Partnerships.
“This is something that we’ll be able to look back on, just like we do on Medicare and Social Security, as a cornerstone that improves the security of millions of Americans, at the same time lowers costs and gets control of costs, both at the government level, but also for families and businesses,” he added.
Obama instructed faith leaders to treat the new law as settled fact and use their perches of power to convey that message to congregants and friends
Why your future healthcare is getting even more expensive… Apparently the healthcare bill is going to require payments of all kinds of sort, from every citizen and every company. Oopsy, the companies will pass these increased taxes and payments to the citizens of this country…
So here you go – more misery spread around by the wisdom of our great leaders, that voted the dumb healthcare reform (we needed a healthcare reform but the one that they voted is the wrong one)
Massachusetts medical-device companies say they’ll cut back on operational costs – and jobs – after a planned 2.3 percent tax on their products is implemented in 2013, according to a new survey.
The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, which held its annual meeting yesterday in Boston, said about 90 percent of the 100 medical-device firms said they would reduce costs due to the new tax tucked into the recently passed health-care reform bill.
The tax – imposed to help pay for the massive health-care industry overhaul and expansion – is “of the greatest concern” to a majority of its members, the survey found.
About 70 percent of the survey respondents said future innovation will be hurt by a new federal “physician sunshine bill.” The bill will require medical-device firms to report their marketing expenditures on physicians, and a recently passed gift-ban law in Massachusetts.
About 41 percent of the council’s members said the new health-care bill will help the industry by expanding the number of people getting health-care insurance.
But 42 percent said the new health-care reform bill won’t increase their business, the survey found.
In a stunning revelation Wednesday, several top U.S. corporations are seriously considering dropping employee health insurance coverage in light of what they see as the inevitable consequence of ObamaCare–skyrocketing costs.
The companies state that after their legal experts poured over the thousands of pages in the new law, it will cost them less to pay the fines for not providing healthcare coverage for employees than continuing to provide employer-paid health insurance benefits.
As a side-note to the announcement, the companies maintain that ObamaCare will result in a dramatic increase in expenses for providing employee coverage, with added costs skyrocketing to multi-billions of dollars.
According to Business Record:
“Additionally, the penalties to businesses for not offering coverage are less expensive than the cost of providing insurance, she said. “But for those that aren’t providing coverage now, this is a huge burden to them. And for employers that have a lot of employees working 30 hours (the threshold to be considered full- ime), you may have a lot of businesses cutting them back to 29 hours.”
Business Record maintains that despite this fact most companies will probably try to continue to provide coverage.
But a report issued today in Fortune Magazine and reported by CNN indicates that the dire warnings of ObamaCare critics concerning the consequences of approving the costly legislation are in fact well-founded.
The report points to internal documents from AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, and several other large corporations which show that executives are, in fact, looking at the option of dropping healthcare coverage for employees due to what they are sure will be unsustainable increases in costs. These costs will be so prohibitive that it would benefit the corporations to pay the government fines instead.
Just wait and see when the whole health insurance industry go down the drain…Universal government health coverage will become mandatory. Taking money from your hard earned paycheck for the good of the country…
Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.
In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state’s largest private insurer provided the Globe.
The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company’s data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions.
Other insurers could not produce such detailed information for short-term customers but said they have witnessed a similar pattern. And, they said, the phenomenon is likely to be repeated on a grander scale when the new national health care law begins requiring most people to have insurance in 2014, unless federal regulators craft regulations to avoid the pitfall.
“These consumers come in and get their service, and then they leave because current regulations allow them to do it,’’ said Todd Bailey, vice president of underwriting at Fallon Community Health Plan, the state’s fourth-largest insurer.
The problem is, it is less expensive for consumers — especially young and healthy people — to pay the monthly penalty of as much as $93 imposed under the state law for not having insurance, than to buy the coverage year-round. This is also the case under the federal health care overhaul legislation signed by the president, insurers say.
and the delivery….creation of jobs and entrepreneurship, but not in America!!! Mandatory health insurance purchase by the American citizens does spread the wealth around the world, all right!
Mumbai – With 22 pen strokes, President Obama signed into existence not just a historic healthcare reform law but also monumental piles of paperwork: New member registration forms. More claims. Ever-expanding databases. And on top of that, pressure to cut costs.
The bulge in administrative work may look like a nightmare to American insurance firms and government employees. But to outsourcing executives here in India, it’s heaven-sent. A number of Indian companies are already anticipating an increase in workload thanks to Obama’s healthcare law.
The addition of 32 million insured Americans is “very significant” for Indian outsourcers, says Ananda Mukerji, chief executive officer of Firstsource Solutions in Mumbai. Companies like his will see “increased opportunities” as US health insurers and hospitals scramble to reorganize to comply with the new law, he wrote in an email to the Monitor.
This extra work will include processing new enrollments, organizing bigger member databases, processing more claims, providing more support services, and managing more revenue, he says.
In particular, outsourcers can expect to benefit from insurers’ need to minimize administrative costs, Mr. Mukerji says, citing a recent Deloitte Center for Health Solutions study showing that up to 41 percent of the cost of a health plan is administrative.
The US healthcare reform offers a “natural extension” of the back-office outsourcing that Indian companies already specialize in, says Tu Packard, a senior economist with Moody’s Economy.com.
Outsourcing comes to America But some services in the US healthcare industry cannot be outsourced beyond America’s borders due to regulations. That’s one reason major Indian outsourcing firms have set up shop in the United States. In a twist, America’s outsourcers are now outsourcing back to America.
In 2008, Bangalore-based Wipro opened a development center in Atlanta that employs 500 people, mostly Americans, and runs a call center for a US healthcare client. Tata Consultancy Services has set up a similar campus with 300 employees near Cincinnati. Infosys is planning a subsidiary in Dallas that will hire locals and seek US government contracts.
Wipro, one of the world’s biggest information technology firms with nearly 100,000 employees worldwide, says the new healthcare law dovetails with two of its focus areas: servicing governments and servicing the healthcare industry. “The healthcare reform should translate to more demand,” says Rajiv Shah, Wipro’ssenior vice president for healthcare.
Wipro plans to double its workforce at the Atlanta office by 2013 and open campuses in other cities, says Suraj Prakash, a vice president at the company. “There will be enough work to be done in the US.”
Indian companies are working with U.S. insurers handling back-office operations, including claims processing, supply management and transcription services. The extension of health care to 32 million Americans over the next decade will mean that the need for those services will grow, executives here said.
“The health-care reform bill is a very, very big opportunity for us,” said Ananda Mukerji, managing director of Firstsource Solutions. He said about 40 percent of the company’s business comes from dozens of U.S. hospitals and insurance companies.
“A big part of what we do for the American companies is eligibility assessment services, where we assess eligibility of a patient for the Medicare program. We also work with hospitals to submit claims and enroll new patients. With the new bill, all this work will increase,” he said.
The new law requires some insurance companies to devote more of the premiums they receive to direct health care and away from administrative costs.
“The health-care . . . law will create a huge pressure on American insurance companies to cut costs,” said Rana Mehta, vice president of health care at Technopak, an independent consultancy firm in Gurgaon. “Ultimately it is a business decision to outsource. All this new work has to go somewhere, and India will gain.”
India’s outsourcing industry was shaken last year when President Obama declared that he wanted to change “a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you a create job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York.”
It has responded with new efforts to reach out to U.S. workers.
In anticipation of the health-care law, many Indian companies are establishing a toehold in the United States by negotiating mergers and acquisitions in recent months.
This month, Patni Computer Systems, India’s sixth-largest IT firm, set up an office in El Paso after a multimillion-dollar deal with a U.S. health-care company.
“We plan to use El Paso as a major hub to deliver health-care services that are required by regulators to keep sensitive data-processing operations onshore,” Sanjiv Kapur, head of Patni Business Process Outsourcing, said by e-mail.
Instead of “offshoring” work, Mukerji, of Firstsource Solutions, calls it “right-shoring,” combining employees in India and the United States. He said his company employs 2,000 Americans.
“President Obama made that famous statement about outsourcing of jobs last year,” Mukerji said. “Today, I would like to say to him that we have created jobs in both Buffalo and Bangalore.”
Then I remembered a story I heard a long time ago in which doctors were faxing or dictating medical diagnosis to Indian company and the medical errors that were resulting because of that.The article is from 2004 and the link to Daily Mail does not work, but think of the possibility that USA is following the path of the UK…
I remembered the story because of how hilarious was the case about the amputation.
It took me 15 minutes to find it again and bring it to you.
India’s image as a paragon of outsourcing took a severe beating last week after revelations of offshoring jobs gone awry shook the entire medical fraternity in the United Kingdom.
Facing an acute shortage of medical transcribers, eight hospitals in London decided to outsource transcription services. Instructions and letters were dictated into digital voice recorders and the files forwarded to a company called Omnimedical, which would then send the recordings to a team of transcribers in India.
In theory, it’s a straightforward process but reality proved otherwise. The mistakes in the transcriptions were so serious, it prompted the Association of Medical Secretaries to go public with spokesman Michael Fiennes citing several horrific examples in the Daily Mail: below knee amputation became “baloney amputation” and phlebitis (vein inflammation) left leg was changed to “flea bite his left leg”.
Hilarious? Not if such blunders cost lives.
This episode evoked memories of the venerable Ian Rush, one of Liverpool’s greatest strikers. Rush’s post-match TV interviews always proved tricky … due to his Welsh accent, “goal” was the only word I could usually decipher.
Football, or soccer as some call it, transcends linguistic and cultural barriers simply because all over the world, players apply the same set of rules. The motley mix of accents and colloquialism, however, means that the English language is open to local interpretation and can sometimes be incomprehensible.
On the surface, it may seem like the onus for patient safety lies in Omnimedical’s hands but it is the hospitals which should be held accountable.
They say the prime motivation behind outsourcing the workload is to provide better service to patients but they fail to address the ramifications of such a move.
The root cause behind the dearth of medical secretaries–a combination of low wages and dim career growth–has been skirted in favor of offshoring, the magic short-term solution.
The monthly wage of medical secretaries in India is reportedly one-third that of their British counterparts. The hospitals will argue that cost wasn’t the only factor in deciding to outsource. In fact, any suggestion that hospitals willfully put patients’ lives at risk would surely be met with furious rebuttals.
This is the peril of outsourcing to India, some camps might say. What if the destination was Australia, Scotland or the United States? Would that have made any difference?
The outsourcing of transcription services can be juxtaposed against the offshoring of call centers–the perennial favorite among many large enterprises. Some companies implement a “follow-the-sun” approach which seeks to ensure that customers from all continents are serviced 24 hours, seven days a week. Noble idea but frustrating when the operator can’t tell the difference between “today” and “to die” or when Toorak becomes “Two Rack”. Organizations which compromise on language and local knowledge will eventually pay the price. The question is at whose expense.
Companies say health care costs hard to swallow – In the first two days after the law was signed, three major companies — Deere & Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Valero Energy — said they expect to take a total hit of $265 million to account for smaller tax deductions in the future
AT&T to Book $1 Billion Cost on Health-Care Reform – AT&T, the biggest U.S. phone company, joins Caterpillar Inc., AK Steel Holding Corp. and 3M Co. in recording non-cash expenses against earnings as a result of the law. Health-care costs may shave as much as $14 billion from U.S. corporate profits, according to an estimate by benefits consulting firm Towers Watson. AT&T employed about 281,000 people as of the end of January
Deere in Obama’s Headlights – What do Caterpillar and John Deere have in common? Besides being America’s two biggest makers of heavy equipment, they have both announced huge increases in expenses due to ObamaCare
Pelosi: we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it:
Congressman John Dingell: Control The People:
Oh the charade….
SEN. MCCASKILL ADMITS DEMOCRATS ARE ‘OVERPROMISING’ ON HEALTH CARE:
may be not)
