About 56,000 Americans die
each year from colorectal cancer. More than
70 million are obese. Yet, according to the
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
only about half of adults report getting
recommended colorectal screenings and fewer
than half report getting counseling from
a health care professional about diet. http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/ 06/nhqr06.htm
H
I T S
A Health
Behavior News Service story on a systematic
review on how psychological
treatment can help those with back pain received
wide international play, appearing in the
New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian
of London and U.S. News & World Report,
as well as on Fox News, the Canadian Broadcasting
Company and WebMD.
M
I S S E S
Science-abusers
on the extremist side of the political spectrum
too often play
upon journalists' reverence for getting both
sides of a story -- even when two sides don't
exist. Such a case occurred recently when the
Reuters news agency flatly declared in a story
about the cause of global warming that while
most scientists believe man is the cause, "That
does not mean there is a consensus." Yes,
there is a consensus, and even corporate polluters
and the Bush Administration agree. The New
Republic has an illuminating article (Jan.
29) on how evidence-deniers don't come up with
better evidence but try to destroy the real
thing. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml
?i=20070129&s=chait012907
Although President Bush persists in calling America's health
system the best in the world, he is making what looks at first
like an honest attempt to keep costs down by using the tax
system to give people an incentive to buy private health insurance.
However, the problem of 47 million Americans without insurance
and tens of millions of middle-class families having trouble
paying for health care is seen by the president as a tax issue,
not a health issue and certainly not an equity issue.
Jessie
Gruman President
and Executive Director
Center for the
Advancement of Health
The key element is allowing lower- and middle-income
individuals to take a tax deduction for buying health
insurance at market prices and taxing others on the value
of high-dollar coverage they buy. It would be like the
immensely popular tax deduction for home mortgage interest
payments -- an incentive for home ownership that helps
only those who already can afford a house.
As with the mortgage deduction, the administration's
Health Savings Accounts and Bush's proposal to let
small businesses get the same discounts big businesses
get, the new plan rewards the "haves." The "have-nots" are
taken care of by Medicaid and Medicare. So that leaves the "have-not-so-muches" in
the middle class to bear most of the burden and get the least benefit.
The mix of subsidies through
the tax system is by no means simple, and healthy people
with college educations,
high-incomes and good accountants are going
to find out they can increase their wealth by getting out of the traditional
employer-based
insurance system that now covers 175 million Americans.
The net result could
be a windfall for the insurance industry and a further widening of health
and income inequality. Poorer people do not benefit
much from tax deductions, as
opposed to tax credits, and richer people will use every section of law
to maximize the value of their coverage and minimize
their tax bill.
I'm no economist, but it seems to me that relying on
a private insurance market that got us to where we are
now is not the best way to achieve a goal
of insuring
more people at affordable prices. And it also seems to me that when higher-income
taxpayers subsidize lower-income taxpayers, you achieve some progress toward
insuring more people -- but the best way of sharing the cost is to put
everyone into a few large risk pools.
Yes, the government
would pay for it, but under the Bush plan government
would also pay -- but at a higher economic and social
cost that fattens
the insurance
industry and maintains inequities in income and health. As an advocate
for health consumers, I do know that whatever the funding mechanism
may turn
out to be,
no system will work if the people paying for it cannot use it -- by
dint of poverty, confusion or lack of information about
the true value of
the care
they are asked
to pay for.
Administration health policy had always been assumed
to be a creature of the insurance and pharmaceutical
industries. But this lipstick-on-a-pig approach
looks more like a creature of the cosmetics industry -- cover the blemishes
and not the people.
FROM THE CENTER
AFTERSHOCK -- Center President Jessie
Gruman's book AfterShock:
What to Do When the Doctor Gives You -- or Someone
You Love -- a Devastating Diagnosis is in bookstores.
For more about the book, and how to order, go to www.aftershockbook.com.
Excerpts were printed in the Jan. 14 edition of Parade,
which has a circulation of 37 million, and she and
the book were quoted in favorable articles by ReutersLife!
and syndicated health columnist Judy Foreman. Dr. Gruman
also has been doing interviews with the news media,
including two segments on WTOP Radio, the all-news
station in Washington.
DIVERSITY
DATA The Center, in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public
Health, has unveiled a unique, interactive
Web site DiversityData.org that contains information on
how metropolitan areas throughout the United States
perform on
a diverse range of social measures. The Web site, supported
by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, offers a dataset of socioeconomic
indicators for metropolitan areas in the form of tables,
thematic maps, and customizable reports. The data cover
various racial/ethnic, income and nativity groups.
The Center’s
Barbara Krimgold was interviewed by ABC and public radio’s “Marketplace”.
NEW
STAFFMargaret Holmes-Rovner, a senior scientist who
conducts research on how people make health decisions,
has joined the Center to help develop a new emphasis
on understanding
and supporting people as consumers of health information
and care. Dr. Holmes-Rovner is on sabbatical from Michigan
State University where she is professor of health services
research in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the
Life Sciences.
HEALTH AND BEHAVIOR INFORMATION TRANSFER
The
Environmental Protection Agency has issued a request for
applications for the Smart Growth Implementation Assistance
program from communities that want help with either policy
analysis or public participatory processes. Deadline for
submission is March 8. For more information and application
materials, please go to www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/sgia.htm
The
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awards grants for investigators
in the health, social and behavioral sciences to undertake
broad studies of national health and health care policy.
The program seeks a diverse group of applicants including
minorities, researchers early in their careers and individuals
in nonacademic settings. Application deadline is March
28. Contact: Lynn Rogut, depdir@ifh.rutgers.edu
The
Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, a
component of the National Institutes
of Health, is seeking
a dynamic individual to serve as a health scientist administrator
with a focus on social sciences research. Go to www.usajobs.opm.gov.
Click "search", then insert the vacancy announcement
number OD-07-166498-DE in the 'key word search' box. Applications
must be received by midnight on March 1. Contact Beverly
Davis (301) 496-1443.
