Health Care Reform Legislation Update: Still no Word about Patient Safety

June 5th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Thus far there is still no word on patient safety from Congress. The Finance and HELP committees are still hammering and yammering about their respective versions of the Senate bill. The news hounds and talking heads are telling us that the big debate is still over single versus multi-payer health insurance and how we the people are going to pay the premiums despite the political rhetoric about drastic cost cutting measures. Tax the rich, tax the smokers and the fatties and so on. Yet there is still no discussion about patient safety standards and the AMA is fiercely lobbying against finding fault with the quality of care. The SEIU, the largest health care labor union in America, is leading many fights against management about maintaining safe staffing levels, but Dennis Rivera, the SEUI president, sat in that meeting with President Obama and the heads of the five families of organized medicine and signed the follow-up letter that said nothing about patient safety. It was disheartening to watch this longtime labor leader and proponent of health care quality participate in such a shameful charade.

Moreover, cost containment is another big issue being promulgated by the Obama administration. The President wants to lower the cost of acquiring health care coverage but anything short of a complete government takeover means that he has to intercede with the private HMO’s and force them to deflate their premiums. However, after nationalizing General Motors, and being criticized by Chavez and Castro for being too much of a left wing radical, President Obama will most probably shy away from a single party system. Therefore, he will have to pounce on the HMO’s to back off from their price gouging and make some drastic cuts. This is risky because the entire managed care infrastructure is built on the backs of the consumers with recommended procedures, equipment and supplies being arbitrarily and capriciously denied. Hence a reversal of price trends and the desperate greed for more profits will translate to more criminal behavior in denying paid-for benefits and blackmailing primary care physicians to treat conditions beyond their training and expertise.

Thus the Obama initiatives to decrease utilization, streamline the management of chronic disease and force HMO’s to cut administrative overhead are doable as long as quality remains a non-issue. What’s this? But Obama said that he was going to do all this while improving quality. Pundits argue that all of the above factors will make health care delivery more efficient, which is an oxymoron because the people who deliver health care are negligently killing 200,000 of their customers every year. How is President Obama going to improve quality by throwing less money at an industry that has performed so badly with more? Actually, there is a way to do it if by some miracle he can listen to the voices in the wilderness and propose that Congress include patient safety standards with proscribed civil criminal penalties for those whose willful non-compliance causes injury or death. Alas, but the President has not answered my email as of this date, so I have no way of knowing whether he will ever know about the above suggestion.

In conclusion, given that the President and his Congress chose to remain apparently oblivious to the massive number of unnecessary deaths and injuries due to medical, nursing and hospital administrative negligence, the term “health care reform” no longer applies. We need to rename it “health insurance reform”.

Other Internet Media Sources:

Joseph M. Smith center among grant recipients

Health care crippling the economy

Health Care Cost-Containment Details Issued to White House

Advocate exec: Doctors in smaller practices need infrastructural …

A conversation with Spence Johnson, Michigan Health and Hospital …

WorldatWork Honors Helen Darling, NBGH President, with Prestigious …

Memorial Hermann system receives health care quality award

Health care reform plan needs balance

GOV. RITTER SIGNS HEALTH CARE, NON-PROFIT BILLS

Experts share views on health care issues