Monday, May 23, 2005

Decoding Health Insurance Opinion piece in the New York Times by Robin Cook - "...As a doctor schooled to some degree in science, I believed (and still do) that decoding the human genome might be the most important milestone in the history of medical science. To borrow Mr. Clinton's metaphor, the full genome offers researchers the sequence of all the letters of the human book of life, a monumental resource despite our imperfect understanding of the book's overarching, mind-boggling complexity. As decoding gathers speed, it promises to change just about everything we know about medicine in the form of understanding, prediction, prevention, diagnosis and the treatment of disease. And in so doing, it also offers us a remarkable opportunity to solve the huge and nettlesome problem of paying for health care in the United States..." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Governors Say Major Reform Only Salvation for Medicaid  Psychiatric News story - "The Medicaid program is threatening fiscal disaster for states, said Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D), chair of the National Governors Association. In a Webcast sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Warner said rapidly escalating costs associated with the 40-year-old entitlement program were threatening states with financial ruin. He called for multiple approaches to reform, including tax credits to provide individuals and families an incentive to purchase long-term-care insurance, regulatory reform to address the problem of 'asset transfer' by which families may transfer wealth from an individual so the individual may qualify for Medicaid, widespread incorporation of information technology to improve efficiency, and drug-pricing reform..."