» Health & Life

Americans Cut Back on Visits to Doctor

afrederick — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:11:29 +0000

By Avery Johnson, Jonathan D. Rockoff and Anna Wilde Matthews | The Wall St. Journal

Insured Americans are using fewer medical services, raising questions about whether patients are consuming less health care as they pick up a greater share of the costs.

The drop in usage is showing up as health-care companies report financial results. Insurers, lab-testing companies, hospitals and doctor-billing concerns say that patient visits, drug prescriptions and procedures were down in the second quarter from year-ago levels.

“People just aren’t using health-care like they have,” said Wayne DeVeydt, WellPoint Inc.’s chief financial officer, in an interview Wednesday. “Utilization is lower than we expected, and it’s unusual.”

Others say that consumers are beginning to forgo elective procedures like knee replacements. “We have a very weak economy and it’s just a different environment for the elective parts of health care,” said Paul Ginsburg, a health economist who runs the Center for Studying Health System Change and has been analyzing health-company earnings. But “this could go beyond the recession. Being a less aggressive consumer of health care is here to stay.”

Continued weak demand could eventually put downward pressure on spiralling health-care costs, a long-sought goal of policy makers. It could also force insurers to lower premiums.

The new trend comes amid a broader drop in health-care use as more Americans lose their jobs and their health insurance. Such cutbacks have happened before in recessions, but the drop seems to be more pronounced this time, industry analysts say.

More Americans also are buying high-deductible health plans that force them to bear more of the upfront costs for health services. Some 18 million Americans bought high-deductible plans this year, compared with 13 million last year, according to Paul Mango, a director at consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

At the beginning of the year, Dan and Natalie Johnson, of Gig Harbor, Wash., used the website eHealthInsurance.com to buy a new plan with a high deductible, now set at $5,500 for their family. Their previous coverage had no deductible.

Now, the couple says they are thinking twice before scheduling doctor visits. Recently, when their 16-year-old daughter’s allergy prescription ran out, Ms. Johnson called the allergist’s office to ask for a renewal, without coming in for an appointment, as she would have done under their previous insurance.

And this spring, their son, 14, got his athletic physical at a local urgent-care clinic that charged just $40, instead of a doctor’s office, which would have cost about $90. “We don’t want to go through our savings going to the doctor,” says Ms. Johnson, a photographer.

All this raises the question of whether, after a year of national attention on out-of-control health costs before the federal health overhaul passed in March, the trend portends a lasting change in the way Americans use the medical system.

Just a year ago, insurers reported surging health-care usage. Back then, more consumers were signing up for Cobra, the federal program that allows people who have lost their jobs to keep their insurance. The government had extended a subsidy to cover 65% of the cost of the coverage, which can be prohibitively expensive.

However, the Cobra subsidies only covered the unemployed for 15 months, and many people have hit the limit and dropped coverage. What’s more, people who have lost their jobs since the end of May don’t qualify for the Cobra subsidies.

To be sure, the change in behavior could be short-lived. On an earnings call last week in which it reported a decline in hospital usage, UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it thought utilization would rise again in the second part of the year, as Americans exhaust their deductibles and insurers start paying for services. Both Aetna Inc. and WellPoint said the utilization fall-off was new as of this year, and they had not seen the trend previously even as the economy has deteriorated. Some insurers also cited an unusually mild flu season this year as a temporary factor.

What’s more, the federal health overhaul could cause usage to surge again. The new law will hand insurance cards to many Americans in 2014, which could unleash pent-up demand.

Utilization has ticked down in previous recessions, and tends to take a year or two to change because of how far in advance employers and insurers design their health plans, said Carl McDonald, an analyst at Citigroup Investment Research. He said the last time he saw utilization fall off was in 2003, adding that usage also dipped in the early 1990s. But he added the drop is bigger this time than in previous recessions.

The declines in utilization has boosted profits for insurers, who set their prices to cover anticipated medical costs. Insurance industry prices and profits have been under fire by Democrats and regulators this year. Insurers have justified high premiums by pointing to out-of-control medical costs. But the recent drop in usage could make it difficult for insurers to argue that continued price increases are necessary.

On Wednesday, Aetna said usage of health-care fell in the second quarter, feeding a 42% increase in profits. WellPoint reported a 4% earnings bump, saying that hospital admissions and usage of prescription drugs had dropped compared with a year earlier.

After the earnings releases, Rep. Pete Stark (D., Calif.) called on the companies to reduce their premiums since they are paying out less in medical care. In an interview, Aetna’s chief financial officer Joseph Zubretsky said companies might eventually have to do just that. “If utilization stays down, it will have a favorable impact on rates,” he said.

One company reporting evidence of lower utilization is CVS Caremark Corp., the drugstore giant. In its earnings announcement Wednesday it said it is seeing a drop-off in new prescriptions for maintenance drugs tied to a decline in physician visits.

People are “visiting fewer primary care doctors and specialists,” said Chief Executive Tom Ryan, in a conference call with analysts.

Last week, Quest Diagnostics Inc., a laboratory-testing company, told investors that its volume fell 2.6% in the first quarter and 1.3% in the second partly because of decreasing physician visits. In addition, AmSurg Corp., an outpatient-surgery company, reported that same-store procedures declined by 2.6% compared to a year earlier.

Another sign that people are forgoing doctor visits or getting less care came from athenahealth Inc., which provides billing services and electronic health records for more than 1,700 medical groups. It said last week that the number of claims filed per physician, as well as the average value of the billing for each visit, had dropped from a year earlier.

Physician visits and hospital admissions are dropping this year, according to Thomson Reuters’ healthcare business, which surveys doctors and hospitals. Doctor visits have declined each month this year, including a 7.6% drop in May 2010 from May 2009. Likewise, hospital admissions dropped in three of the first four months of this year compared to those months last year, including being down 2.3% in April 2010 from April 2009.

[article originally appears at wsj.com]

The New York Times, Billionaire Buffett and the Weeping Abortionist

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:14:47 +0000

Ken Blackwell

It can’t be news that the Gray Lady—the unofficial title of the New York Times—is militantly pro-abortion. It might even be called a house organ of the abortion lobby.

But a recent lengthy story in the Times (“The New Abortion Providers,” July 12, 2010) is a goldmine of information for pro-lifers about this execrable traffic.

Did you know that Warren Buffett has given $3 billion—yes, three billion dollars—to promote abortion here in the U.S. and around the world? Often, government officials in developing countries are under pressure to control population in order to qualify for international aid. So they pressure women in the villages to get abortions. Western Europe is especially strong in pushing for abortion in these developing countries.

The Times article quotes Buffett’s late wife telling interviewer Charlie Rose “Warren feels that women all over the world get shortchanged. That’s why he’s so pro-choice.” The article tells us after Susan Thompson Buffett moved from Omaha, Nebraska, to San Francisco in 1977, she and Warren remained close. She even introduced Warren to the woman he has lived with since 1978. This threesome would send out Christmas cards together, the Times informs us.

Warren Buffett strongly backed Barack Obama. On January 23, 2009, President Obama’s first official act was to open the sluice gates of taxpayer support for abortion worldwide. The U.S. has now joined those exerting pressure on women in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We may be going broke, but Planned Parenthood is still making a killing.

Abortion promotion is a national security crisis for the U.S. Men and women in the Third World get it. They know that by pressing abortion on their countries—as Joe Biden has done recently in Kenya–the Obama administration wants fewer of them. These peoples will become fertile ground for anti-Americanism.

The Times also reports abortionists in this country are “startled by some poll numbers that for the first time, more Americans call themselves pro-life than pro-choice—a shift that includes young people.” The author of the article, a zealous pro-abortion writer named Emily Bazelon, noted that four of seven medical residents in one training program she witnessed chose not to take part in abortion.

All over the world, it seems, abortion traffickers are losing support. Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood center director from Texas, quit and joined the pro-life side. Her story made headlines on FOX News, on cable shows, and on the talk show circuit.

Of course, not all abortionists are affected by these changing currents of opinion. The respected journal First Things carried this stunning item last January:

In stark and sad contrast to the story of Abby Johnson is the story of a doctor in the Midwest who wrote about her own moment of disillusionment. It came as she performed an abortion on a woman eighteen weeks pregnant while she herself was eighteen weeks pregnant. “I felt a kick—a fluttery ‘thump, thump’ in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a ‘thump, thump’ in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics.” Horrifyingly, for this woman, unlike Abby Johnson, that was not the end of it. Her illusion was gone, but she continued to perform abortions. “Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy,” she said. “In fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.” First Things has long led in reporting important news about the Culture of Life. From this source, we learn that 78% of abortion facilities are located in or near minority neighborhoods in this country. Is it, therefore, any surprise to learn that Warren Buffett has joined the club of billionaires who pressure black and brown women around the world to kill their unborn children? Planned Parenthood is the favorite charity of many billionaires. The problem Buffett and others of his ilk have is the weeping abortionists. The law that is written on our heart tells us not to kill our own kind. Even if all the people on earth hardened their hearts to those kicks, those fluttery thump-thumps, the very stones would cry out.

Ken Blackwell’s Biography

Ken Blackwell, a contributing editor at Townhall.com, is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and the American Civil Rights Union. He is the co-author of the new bestseller The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, on sale in bookstores everywhere..

Pro-Life Groups Seek Probe Into Kagan’s Clinton-Era Role in Partial Birth Abortion Debate

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:10:42 +0000

Thursday, July 29, 2010
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer

Washington (CNSNews.com) – More than 30 pro-life organizations are calling on senators to investigate Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s record with regards to partial-birth abortion while serving as a Clinton administration attorney.

The Senate Judiciary Committee already sent Kagan’s nomination to the full Senate for a vote, which is expected next week. President Barack Obama nominated Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, to be an associate justice on the high court in May.

“The undersigned organizations are writing today to express our strong opposition to the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court,” the letter sent to all 100 senators on Wednesday said.

“We also join Americans United for Life Action in their call for an investigation into the discrepancies between Kagan’s testimony before Congress and written documentation of her undue influence on medical organizations while advising President William J. Clinton on partial-birth abortion,” the letter added.

Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life Action, first called for a probe.

Pro-life organizations that backed her up included the Family Research Council, Human Life International, Liberty Counsel, March for Life Education and Defense Fund, Priests for Life, Susan B. Anthony List, Students for Life and the Traditional Values Coalition. Numerous state organizations also signed on.

Kagan served as associate White House counsel from 1995 to 1996 and as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council (DPC) from 1997 to 1999.

As CNSNews.com reported last month, in 1996 she lobbied the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to oppose a ban on partial birth abortions. This came after she learned that a select committee of ACOG determined, “in the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial-birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman’s health.”

Memos and other documents pertaining to Kagan’s White House work were released by the Clinton Presidential Library.

In a Dec. 14, 1996 memo, Kagan stated it would be a “disaster” if ACOG stated this.

The Kagan memo said. “1. Todd Stern just discovered that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is thinking about issuing a statement (attached) that includes the following sentence: ‘[A] select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which [the partial-birth] procedure … would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.’ This, of course, would be disaster – not the less so (in fact the more so) because ACOG continues to oppose the legislation. It is unclear whether ACOG will issue the statement; even if it does not, there is obviously a chance that the draft will become public. (The AMA last week decided to continue to take no position on the partial-birth issue.)”

She then drafted an amendment to ACOG’s statement, which stated that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”

On Jan. 12, 1997, ACOG publicly released its statement on partial birth abortion, medically termed intact dilatation and extraction abortion. It included a passage that tracked – verbatim – the “suggested option” from the handwritten notes found in the Kagan file released by the Clinton Library.

The final ACOG statement included the words: “An intact D&X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman…” These words were not in the previous draft.

Advising President Clinton in an April 10, 1997 memo, Kagan said the ACOG statement was the “most reliable.”

“President Clinton and numerous courts (including the United States Supreme Court) ultimately relied on the ACOG statement to justify opposing the Partial Birth Abortion Act,” the letter from pro-life groups said.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Stenberg v. Carhart, which declared Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion unconstitutional.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion stating, “The District Court also noted that a select panel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists concluded that D&X ‘may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.’”

Blocking confirmation seems unlikely as Democrats, who favor Kagan, have a 59-41 majority in the Senate and some Republicans are expected to vote for her. Asked Tuesday if the White House expects a confirmation vote next week, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “The confirmation that the vote will happen and that we’ll have a new Supreme Court justice, yes.”

During her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said, “Well, I’ll tell you this bothers me a lot, because I know that there were plenty of doctors at ACOG that did not believe that partial birth abortion was an essential procedure, and who believe that it was really a brutal procedure and it was a custom conflict there, and as you know, many in Congress came to the conclusion that it was a brutal procedure too and that it was really unjustified.

“That bothers me that you intervened in that particular area in that way. And that’s all I’ll say about it, but I just want you to be aware that that bothered me,” Hatch added.

Kagan responded, “Sen. Hatch there was no way in which I would have or could have intervened with ACOG, which is a respected body of physicians, to get it to change its medical views on the question. The only question that we were talking about was whether this statement that they were going to issue accurately reflected the views that they had expressed to the president, to the president’s staff, to Congress, and to the American public. I do agree with you, this was an enormously hard issue.” (See Earlier Story)

The letter stated, “The statement conflicts with her account of her June 1996 meeting with ACOG.”

“These discrepancies in Kagan’s statements cast doubt on her respect for scientific evidence as well as her ability to serve as an unbiased justice on our nation’s highest court,” the letter stated. “We urge you to conduct a thorough investigation before casting your vote on her confirmation.”

On July 19, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop sent a letter to the Senate calling for Kagan’s nomination to be rejected based on her actions regarding ACOG and partial-birth abortion. AUL released a report detailing the memos days before Koop’s letter.

“A nominee to the highest court in the land must meet our nation’s absolute highest standards of integrity and impartiality,” Yoest said in a statement Wednesday. “With serious outstanding questions clouding Ms. Kagan’s nomination, we are leading a united effort to ask that the Senate investigate discrepancies between her Senate testimony and the written record on partial-birth abortion before proceeding to a floor vote.”