Len Nichols in NJBIZ | Hospitals See Benefits in Universal Insurance

Jerry Irvine — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:53:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Hospitals See Benefits in Universal Insurance

Hospitals and insurers, the health care players at the center of a bill to cover uninsured New Jerseyans with government-funded health insurance, stand to be financial winners under the plan, industry insiders say.

The measure (S-1557) would put New Jersey in the forefront of health care reforms being enacted by states and debated on the presidential campaign trail. The plan, proposed by Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), would make New Jersey the second state after Massachusetts to require all residents to have health care coverage.

There are almost 1.3 million uninsured people living in New Jersey, 242,000 of whom are children, according to a team that was spearheaded by Vitale to research universal health care. Uninsured residents would be automatically enrolled in a state-sponsored plan at places like emergency rooms and pharmacies.

...

Len Nichols, a health care economist with the New America Foundation, says “there’s no question that [Vitale’s plan] is good” for hospitals and insurers. “Hospitals end up delivering the great bulk of the uncompensated care that the uninsured get,” he says. “If everyone is covered, and hospitals are giving up their [under-funded] subsidies, they should be able to reduce that cost shift to the privately insured and save money.”

Meanwhile, insurers that are “very good” at attracting market share and managing their costs efficiently “may end up making more money than before,” says Nichols.

Len Nichols in NJBIZ | Looking for New Ways to Fix Health Care

Communications — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:19:00 -0400

New America in the News:

NJBIZ | Looking for New Ways to Fix Health Care

. . . Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy institute based in Washington, D.C., argued that the insured are already coming up with some of that money. The uninsured “present a hidden tax to the rest of us” because hospitals charge insured patients more than they should to make up revenues lost by treating patients without insurance, he said.

Meanwhile, insured Americans aren’t getting much quality for the money, Nichols said. “We spend more [for health care] than any other country on the planet and our overall health care system is ranked number 37, right next to Slovenia and Costa Rica. These are countries that should beat us in soccer, not health care.”

Roughly 30 percent of health care costs do not produce clinical value, Nichols said. He recommended solutions such as providers using more evidence-based treatments, a greater use of information technology in doctors’ offices, and making it harder for pharmaceutical companies to get new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

To get a new drug approved now, drug makers must show the therapy “didn’t kill anyone and beat a placebo” in human studies, Nichols said. “Prayer beats a placebo. So maybe we ought to think about raising the bar just a tad.”