Health Spectator

Instead, Medicare may open to those 55 and older

In a surprise move to appease moderate Democrats, sources say the Obama health reform plan may drop the public option in favor of extending Medicare to the uninsured who are more than 55 years of age, the Associated Press is reporting. Currently, only those over 65 are eligible to receive Medicare.

At a last-minute news conference in the Capitol Tuesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) would say only that a “broad agreement” had been reached between liberals and moderates on the issue. The resulting bill is expected to forbid insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions and to reduce healthcare costs in general.

However, dropping the public option is seen as a great loss by those who wish to see healthcare needs prevail over insurance-industry profits. And it seems less likely costs will be curtailed if a purely private health insurance solution is formulated. Currently, about 20% of every healthcare insurance dollar the public pays out goes to insurance industry profits and overhead. The competition provided by the public option was seen as a way to lower these costs and see that more of the healthcare dollars coming both from taxes and individual expenditures would go toward providing actual health care. Medicare overhead costs are generally considered to be between two and five percent, with four percent the most popular figure.

One undoubted benefit of increasing the Medicare rolls is that it will increase the scrutiny paid to Medicare and its benefits. Currently, Medicare recipients are saddled with recent additions to the plan that operate like private insurance or require recipients to sign up for private insurance if they wish to receive, for example, payment for drugs. Some recipients claim that the copays under these plans exceed the cost of many generic drugs purchased directly from a low-cost pharmacy.

Increasing the number of people dependent on the program may increase political pressure to return Medicare more to its single-payer roots.

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This first video, a brief excerpt from a roundtable discussion, focuses on the public option in healthcare. In it, first Robert Reich says a few words, then Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tells us what’s behind the resistance to the public option in the Senate. Then in the clip below that, Robert Reich, who is a former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton and currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, explains what the public option really means.

Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University; Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics; and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography.

Robert Reich (below) is currently Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

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The word’s been out for several weeks now: Newseek has reported that hand-washing won’t help you avoid swine flu. That sounds like the bad news, but it’s really the good news: you’re not likely to get swine flu from touching things that someone who has swine flu has touched.

The most likely way to get swine flu (H1N1) is via particles of moisture suspended in the air and known to scientists as aerosol. That means that a really good way to avoid getting swine flu altogether is to wear a face mask all the time when you’re around other people. It may make you seem weird, but it likely will keep you safe from infection.

Coughs and sneezes from the swine-flu infected are what you have to fear if you’re worried about catching swine flu.

If wearing a face mask doesn’t strike you as a lot of fun but you still want to avoid the pork plague, then we suggest you start downing vitamins D and C: at least 3 grams a day in the case of vitamin C and at least 4,000 IU of D3 a day in the case of vitamin D. Going up to 10,000 IU a day of D won’t hurt you, and you should easily be able to consume 10 grams of C daily without ill effect.

The sign that you’ve taken too much vitamin C? Diarrhea, which also happens to be a symptom of swine flu, but we’re guessing you’ll be able to tell the difference. That’s only likely to happen if you exceed 10 grams of C a day, and it may take nearly twice that—average overdose of vitamin C is around 18 grams for most people.

But it shouldn’t take nearly that much to keep you healthy. And as we said, 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day should be more than enough to ward off the flu.

By the way, don’t give up on hand washing. It may not make any difference against swine flu, but for seasonal flu and colds, it likely will. And there are myriad other infections you can get from not washing your hands.

They’re all best avoided.

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US consumers may have a lot to think about when they visit the supermarket, what with pesticides in our fruits and vegetables and hormones in our meat.

But pity the poor Chinese consumer. Imagine what consumer protection is like in China if we hear frequent complaints about our FDA and EPA. The recent ongoing series of pet-food recalls in this country were, after all, the result of contaminations that originated in China. In fact, Reuters reports, “China’s citizens are treated to a near-daily diet of stories of mass food poisonings or tainted products, and the government is starting to take action.”

A Chinese official—Zheng Xiaoyu, a former head of the national food and drug agency, the equivalent of our FDA—was sentenced to death “for taking bribes in exchange for drug approvals.”

Now that’s what we call taking action!

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