I've figured it out. At first I was confused but now all is clear. You see, we ARE running the…
Morning Headlines 6/24/20
CMS Administrator Seema Verma says that analysis of Medicare claims confirms that socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity of COVID-19 patients affect their likelihood of complications.
Cerner’s ‘transformation’ work continues with more layoffs in KC, across the country
Cerner conducts another round of layoffs, this time involving 100 employees.
DispatchHealth Raises $135.8 Million in Series C Financing
High-acuity house call provider DispatchHealth raises $136 million in a Series C funding round, increasing its total to $217 million.
CMS creates the Office of Burden Reduction and Health Informatics, which will look at the burden of meeting CMS compliance requirements, fostering innovation through interoperability, and using technology to create new patient-friendly, data-sharing tools.
Re: COVID-19 and Socio-economic Status
Administrator Verma’s heart seems to be in the right place and the tweets carry a lot of bite. But I am skeptical that asking current health systems players to take on the role of addressing social and economic factors of their patients is going to work. Those who know the system know very well that American health system has had its knee on the neck of racial minorities and economically disadvantaged for a long time. You don’t get to be a part of $4,000,000,000,000 annual industry without shattering a few million middle class dreams.
No amount of “value based payments” is going to address UCSF trying to charge $18,000 for COVID-19 test, or UVA health or Sutter health suing patients to bankruptcy, or UPMC trying to squeeze a community by closing rural hospitals (https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/pittsburgh-upmc-hospital-single-payer-amazon), or the bad faith middlemen like PBMs and insurers, or unscrupulous pharma companies.
The fact is that the $4 trillion medical care industry has squeezed paychecks, bankrupted families, crowded out investment in community programs, made it harder for small business owners to invest in their business and deterred would-be entrepreneurs (who might have created jobs in their communities) from taking risks.
Just like in the blink of an eye, the killing of Mr. Cooper changed the perception of the country regarding the “justice” system and the police unions find themselves powerless in front of this avalanche, if the medical care system in the country doesn’t self-correct, no amount of lobbying power will protect them from calls to ‘defund the health care’. It is just a matter of time! And it cannot come a moment too soon.