In a powerful act of courage that opposes conventional practice, Xerox officials have proposed putting employees in charge of their own health insurance within seven years. Xerox plans to give at least $5000 to each of their 50,000 employees so they can purchase a portable customized insurance policy. A portion of the money must be used for insurance, and would therefore be tax-exempt, but the remainder would be taxable cash compensation.
Before MinnesotaCare, health care providers bore the cost of caring for Minnesotans who could not afford medical insurance, either by absorbing costs themselves, or by charging their insured patients higher fees. This, in turn, affected the premiums paid by insured Minnesotans, as insurers passed on the higher fees to their policyholders.
The answer to fear and conflict lies in this principle: "He who holds the gold makes the rules." Until patients regain individual control and management of their health care dollars, outside administrative decisions and financial conflicts of interest will threaten medical judgment.
Dissatisfaction with HMOs has led some to call for increased regulation of the HMO industry. Government officials express concern for patient protection and access to health care. Yet government action did much to encourage the spread of HMOs'and government action continues to steer people into HMOs.
Referring to a 1986 newspaper expose': "It took four years, an audit of Pennsylvania's federal funding links to the EQA [Educational Quality Assessment], and a series of threats and counterthreats between federal and Pennsylvania education officials over the particulars of the funding, before state testing authorities finally admitted to the public that the EQA was, in fact, a psychological testing instrument and that it violated several of the seven protected areas under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, passed in 1978, sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch." (page 11)
Certainly the reason to go to Arizona is not to make more money. My income will drop--maybe 30-40%. On the same hand the income factors in Minnesota are so driven by non-patient oriented mechanisms that my idealistic mind doesn't allow me to continue to practice that way.
A new public-private partnership will "target social, emotional and health hurdles that can trip up poor children." (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 12/19/96) Initial cost: $27 million.
While President Clinton's call to compassion for the uninsured and underinsured is laudable, the true measure of compassion in his or any other government regulated health care plan needs to be carefully weighed.Health care in the United States has often been noted for its humanitarian efforts, which have included the donation of services and supplies, treatment of the poor and care given to our neighbors around the world whose needs cannot be met in their own countries
The following letter was retyped from the original for clarity. Marc Tucker is President of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) and the original letter is typed on NCEE letterhead. The letterhead includes a list of the NCEE Board of Trustees, one of whom is Hillary Clinton. It has been reproduced from the CPR for Families site.
The federal medical privacy rule went into effect on April 14, 2003. There is no reason to celebrate. Despite the flurry of privacy notices and the irksome new obstacles to normal patient-doctor interactions, private medical records have not been protected from peering eyes. Instead, the federal government has authorized 600,000 clinics, hospitals, insurers and data processing companies to dig deep into the private lives of more than 280 million individuals. And for the most part, patients won't even be allowed to know who's doing the digging.
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