Obama's budget puts $634B down on health care reform
President Obama this morning unveiled his first budget, which includes a $634 billion down payment on achieving universal health care for Americans.
Health care reform 'will not wait another year'
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his priority to provide universal health coverage and reduce health insurance costs, declaring before the joint session of Congress that "health-care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
For the most part, the health insurance community's reaction appears to be supportive, yet cautious. A statement from America's Health Insurance Plans concurs that insurers "strongly agree that comprehensive health care reform cannot wait. We will continue to offer workable solutions to ensure that all Americans have quality, affordable health care."
Other health care experts say the president needs to offer more concrete details on his plans. To read more of the article, click here.
Financial future uncertain for insured Americans
Kaiser Family Foundation released a poll finding that in the past 12 months nearly 53% of Americans have cut back on their health care due to cost concerns. For many, this means finding innovative — though often unsafe — alternatives.
For example, 35% of survey respondents are depending on home remedies or over-the-counter medication in order to avoid an expensive doctor's visit.
A similar percentage (34%) of respondents are neglecting their dental health, while one in four (27%) are putting off care altogether. Additionally, 21% of those polled have not filled prescriptions and 15% cut pills in half or skipped doses in hopes of making their prescriptions last longer, according to the KFF survey.
Some have begun to take more drastic measures to cut down on medical costs, including postponing health care when it was needed (27%) and delaying doctor visits for temporary illness (19%) or preventive care (19%). The most unsettling finding was the 16% who put off care for a serious problem, such as diabetes, or delaying a minor or major surgery.
On the other hand, those who could not afford seeing a doctor are accumulating more financial obstacles, as 19% have experienced serious money problems in recent times due to family medical bills, KFF found.
Thirteen percent report expending all or most of their savings on high medical bills in the past 12 months, with the same amount claiming that their medical debt will create difficulties in paying other bills.
With such intensive spending and job uncertainty, 45% of respondents are "very" worried about having to pay more for their health care or insurance — the highest proportion Kaiser has measured since late 2006.
Approximately four in ten individuals (38%) are very worried they may not be able to afford health care they need, especially if they believe someone in their household will lose a job this year (56%).
The survey polled over 1,000 adults and was conducted in February of 2009 by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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The Department of Labor created a COBRA Web page that provides links to the full text of the COBRA provisions in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provides a 65% federal subsidy for COBRA premiums for eligible individuals for up to nine months.
The Web page also offers documents that provide basic information on COBRA, targeting employees and employers. The DOL encourages visitors to subscribe to the new COBRA Web page because the agency plans on updating the page with new guidance and educational information and tools.
Also visit the IRS's Web page: COBRA: Answers for Employers.
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Congress confirms Solis as Labor Secretary
On Tuesday, the Senate voted 80-to-17 to confirm Congresswoman Hilda Solis of California as the new Secretary of Labor, ending more than a month of delays in approving her confirmation.
Republicans had expressed concerns over Solis' work for a pro-union organization and her husband's business failure to pay tax liens.
She will oversee an agency responsible for regulating nearly 700,000 retirement plans and 2.5 million health plans. The Department of Labor has an annual budget of about $53 billion and nearly 17,000 employees.
"Congress will once again put the Labor Department on the side of working people who deserve fair wages, safe workplaces, job training to compete and win in the global economy, and the right to organize and bargain collectively," says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in statement congratulating Solis.
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Tracking health care spending based on medical conditions
New medical research shows that heart conditions and mental disorders accounted for 17% and 9%, respectively, of health care spending in 2005, making the conditions the most costly to treat, reports the policy journal Health Affairs.
Analyzing various medical data, from 1996 through 2005, researchers tracked national health care spending for 32 medical conditions. In the journal article, researchers suggest that strong preventive care may explain why the spending growth rates were lowest for lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, coronary heart disease and stroke.
"The ability to track national health spending by medical condition should help identify conditions that account for large shares of spending and growth and that, therefore, deserve particular attention in our quest to improve value, manage growth and target prevention efforts," the researchers wrote.
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Money is the heart of the matter
With Valentine's Day now a fond memory and February winding down, it's still time to focus on American Heart Month, which Congress designated in 1963 as a reminder that, despite advances in medical science, cardiovascular diseases are still quite common.
The American Heart Association estimates that roughly 1.2 million Americans suffered a first or recurrent coronary attack in 2007. Although the group notes that the survival rate for a heart attack is now 67%, compared with 45% in 1950, there's still cause for alarm.
The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America is using American Heart Month as an educational opportunity for employers, brokers and other benefit decision-makers to examine what it calls "the impact that the heart can have on finances."
Barry Petruzzi, Guardian's second vice president of group benefits, notes that "the prevalence of ailments like heart disease and cancer, coupled with high survival rates, underscore the value of critical illness insurance. If we could hand a $5,000 or $10,000 check to a person as they recover from a heart attack, stroke or cancer diagnosis, few would argue against the fact that the money would go a long way to help with recovery," he adds.
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