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The Case for A Single Payer Universal Healthcare System       

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Knowledge is Power

A Virtual Library of Timely Information on Healthcare Access, Costs,

Distractions, Fraud, Malpractice, Marketing, Negligence,

Patient Safety, Political Corruption, Politics, Quality, Public Policies, and

The Rationale for An American Single-Payer Universal Healthcare System

 

"Know where to find the information and how to use it - That's the secret of success" -Albert Einstein

Healthcare consultants for hospitals, managed care organizations, government, law firms, labor unions, major employers, purchasers, providers and consumers.

Social Responsibility


HCI takes pride in publicly supporting a single-payer universal healthcare system for all Americans. Because of our knowledge and insights, we have a moral duty and public interest responsibility to proactively participate in the national healthcare public policy dialogue.

HCI's healthcare management, planning, and public policy consultants are available to ensure that healthcare consumers and purchasers are able to access timely information, which may help them to:

...better control healthcare costs and eliminate excessive spending on service vendors.
...avert the illusions of superficial reform and establish proactive strategies and support rational government polices, which will substantively address quality, patient safety, and cost-savings opportunities.
...access the best healthcare diagnostic and treatment options available for healthcare consumers.
...facilitate the process of obtaining the most current medical outcomes data for specific healthcare providers.

...become sophisticated purchasers and consumers utilizing timely healthcare information.
 

In Brief: Why The United States Has Failed To Develop

A Single Payer Universal Healthcare System

  • Corporate-financed elections of Congress and the President --- special interests' lobbyists pay to play; Americans accept leftovers; costs escalate; coverage benefits are slashed. Political campaigns should be publicly-financed through tax revenues. It is the best investment Americans could make in our government.
  • Most Americans are complacent and uninformed --- disinterest and reliance upon special interests nurture lucrative economic opportunities; greed and power trump Americans' healthcare access and well-being. The media have masked the truths about our dysfunctional healthcare non-system.  It tends to perceive the paradigm in the context of an employer-based insurance model.
  • Insurance and other special interests have proactively and aggressively under-mined the public interest in some Americans' pursuit of a Medicare-expanded or single payer universal healthcare system public policy.  They create new insurance products to deter more in-depth analysis of the costs associated with administrative expenses, marketing costs, operating overhead, and bloated profits and executive compensation.
  • The Iraq Debacle has drained massive resources from domestic needs inclusive of healthcare, college tuition assistance, education, and other vital social programs.
  • Fraud, greed, waste, abuse, fragmentation, decentralized finance, and political corruption siphon the resources requisite to have an accessible, affordable, high-quality, and safe healthcare system.
  • Ideological conservatives have used gay marriage, flag-burning, tax cuts, earmarks, hollow political ethics reform, and other diversions to gridlock Congress and forestall meaningful change to the detriment of most Americans.
  • Incremental/token reform (insurance-creep) has been used as camouflage for cosmetic, superficial, and ineffectual change. The piecemeal approach serves to buy time and sustained profitability for special interests inclusive of the insurance, for-profit healthcare provider, and financial services industries. Politicians who claim Americans aren't ready for fundamental systemic change are wrong. They would be well-advised to accelerate their advisors and consultants' understanding of it and lead more candid and forthright information campaigns in support of it.
  • Progressive advocacy organizations supportive of a single payer universal healthcare system engage in a Silo Effect --- they lack common goals, become competitive for attention and support, lack cooperation, fail to communicate and coordinate with each other, fail to educate, and fail to trust the public's ability to process information. Anecdotes and slogans supplant the drumbeat of facts necessary to embolden and empower broad bipartisan support for fundamental change. Politicians respond with promises of incremental and fragmented 'insurance' remedies, which have no prospect of establishing universal solutions for the healthcare access, accountability, affordability, quality, and patient safety crises.

The Case for A Single Payer Universal Healthcare System       

"...the real drivers of our deficits long-term have almost everything to do with our rising health care costs."

President Barack Obama, Press Conference, March 24, 2009

 

Informative Links: Documents, Media and Research Reports

s_28 (15K) Prudent healthcare purchasing and consumption require an informed public. Frequently, HCI provides our clients and visitors to this site with links to timely and interesting articles and web sites on the Internet, which we review and evaluate. These include a broad spectrum of healthcare access, cost, quality, and public policy issues useful to healthcare consumers and purchasers. In addition, we consider other public policy issues, including foreign policy germane to any discussion of resource allocation of funds for Americans' healthcare. We encourage visitors to do more Internet research using the search terms below or others to access topics of interest to them.

 

Healthcare consultants for hospitals, managed care organizations, government, law firms, labor unions, major employers, purchasers, providers and consumers.

 

2009-10 HealthCare Reform Plans and Politics

America's Health Care: World Rankings, Public Perceptions, Unconscionable Costs, Universal Single Payer Advocacy & Reality

American Economics

 

Bad Corporate Healthcare Benefits Policy

Bad Healthcare Public Policy

Bush's Recession Impact

Changing Moral Values to Fit Immoral Policies, Distractions and Hypocrisies

Community & Compassion Driven Health Care

Conflicts of Interest (conflicts arising from selecting personal or professional advantage while having previous or current public interest obligations) ... & Systemic Corruption

Conflict-of-Interest of the Month, 2005-2009

 

Consulting, Broker & Accounting Firms' Less Glorious Moments

'Consumer-Driven' Health Care

 

Corporate Crimes Score Card A-Z

Corporate Integrity Agreements aka Medicare & Medicaid Fraud Settlements

Discrimination, & Disparities

Emergency Room Issues

Evidence-Based Medicine

Financial Services Industry Fraud

 

Government 'Leadership' Can Be This Dumb, Corrupt, Transparently Self-Serving, and/or Ludicrous & Contemptuous of Americans

 

Healthcare Fraud & Other Illegal Capers: A Virtual Money Hemorrhage

Health Hazards

Health Insurance Loss, Retirement Benefits Cuts, Uninsured, and Cost Escalation

Healthcare Public Policy 'Leadership'

Healthcare's Winners, Losers & Americans Who Don't Break Even

Health Savings Accounts

Home Health Care Agencies

Hospital Accreditation Issues

Hospital Acquisitions, Mergers, Takeovers & Accountability Failures

Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Medical Errors & Patient Safety

Hurricane Katrina Disaster: Causes, Effects & Public Health Implications

Important Books and Publications

Important Films

 

Indictments, Convictions, Civil Lawsuits and Settlements - 2004-09 Potpourri

International Healthcare Issues

Iraq Debacle's Casualties, Insurgency & Civil War (a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country) ... al-Zarqawi killed ... violence continues ... U.S. Troops stressed out

Journalistic Ineptitude

Kudos to The Financial Services Industry

Long-Term Care Facilities/Nursing Homes

Managed Care (Cost) Organizations

Market-Driven Healthcare

Medical Malpractice & Negligence - A Hyped Red Herring: Tort Reform or Reducing Medical Errors & Negligence

Medicare RX Drug & Managed Care Programs: Big Profits, Excessive Costs, Inadequate Benefits, and Hollywood Moments

Medications Errors Increasing

Medications' Pricing & Profits

Nursing Shortage - Causes & Effects

OIG Enforcement Actions

Organizations Influenced, Governed or Controlled by Healthcare Industry Provider Interests

Political Delusions & Other Fun Characters

Politics of Healthcare

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." - Plato

Progressive Developments & Proposals

Quality Assurance?

Single Payer Universal Healthcare

Single Payer Universal Healthcare Detractors Take Note: The Private Sector Insurance-Based Model Track Record

The National Physician Data Bank: Knowledge of Dangerous Doctors Inaccessible to Healthcare Consumers

Top Political Hypocrites, Phonies, & Opportunists Running for Elective Office in 2008, 2010 - Failures on Healthcare, Iraq, and Other Major Consumer & Public Interest Policy Issues

 

Tragedies, Travesties, & Lost Resources

Unnecessary Surgery

Veterans' Health: Cheering The Troops Abroad & Cutting Their Benefits At Home

Veterinary Medicine & Pet Companion Issues

Vigilant Journalism: Special Recognition

Waste and Inefficiency

 

What's Wrong With These Pictures?

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity --- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Consumer Empowerment: Objective Healthcare Information

Resources and Public Interest Organizations

Healthcare consultants for hospitals, managed care organizations, government, law firms, labor unions, major employers, purchasers, providers and consumers.

'CONSUMER-DRIVEN HEALTH CARE'?

The architects (vested financial interests) of 'consumer-driven healthcare' have convinced many employers to shift more costs to employees. This is the latest in a series of panaceas that have been promoted for more than two decades to curb excessive healthcare costs. Higher deductibles, increased co payments, and larger employee payroll deductions for group healthcare plans are characteristic of 'consumer-driven healthcare' (aka opportunity-driven or enrichment-driven healthcare). It is neither driven by consumers nor beneficial to them. It has been packaged as 'consumer-driven' because cost-shifting to consumers required tactful marketing and acceptance by employees and beneficiaries. We know that 'managed care' is about managing cost, which is notable for neither effectively controlling costs nor ensuring higher quality healthcare.

Managed care has significantly reduced unnecessary care and costs when compared to the fee-for-service system, which preceded it. Managed care has also been known to stonewall or withhold life-sustaining care and establish arbitrary, irrational care constraints. Figuratively, the Titanic replaced Pearl Harbor, but the ever-increasing financial costs to employers are intolerable and healthcare consumers are experiencing reduced benefits and unaffordable costs.

Managed care, other than some staff model prototypes, has been a profit-driven splint on a hemorrhage of out of control healthcare costs. Managed care companies and their supporting cast of vendors, brokers, and consultants have a vested interest in sustaining massive, unnecessary, and redundant administrative, marketing, information systems, and related self-preservation expenses. These costs and other systemic inefficiencies waste finite financial resources that may otherwise be invested in ensuring accessible, affordable, and high quality healthcare for all Americans.

Our principals consider the illusion and misnomer promoted as 'consumer-driven healthcare' imprudent and ineffectual long-term in controlling healthcare costs for healthcare purchasers. It is impotent in enhancing healthcare quality for consumers. It is another roadblock to America's compelling need to move toward an equitable single payer universal healthcare system. The adverse consequences of this absurd, temporary profit preserver for private sector insurers and healthcare benefits consultants/insurance brokers may become transparent to healthcare purchasers, government legislators, and consumers within a few years. Meanwhile, consumers and purchasers should utilize healthcare information and other tools available to them and support innovative single-payer universal healthcare public policy initiatives.

SELECTING HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS - QUALITY INDICATORS

Selecting competent physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes for your families is among the most important responsibilities of enlightened healthcare consumers. Most group and individual healthcare benefits plans do not provide tools for helping consumers access information to empower healthcare consumers and their families. Healthcare information is vital to the process of consumer empowerment.

HCI encourages consumers to secure objective information and then, discreetly informally interview nursing staff, other patients and patients' families, and other physicians to determine which physician, hospital, or nursing home to entrust with the care of you or your loved ones. Consumers should commit as much or more time to identifying the best available healthcare resources as they do in researching other major family investments. It can literally mean the difference between a positive medical outcome and tragedy.

 

Healthcare consultants for hospitals, managed care organizations, government, law firms, labor unions, major employers, purchasers, providers and consumers.

 

 

A Final Note


HealthCare Initiatives, Inc. has built its' reputation upon pursuing our clients' interests with integrity, candor, resourcefulness, and unparalleled customization.

Each client situation is unique. We approach each client's set of circumstances with enthusiasm and unlimited problem-solving assets.

Employee healthcare benefits and public policy consulting should offer clients independent analytical, evaluation, design, negotiation, interpretation, and implementation resources to ensure the best outcomes for healthcare purchasers and healthcare consumers. HCI provides clients with the best available solutions to healthcare cost and quality challenges for both healthcare purchasers and consumers.

We offer quality healthcare consulting services to clients who seek to achieve enhancements in the quality of services, which they purchase, and significantly improve control over their healthcare expenditures. We are invariably candid and forthright in our assessments and recommendations on behalf of our clients. Clients are confident that they will receive quality consultation and additional value for their investment in our services. HCI provides the highest level of expertise and objectivity in the healthcare consulting industry proficiently, cost-effectively, and with complete integrity.

We look forward to being of service to you.

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Healthcare Consultants


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HCI@healthcare-consulting.com

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                          Healthcare consultants for hospitals, managed care organizations, government, law firms, labor unions, major employers, purchasers, providers and consumers.