In the continuing saga of the high cost of prescription drugs, a report in Business Insurance last week announced that Boston launched a drug reimportation program. It’s a pilot program so far, but in taking this step, Boston becomes the largest municipality to defy federal law against drug imports. The pilot is currently restricted to Boston employees and retirees. Mayor Menino estimates that it will save more than $1 million in the first year.
The issue of drug imports isn’t just a controversial one here – some in Canada are expressing concern over the Boston deal too, fearing that it may lead to Canadian prescription drug shortages.
For more information, see past posts:
More on the prescription drug saga
Ouch! Pain drugs or drug pains
Posts Tagged ‘health care costs’
Boston pilot to import prescription drugs from Canada
Monday, August 2nd, 2004Cover the Uninsured Week
Thursday, May 13th, 2004Thanks to Ross at The Bloviator for informing us that we are midway into the Cover the Uninsured Week, and that more than 20 million workers lack health insurance.
Ross provides a link to a 57-page state-by-state analysis of Americans without health insurance (PDF) commissioned by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and conducted by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center located at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. It uses data from the CDC’s 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Pages 23 through 36 provide state-by-state tables on uninsured rates for adults, comparisons of the uninsured by ethnicity, rates of both insured and uninsured who do not have a personal doctor or health care provider, and other important data. Texas has the dubious distinction of leading the nation with 27% uninsured working adults.
In conjunction with the week’s activities, the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a study that examines the cost of medical care for the uninsured and how much care they receive compared to fully insured people.
The study reports:
“Uninsured Americans could incur nearly $41 billion in uncompensated health care treatment in 2004, with federal, state and local governments paying as much as 85 percent of the care, according to a new Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) study. Even with uncompensated care, the study shows that people uninsured for the entire year can expect to receive about half as much care as people fully insured.
“Another major finding of the study, authored by Urban Institute researchers Jack Hadley and John Holahan, is that if the country provided coverage to all the uninsured, the cost of additional medical care provided to the newly insured would be $48 billion – an increase of 0.4 percent in health spending
Trading tax cuts for health care?
Sunday, April 11th, 2004How important is health care to the average American? We certainly knew it was important, but an article in bizjournals about a recent poll on health care conducted by the Commonwealth Fund drove the point home: It is apparently important enough that “62 percent of Americans would be willing to give back all of the recent federal tax cuts in exchange for universal health insurance coverage.”
And also on the topic of health care coverage or the lack of it, read 10 Myths of the Uninsured, testimony presented to a congressional committee by economist Len Nichols, Ph.D., vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). He pokes holes in many common assumptions about health care, including the idea that American businesses pay $400 billion a year to provide coverage for workers, stating that “Economists believe that ultimately most workers end up paying for health insurance in the form of lower wages.” Thanks to Pulse for pointing us to this article.
George’s Employment Blawg also has a good post on health care issues, including a link to a report entitled Health Care Benefit Crisis: Cost Drivers and Strategic Solutions (note: 30 page pdf file) by Eric Parmenter of Grant Thornton. We will quote George in summarizing it:
Packed with facts and figures, this document begins with a comprehensive, yet concise analysis of sources of increases in health care benefit costs, including: the aging of the baby boomers, costs of new technology, legislative initiatives such as HIPAA, “managed-care saturation,” “direct-to-consumer prescription marketing,” “insurance industry consolidation and profit-taking,” our “litigious society,” poor health care quality, “preventable and avoidable accidents and health problems,” lack of insurance, and “consumer cost insulation.”
Rounding out our reading on the health care crisis, Tom Mayo at HealthLawBlog updates us on recent developments on the issue of drug costs. Tom says: “Who knows? Maybe drug costs will be the leading edge of a health-care reform movement that drags the country, kicking and screaming, into universal coverage (maybe single-payer, but probably not).”
