Letter to the Editor is a regular feature. We welcome all comments and publish our selections. Edited for length and clarity, full name requested.
A full circle of disability protection
As a retired special education teacher, I wonder why seniors in nursing homes aren’t covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (“imminent intergenerational crisis”: Americans with disabilities face long-term care plans). , 11 December). The law covers all the problems faced by older people in nursing homes and children with the same needs. Students obtain an annual prescribing plan through meetings with parents, anyone they contact to provide services, and administrators. Why isn’t this annual plan tailored for retirees and nursing home seniors? Children go from newborns to toddlers and up the ladder of growth and maturity. Our seniors go through these same stages in reverse. The care we give older adults should mirror the care given to children, albeit perhaps longer at each stage. Big changes will be required. I understand that all but the most dedicated and involved people will oppose this idea and view the elderly as disposable. let die”. Thank you for taking this opportunity to throw in my two cents.
— Judy Galt, Orange Park, FL
I never really thought about it, but it looks like it. The baby boomer generation is long gone, and disabled offspring may more often lack proper planning. Kaiser Health News https://t.co/4VIOUwbLVk
— Dr. Carl Hindy, Clinical Psychologist (@DrCarlHindy) November 11, 2022
— Karl Hindy, Exeter, New Hampshire
Abolition of disability tax
Thank you for highlighting how hard it is for blind people to pay for health care (“Disability Tax: Health Care Remains Inaccessible to Many Blind Americans,” Dec. 2 ). I rarely see anything related to blindness or accessibility in my news feed. So while your findings are depressing, I enjoyed my day knowing that this issue was highlighted in the national news.
— Brandon Keith Biggs, Atlanta
No surprise.I # Deaf & Healthcare providers still expect me to be able to hear and understand important information over the phone. The Americans with Disabilities Act has no teeth. # blindness #Ada #kaiser #hhs #California #Indiana #etna #national anthem #MedTwitter #hoh https://t.co/1F9TusBBGa
— Jim Hankins (@ltecato) December 2, 2022
— Jim Hankins anaheim, california
I would like to personally thank you for reporting this issue. There are workarounds for many of us to avoid them. Unfortunately, it’s another same predicament. This is not just limited to the healthcare system. Blind people who use technology often rely on paid subscription services to complete visual tasks. One of them is called Ira. Trained people guide blind people through a variety of tasks, such as navigating inaccessible websites and filling out forms, or taking pictures of bills and reading them aloud.
Separate but equal conditions result because the public is unaware that the blind are unemployed or underemployed. The blind employment rate is 20% less for him than for convicted felons. The underemployment rate is 78% for him. One reason is the outdated sub-minimum wage law under Section 14(c) of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which states that disabled people in America are paid less than the federal minimum wage by all large corporations. I admit Between.
Again, it’s not the kind of fluffy, fuzzy, feel-good problem that blind people graduate from college or that most people with sight simply do every day, so most people and the media don’t report it. Thank you for reporting information that does not.
— William F. O’Donnell, Austin, TX
Good article on how plan sponsors acquire copay support and patient assistance funds for themselves (on behalf of patients). Not news for Drug Channels readers, but mainstream it’s good to see the news@Julie_appleby @KH News https://t.co/V6WfPeUDc6
— Adam J. Fein (@DrugChannels) December 11, 2022
— Adam J. Fain, Philadelphia
Benefits for Big Pharma
Who benefits from patient assistance and out-of-pocket assistance programs? It should come as no surprise that wolves in sheep’s clothing are actually pharmaceutical companies Offset Your Own Expenses”, Dec. 6).
One point missing from KHN’s article on these schemes is the enormous return on investment for Big Pharma. Pharmaceutical manufacturers cover patient co-payments, and sometimes even the entire deductible, to keep patients on more expensive products. (instead of the cheaper alternative that the patient’s health insurance pays for). Once the deductible is met, the patient’s employer is forced to pay her 80% or more of the patient’s drug costs. And once a patient reaches the annual maximum out-of-pocket (MOOP) threshold, the employer will pay her 100% of the costs, and the pharmaceutical company will make her 100% of the profit, no longer Stop paying aid.
In many cases, this means that the drug company essentially waives the cost of one or two doses of the drug, and the employer pays many times that to cover the rest of the year. will be forced to pay
Pharmaceutical manufacturers say their assistance programs are evidence of their commitment to keeping prescription drugs affordable, but according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, “Prescription Drug Discount Coupons and Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs).” While drug discount coupons may reduce the amount an insured person has to pay out-of-pocket for drugs, they generally do not reduce the price charged to drug insurers or government programs. This means that patients will end up paying higher premiums later.
A recently published ‘Drug Manufacturers’ Billion-Dollar Scheme’ by the Regence Health Policy Center posed this interesting question. system? “
If drug companies really want to help patients, they should stop tricks and schemes and charge reasonable drug prices in the United States, just like they do in all other developed countries.
— James Gelfand, President of the ERISA Industry Committee, Washington, DC
What a wonderful world it would be if businesses, including insurance companies, were creative in making care better and more affordable for patients. https://t.co/s1M5V1UTZF If you agree. Please comment.
— David Johnson (@4sighthealth_) December 14, 2022
— David Johnson, Chicago
Community health centers are transparent, trustworthy and essential
What seems to be a pattern is that a KHN article on community health centers by Phil Galewitz and Bram Sable-Smith (“Taxpayers Pay When Malpractice Occurs in Community Health Centers,” Nov. 28) states that choice Using statistical data and outlier cases, the picture of life-sustaining care that community health centers provide to 30 million Americans is grossly inaccurate.
In contrast to the distorted conclusions drawn by the article’s focus on a very small number of procedures, health centers provide high-quality access to tens of millions of underserved and vulnerable patients in the United States. We provide care.
Given the important role health centers play in the delivery of health care and the vast increase in the number of health centers and patients, malpractice claims are an unfortunate reality. KHN’s account focuses on a few select cases, while acknowledging that “settlements and court decisions are not a measure of a clinic’s overall performance.” The focus of this article on his 2018 and his 2021 claims payouts, albeit tragically, of his 117 million patients and his 477 million visitors It’s only part of the story.
The bigger and more impregnable story is that medical centers implement strict protections to ensure the best possible patient care. , is not automatically granted to Health Center grantees. Rather, health centers must implement robust quality improvement and risk management programs in order to qualify for and maintain FTCA coverage. Such coverage ensures that economically challenged patients have affordable access to the medical services they need, when and where they need them. Additionally, the Health Center undergoes on-site audits of these processes to ensure they meet appropriate standards and function as intended. With the FTCA applied, medical centers will pay more attention to the quality of care.
Every dollar invested in medical centers brings value to American taxpayers. The program will save $24 billion annually across the system by reducing medical center patients requiring emergency room visits and hospitalizations. More important than the money saved, health centers are transparent, trusted and important stewards of public health. We stand by their long and successful track record.
— Rachel Gonzales-Hanson, Interim CEO and Chairman of the National Association of Community Health Centers, Bethesda, Maryland
And another recent story about medical malpractice at a community medical center https://t.co/bh7XIMfVMA
— Taylor Emry Glascock (@tayloremrey) November 30, 2022
— Taylor Emry Glascock, Chicago
STD Testing: Why not try it at home?
Home testing for STDs is valuable, but making the most of the testing technology we have today is even more so (“New Uses for Dating Apps: Tracking STDs”). , November 30). Sixty percent of all her STIs in high-risk individuals are extragenital (throat or rectal) and therefore not diagnostic from a urine sample. For many people, STD testing should include throat and rectal swab screening as well as urine screening. While this can be accomplished by labs providing clients with swabs for self-collection, Hologic (the company that manufactures his Aptima system featured in the article) claims its system can be used to self-collect genitalia. No validation studies have been performed to allow it to be used for external testing. Therefore, the patient should go to the provider to collect the swab rather than going to the lab immediately after the order is submitted. It is a matter of making the most of what we have and ensuring that adequate extragenital screening is done and that it can be done in the most convenient way possible. (collected at home and sent back for processing). Halogen testing, a system used by Quest, Labcorp, CPL, etc., does not. While being able to get quick results at home is great (which, of course, requires a self-collected sample), being able to take full advantage of currently available technology is a big step forward.
— Christine Brennan, New Orleans
App usage may have exploded since then, but 20 years ago, when I was an office worker, I was doing this. #EIS board member @CDCgovIn fact, I had to visit a specific blocked website. It was interesting to explain it to the IT guys. https://t.co/8zsq887ECp
— Michael Greenberg, M.D. (@greenbergepi) December 4, 2022
— Dr. Michael Greenberg, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
