Today I attended the Commonwealth's Club presentation by Mike Leavitt, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Below are my notes - the facts as presented. Leavitt wore a conservative dark-grey suit and red tie; he made few hand gestures, told a couple of bad jokes, made some incoherent segues, and his speech (unofficially entitled, "Making Peace between Priceless and Pricely") was laden with grammatical errors - a Bushman, through and through.People living below 200% of the poverty level ($14-16K annual income; PL=$7-8K annual income) do not have to pay for emergency room visits.
As a result of Katrina, 1.4 million people lost their prescription records. Within one week, the federal government was able to reconstruct patients' medical records so those displaced persons could retrieve their prescriptions at pharmacies nationwide.
Medicare Part D pays at least half of Rx bills for life. Read the Gray Panthers take on Medicare Part D
here.
Overall healthcare comprises about 8% of the GDP (3% owing to Medicare alone).
Obesity and its consequences (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) are the biggest health concerns facing the nation.
The government is looking forward to a universal computer-based record system which will replace the clipboards we are all given at clinic visits. Currently there are several computer-based record systems used by hospitals. As a function of differing technology, many of these systems cannot communicate with each other (see:
Leavitt's railroad analogy), so patient information is often duplicated, at best, and omitted, at worst.
There was some talk of Health Savings Accounts - I'm unsure of the structure of this program. It suggested best use was by healthy, young adults.
Someone asked if birth control pills would be covered by Medicare (I had no idea they, or any other form of contraception,
weren't covered - when I was working for Planned Parenthood in the early nineties, contraception was covered by
MediCal), and Leavitt responded (not
sic), "I don't know. There is talk of that on Capitol Hill, but I haven't been included in those discussions."
The talk turned to the Avian Epidemic (
H5N1), and Leavitt proposed local responsibility (with federal funding) for "social distancing" (a kinder way of saying, "quarantine"). He stated (in his best Bernie Taupin) that although the funds may be available to provide every citizen with a vaccine, there was not yet a feasible way to "put pills into the palms of people." At which point a Mensan behind me quipped, "just mail 'em."
