Related: Why the Nation Doesn't Need Massachusetts Health Care
Massachusetts Health Care Takes a Seat on the S***ter
The Massachusetts Model
"Partners, insurer under scrutiny; AG seeks details on agreement; Possible collusion over prices cited" by Scott Allen and Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff | January 23, 2009
Attorney General Martha Coakley has launched an investigation into whether the state's largest health insurance company and its largest healthcare provider may have illegally colluded to increase the price of health insurance statewide over the last nine years, according to several legal and government sources.
The attorney general sent formal demands for information to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Partners HealthCare late last week, the sources say, calling for a detailed account of their contract negotiations in recent years.
Since 2000, Blue Cross has boosted the rate it pays for medical care by Partners doctors and hospitals by 75 percent, dramatically more than the increases given to most other Massachusetts hospitals. Blue Cross now pays $2 billion a year to Partners, parent company of Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals.
Coakley's investigation comes just weeks after the Globe Spotlight Team reported that the leaders of Partners and Blue Cross made a private agreement in 2000 under which Blue Cross would give Partners a significant increase in payments as long as Partners obtained similarly big pay increases from Blue Cross's competitors. The deal - never written down because Partners lawyers feared that the agreement was legally risky - required Blue Cross and its competitors to raise insurance premiums to pay Partners, ushering in a decade of rapidly escalating healthcare costs....
And they want to bring that model to the WHOLE COUNTRY?
Sounds like those guys KNEW what they were doing was WRONG!!!!
****************
Partners and Blue Cross officials say they have done nothing wrong and that the real drivers of the 78 percent increase in Massachusetts insurance premiums since 2000 are factors such as new medical technology and the growing incidence of chronic diseases such as diabetes. Both acknowledge that Partners price hikes in 2000 helped start a trend toward rising insurance rates, but say the higher pay to Partners and other hospitals was necessary so that the company could meet its own rising costs.
Yeah, GOUGING and LOOTING US was done so THEY could meet THEIR COSTS!! Whatever!! These fucking pigs should be tossed into the harbor!!!
Dr. James J. Mongan, Partners chief executive, denies that Partners has driven up healthcare costs disproportionately, arguing that his eight hospitals and more than 40,000 employees are caught in a national trend toward higher costs. Mongan has said that insurance rates in Massachusetts have gone up at roughly the same rate as the national average....
The report by the Spotlight Team in November that Blue Cross typically pays Partners' flagship hospitals, the Brigham and Mass General, 30 percent more than other teaching hospitals that mainly treat adults has focused debate on the disproportionate cost of Partners, which treats 1.7 million patients. Though the Partners teaching hospitals have excellent reputations for quality, quality data does not show they consistently achieve better results than other, less well paid hospitals such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Partners now makes hundreds of millions of dollars from its contracts with insurers while some other hospitals say they actually lose money every time they treat a Blue Cross member....
Time for the Sicko program, readers!! Now more than ever!!!!
The type of agreement that Partners and Blue Cross forged in 2000, known as a "most favored nation" agreement, is not automatically illegal, but such deals so often lead to higher prices that most-favored-nation agreements have been banned in several states, including New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
Yup, SERVICES CUT and TAXES RAISED so that HEALTH CORPS can RIP US OFF!!!!!
In this case, Blue Cross chief executive William Van Faasen feared that if he gave Partners the extra $193 million the company wanted over three years, Blue Cross insurance might become more expensive compared to the competition. But Dr. Samuel O. Thier, then the Partners chief, promised to seek similar increases from Blue Cross rivals, easing Van Faasen's fear about price competition.
Keith Hylton, a law professor at Boston University who has written a book on antitrust law, said that Coakley would have the option of taking legal action under either federal antitrust or state consumer protection law, which should worry Blue Cross or Partners. He said the federal law governing anticompetitive behavior by companies, know as the Sherman Act, allows prosecutors to recover three times the damage caused by the anticompetitive behavior.
"The concerning thing here is that antitrust laws are so serious in this country," said Hylton, who believes Coakley did the right thing by launching the investigation. He had this advice for Partners and Blue Cross: "They need to talk to lawyers."
Fuck that! Let's TAR, FEATHER, and HANG the SOBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Skyrocketing healthcare costs are under more scrutiny than ever in Massachusetts, partly because the success of the state's new health insurance mandate depends on controlling medical costs. The state has budgeted $869 million this year to pay for subsidized insurance. The governor and several groups have begun attacking the problem in the last month and are hoping to recommend solutions this year.
Governor Deval Patrick called a meeting of providers and payers on Jan. 12, during which he said he could resume state regulation of health insurance rates if people in the industry could not resolve the cost crisis.
Pfft! Whatever.
When these criticisms were raised at the start, they were brushed off by the promoters of this looting operation!
Meanwhile, look who ain't coming because they can't loot us like they used to:
"New drug firm limits prompt fears of falloff in medical meetings in city" by Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff | January 24, 2009
Boston's status as a popular destination for medical industry meetings - which generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for hotels, restaurants, and the state - is at risk because of new regulations restricting financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and doctors, according to industry executives.
That's FINE with ME! I don't want their corrupt, money-wasting asses here!
Shouldn't that $$$ be spent on ACTUAL HEALTH CARE rather than PARTIES for HEALTH EXECS!!!?
The city hosted 2,500 medical and pharmaceutical company meetings in 2007 and 2008, attended by thousands of doctors and other clinicians; hotels earned $130 million from those meetings, while the state received about $16 million in tax payments, according to the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. About 40 percent of the city's convention business is medical-related.
Yeah, and how much did they GIVE BACK in terms of CORPORATE WELFARE and TAXPAYER GIVEAWAYS?
But now, with strict new regulations set to take effect July 1, some meeting sponsors are considering pulling out of Boston, said Patrick Moscaritolo, president of the convention bureau....
Byyyyyyyyyye -- and GOOD RIDDANCE!!!!
******************
Drug companies participate heavily in medical meetings across the country in other ways as well, by paying for meals and subsidizing tuition and by hawking their products to doctors from rows of exhibits set up on convention floors....
The regulations written by state Public Health Department staff are intended to implement a law passed by the Legislature last summer, which bans companies from providing gifts to physicians, limits when companies can pay for doctors' meals, and requires companies to publicly disclose payments to doctors over $50 for certain types of consulting and speaking engagements. The law aims to control costs by reining in unnecessary prescribing of expensive drugs and to make doctors' potential conflicts-of-interest transparent to the public.
The new rules also govern drug company conduct at scientific meetings, professional conferences, and continuing medical education courses in Massachusetts. They allow firms to sponsor such meetings, as they do now, but with restrictions: Companies cannot pay for attendees' personal expenses such as travel and lodging, or pay them to attend. Companies cannot pay for meals for specific groups of doctors in attendance, but conference organizers can use pharmaceutical company funds toward meal costs for everyone. And, drug companies cannot dictate to conference organizers on the presentations made to physicians....
And because BRIBERY is now OUTLAWED in Massachusetts, the looters are going to go somewhere else!!!
On the opposite side, consumer groups and others are heavily lobbying health officials to tighten the rules....
I love how the opposition is saved until the very end; obviously, the pro-corporate press is FOR the drug companies -- I mean, look at all the business we are losing (wah-wah)!
"I don't buy that this will have any material effect on the convention business in Massachusetts," said Senator Mark C. Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat who has pushed for years to ban industry gift-giving. "But even if it does, I would say it's completely irrelevant. We're talking about rules to protect the public health here."
Which is why the PRO-CORPORATE, PRO-PROFIT, PRO-POISONING PRESS is downplaying the angle!!!
