Junk food makers may be open to national limits in schools

Rising childhood obesity rates and easing resistance from the food industry may result in meaningful national legislation to limit junk food in schools according to today’s Washington Post. CT was a national leader in 2005 passing a ban on soda in schools, which was vetoed by the Governor. In 2006, the legislature passed and the Governor signed a similar ban that included incentives for schools to meet nutritional food standards. Since then a dozen states have passed similar laws. According to the liquid candy calculator from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a one cent tax per 12 oz. non-diet soda in CT could raise $18 million/year; obesity costs CT over a billion dollars annually, over half of that in Medicaid.
Ellen Andrews

CT on health reform.gov

On Friday, President Obama’s website tracking health care reform published state-specific pages making the case for reform. CT’s numbers aren’t surprising, but it’s another source for info. Family premiums in CT approximately equal the entire wages of a full time minimum wage worker. Employers offering coverage is dropping, health care costs are skyrocketing, and the quality of our care is average.

My pet peeve with these collections from national sources (and it’s not just the White House) – we are not “Connecticuters”. I’ve lived in CT thirty four years and never heard that word. Are national reformers talking to anyone outside the beltway, beyond Massachusetts I mean?
Ellen Andrews

Senate passes a budget, Governor expected to veto

Yesterday the Senate passed a Democratic budget spending $35.5 billion over the next two years. The fiscal year ends next Tuesday. The Democratic budget saves health coverage for legal immigrants, the current definition of medical necessity for Medicaid, and increases cigarette taxes by 75 cents per pack to $2.75. The budget also takes $50 million from HUSKY HMO rates, based on an audit by the Comptroller’s Office finding that the HMOs are overpaid by 5 to6%; that cut was also included in the Governor’s latest budget proposal. Five Democratic Senators and all the Republicans voted against the bill. The House will vote on the bill today. The Governor has signaled that she will veto it.
Ellen Andrews

SustiNet rally and vigil

Tuesday the SustiNet and Health Care Partnership bills were delivered to the Governor for her to sign (hopefully). The next day, the Interfaith Fellowship for Universal Health Care organized a vigil and rally to encourage the Governor to sign the bill. They started with a vigil outside the Governor’s office and then walked from there, wearing red SustiNet T-shirts and carrying signs, to the Governor’s mansion in Hartford, where about 65 people gathered for the rally. Two state legislators participated in the event, Rep. Betsy Ritter (Waterford and Montville) and Tim Rep. O’Brien (New Britain and Newington). There were a few speakers and a lot of chanting. We hope that showing our support at this rally demonstrates to the Governor how strongly we feel about having this bill signed into law.
Jen Ramirez

Former insurance executive tells the truth

We haven’t been blogging much on national health reform here at CT Health Notes. No need for it – that space is crowded with great blogs at the national level. Like everyone else, we’ve been following them and “official” developments closely. But yesterday something extraordinary happened. A former insider at two large insurance companies opened his testimony on Capitol Hill with

“My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years, I worked as a senior executive at
health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump
the sick – all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors. I know from
personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to
question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers
make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed
to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand—or even
to obtain—information we need.”

He went on to say,

“The average family doesn’t understand how Wall Street’s dictates determine
whether they will be offered coverage, whether they can keep it, and how much
they’ll be charged for it.”

He describes the single minded priority within companies for ever-rising stock values and profit. Investors are only interested in earnings per share and medical loss ratios. Not only is his testimony a refreshing and detailed look at how insurance companies do business, it is good reading. He must have been very good as chief of communications.
The industry’s responses are about what you’d expect.
Ellen Andrews

Governor vetoes common sense consumer protection

There is a loophole in the current CT law that doesn’t allow insurance companies to cancel your health insurance policy just when you need it. But Monday the Governor vetoed a bill to close that loophole. In 2007, CT passed PA 07-113, An Act Concerning Postclaims Underwriting, which was meant to stop insurers from claiming that consumers hadn’t disclosed something in their application conveniently just when the consumer became ill and the insurer is facing big bills. Lawsuits in other states found that some insurers had entire departments devoted to these investigations and paid bonuses to employees for finding excuses to rescind costly policies. The 2007 CT law requires insurers to do their investigations at the time of the application. If they approve someone and start taking the premiums, they have to cover them – except in cases of intentional fraud obviously. Unfortunately, CT’s insurance department interprets the law to exclude cases where insurers hadn’t done their job and examined consumers’ medical records at the time of application. How convenient is it to just take premiums from everyone and only do the work of investigating when someone files a claim. This year's bill, PA 09-135, An Act Clarifying Postclaims Underwriting, was meant to fix that. CT’s State Healthcare Advocate Kevin Lembo characterized the Governor’s action as “among the most callous veto messages I’ve ever seen from this Governor.” “Nowhere in her veto message is there a recognition of the impact on a patient lying in a hospital bed whose policy has been ripped away. No concern for people losing their homes or foregoing life-saving treatment because an insurance company decided it was too expensive.”
Ellen Andrews

Physician signing bonuses favor primary care, but salaries still lag

A new report on physician searches by a large recruiter shows a growing use of bonuses to attract providers. The strongest growth in searches is among family practice, general internal medicine and pediatrics. 85% of searches include signing bonuses averaging $24,850. 98% also include relocation allowances averaging $10,427. Other incentives include continuing medical education pay, malpractice, health insurance, retirement, disability and educational loan forgiveness. Family practice slots were the most common searches at 595, up from 297 in 2005/6. Starting salaries for family practice physicians averaged $173,000 (up 19% from 2005/6), for internists $186,000 (up 15%), and for pediatricians $171,000 (up 13%). Not bad, but specialists still make far more -- $401,000 for urologists, $419,000 for cardiologists, and $481,000 for orthopedic surgeons. The mean US annual wage for registered nurses is $65,130. The report covered searches for 3,800 physicians and nurse anesthetists between April 2008 and March of this year across 47 states including CT.
Ellen Andrews