Henry Aaron on Health Care CostsHenry AaronHosted by Russ Roberts | ||||
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In this bonus middle-of-the-week podcast, Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about health care costs. Researchers in a New England Journal of Medicine article have estimated that the US could save $209 billion if the US went to a single-payer system like Canada. Is this number reliable? Aaron takes a deeper look at the estimate and discusses the relevance of such estimates for health care policy.
This is a special mid-week podcast. It's a follow-up to an earlier podcast with Arnold Kling that raised the issue of administrative costs and potential savings from going to a single-payer system. It also ties in with recent discussions here at EconTalk about the challenges of accurate measurement in the social sciences. We hope you enjoy it. If not, come back Monday when our regular schedule resumes.
Time: 39:35
Size: 18.2 MB
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Mike Munger on the Division of Labor | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
Mike Munger on the Division of LaborMike MungerHosted by Russ Roberts | ||||
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Mike Munger of Duke University and EconTalk host Russ Roberts talk about specialization, the role of technology in aiding specialization and how the division of labor creates wealth.
Time: 1:01:37
Size: 14.2 MB
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Kling on Hospitals and Health Care | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
Kling on Hospitals and Health CareArnold KlingHosted by Russ Roberts | ||||
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Arnold Kling of EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the death of his father and the lessons to be learned for how hospitals treat patients and our health care system treats hospitals.
Time: 59:26
Size: 27.3 MB
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Lipstein on Hospitals | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
Lipstein on HospitalsSteven LipsteinHosted by Russ Roberts | ||||
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Steven Lipstein, President and CEO of BJC HealthCare--a billion hospital system in St. Louis, Missouri--talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of hospitals. They discuss pricing, the advantages and disadvantages of specialization in modern medical care, and culture and governance of non-profit hospitals vs. for-profit hospitals. At the end they talk about the positives and negatives of a national health board patterned after the Federal Reserve.
Time: 1:05:17
Size: 29.9 MB
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Readings and Links related to this podcast
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About this week's guest: About ideas and people mentioned in this podcast:
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Highlights
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| 0:36 | Intro. Hospitals: day-do-day operations and policies. Start with pricing: Bills from hospitals are a little mysterious. How do prices get set, what leeway? Where does the money come from? BJC has 13 hospitals, 2 teaching, some small rural, some in urban core, pediatric and adult. About 30% of revenue comes from the Federal government through Medicare, which insures people over 65 and certain categories of the disabled. About 13% comes from Medicaid, which is funded jointly by the Federal government and by the states, and insures those under a certain threshold of the poverty limit and other categories of the disabled. For those two groups, prices are not set by BJC but are legislated by the government. Not based on supply and demand. Other big payers: commercial payers--insurance companies and managed care. Hundreds of managed care contracts. Those insurers wanted to negotiated discounts with hospitals or doctors. The larger the discount, the higher the price grew. Example: If original price was $100 and insurer wanted a 2% discount, effective revenue to the hospital was $98. Over time, insurers wanted to negotiate bigger and bigger discounts, so it took a lot more of a price increase by the hospitals to generate that same $98. If the insurer wanted a 50% discount, price would grow to $200. Because other prices are legislated, because those costs have to be covered from some source, if the Medicare and Medicaid costs cannot be covered by those programs, the burden is shifted to the commercial side. End up with very inflated prices to cover the underpayments from Medicare and Medicaid plus these deep negotiated discounts. What's the meaningfulness of a discount? There's no difference between full price at $100 and half off at $200. Hospitals need to generate about a 3% operating margin. When you take that with their non-cash expenses like depreciation, end up with about 9-10% of revenue that helps them meet their capital expenditure obligations, to replace the facilities, property, plant equipment. About 6% of that from depreciation expense and 3% off operating margin. If operating margin is negative from Medicare and Medicaid, just shift it to the commercial payers. Have to mark those prices up. Prices mean very little inside the industry any more. Very few payers pay a list price. Prospect of trying to reform makes a lot of sense. |
| 6:30 | Nuts and bolts: Russ, two kids delivered at BJC. Charges on bill, cost $15 but through insurance premiums as employee, covering each other. Long list on bill, including orange juice, very large number, something like $100. If everyone started bringing his own orange juice, really wouldn't reduce the cost of deliveries by $100, would it? Why charged $40 for an aspirin pill while in the hospital? Different explanations: tablet had to be individually packaged and delivered to the floor and delivered by a registered nurse, but also paying for the aspirin pill for everyone not insured, plus Medicaid and Medicare shortfall, plus teaching doctors and nurses how to administer the tablet. All the costs of the social missions: caring for the poor, educating next generation, caring for the patient, plus negotiated discount. Price has little meaning to the consumer or provider. No incentive to bring own orange juice or aspirin. Would bill go down if so? Some situations where bill can go down. Rules and regulations govern administration of medication in a hospital, so discouraged from bringing medication from home. Bringing orange juice from home might not be the most cost effective way to reduce your hospital bill. |
| 10:37 | Side question: What proportion of day and staff time is spent trying to figure out these pricing complications? Not much of own individual time but a lot of money spent managing outdated revenue cycle in health care industry, estimated $300 billion more than other developed nations from fragmented system. Anecdote on complexity: Experience at BJC, Russ had sore throat that didn't go away, father had had polyp about the same age; doctor took out technology implement that looks like popsicle stick, thought it wasn't anything; then took out more complicated technology, scope, and explored throat. Russ could have declined the expensive technology, come back later if problem didn't go away. Pace of technological innovation. What kind of financial incentives, cost sharing, so that Russ would have thought twice before allowing the scope examination as opposed to a tongue depressor? Midst of that dilemma now. Increased deductibles, higher co-insurance, co-payments. Anything free will have higher demand than anything that costs money. Sometimes Russ would make a mistake, refuse care and end up with throat cancer. In current world, nobody says no. In America, 55% of households earn under $50,000 a year. If you earn up to $50,000 a year, challenged till recently by high gas prices, food prices, energy prices; concerned with downturn in overall economy; what does a $2000 deductible with $200 copayment mean? People will forego access to the health care. May 4 in a 100. Cost sharing by typical American is causing them to forestall health services, causing people to end up in the hospital for avoidable conditions or experience complications that they wouldn't have experienced had they had access to early treatment. The more cost-sharing and financial responsibility: how much is good and how much causes them to forego much needed care ending up costing more later on? Trade-off. [Taping date: November 24, 2008, financial turmoil and uncertainty.] |
| 18:26 | At some point in the past, maybe in the 1980s or '70s, most effective non-invasive technique was an x-ray. That changed: got new techniques, MRI, CAT-scans; and they keep getting better. Robotic surgery. Pace of that: when you have to decide when to acquire a new piece of technology, who makes that call? Government, hospital? Governed by intellectual curiosity, affiliated with Washington School of Medicine, driven by desire to figure out which technologies are best. Doctors, scientists, consider whether patients will benefit. Teaching environment: learning, discovery, dissemination of new knowledge; want to be involved in figuring out what works, what adds value and what doesn't. Involved in early clinical trials. By the time proliferation to larger community, usually public and published studies. A 1% improvement that doubles the cost is not a benefit. Most attention now: end of life care. Mother, leukemia, extensive chemotherapy. If physician had said, "There's an 80% likelihood that you are in your last 2 years of life," would she have said she wanted the treatment to see if she was in that 20%. Once she realized that Medicare would cover it, she might have done it. Many families want to try to beat the odds. Probabilities are hard to think about. In technology, certainly there must be cases where you want to make sure the insurers will cover it before you adopt it, and legal pressures. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for drugs and devices. Once approved, typically are covered by insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid. Do factor in if technology is financially viable. Duplicate equipment more of a problem with competitive model, Saskatchewan, Canada. |
| 26:01 | BJC is an umbrella organization of 13 different hospitals, non-profit. How does profit/non-profit affect competitive environment? Does BJC face competition? Both not-for-profit and for-profit companies generate an operating surplus. Difference is that for-profit companies, hospitals, are able to distribute their earnings for individual benefit--shareholders, owners, investors. Not-for-profits do not distribute their earnings for individual benefit. By law they are required to retain those earnings for community benefit. Community benefit obligations of not-for-profit hospitals and hospital systems: what is it, how is it measured, quantified, reported back to the public? Tenet, for-profit hospitals, earnings could be taken to headquarters in Dallas or elsewhere or distributed as dividends. BJC retains earnings in St. Louis area and redeploys them for community benefit. Sounds good, but cost to that system: in the rest of the economy, role of profit and loss is to induce prudent risk-taking on the part of owners. Loss induces prudence. In the case of a for-profit operation, stock holders, owners judge the bottom line. Not-for-profit whether the community is benefiting or not is not decided by the community. No feedback loop as in a for-profit system. For a not-for-profit hospital, who does the CEO try to please? to whom accountable? Accountable to the patients. Board of Trustees representative of the community is reported to. Patients come at a time of great personal need, anxious, concerned; want to give good personal experience. Have to recruit the best and give a clinical environment and tools to do that. Second, have to be financially responsible, living within resources, with a little left over at the end of the month as savings, like a family budget. Renew property, plant, equipment. Third, position hospital to be around a long time. Not thinking just about next quarter's earnings or next month's earnings or what the value of the stock will be. Asset to the community, provide the community with a sustainable advantage over time. Fourth, stay true to social and academic mission. |
| 34:06 | Goals conflict, tradeoffs, weird environment, incentives faced are unusual. Must be political pressure within and without organization to try to balance those goals. Board understands needing to be financially responsible and there needs to be a balance. Can't spend all in savings account today, not always able to build state-of-the-art facilities because buildings don't take care of patients--people do. Have to have the right balance. Doctors, nurses, technologists still at the core. Specialization: intense in the medical profession. One hundred years ago, you might just be a surgeon. Today, pediatric surgeon, etc. How does a hospital, given the benefits of that specialization, balance that against the holistic complexity of the human body? How do you keep one specialist from doing something that might benefit the liver but not the rest of the body? Family goes in as an advocate. How does hospital try to reduce those problems? Surge of new knowledge drives specialization. Used to be that family doctor was based on five or six elements, e.g., x-ray, physical exam. Now, knowledge of over 30,000 gene-pairs introducing a whole new set of information. Different kinds of diabetes. Huge specialization. The more specialty training, the higher the income. Causes doctors to pursue careers in the specialties. System rewards specialty training, so generalists are dependent on specialists or information technology. Why do the specialists make so much more? Whole 'nother weird market. Determined by work units. Requires more education, more residency, more highly valued. Over time, those differences have gotten out of whack. Medicare pays doctors out of work RVUs, relative value units, value for every hour of work provided, disproportionately weighted toward procedures involved. Shortages of primary care physicians--less remunerative and fewer and fewer doctors. More specialization, has costs, ability to communicate with each other; can use technology to help the communication, but imperfect. Hospitalists: physicians who spend 100% of their time in the hospital, coordinate the care you receive. Episodes of care go beyond the hospital. Hand-off involved. The more hand-offs you have, the greater the opportunity for failure of care coordination. Increasingly reliant on physicians and hospitals to coordinate our medical care. Fewer visits to primary care physician today. Whether in the hospital or home, need to involve family members in coordinating care. Hospitals can aid through communication strategies, electronic health records, being open. Mother leaving chemotherapy treatment, fell in parking lot, broke leg, ended up in emergency room. Needed coordination, family best. |
| 47:03 | Role of data in making decisions in the hospital. Leonhardt podcast: door-to-balloon time, person comes in with heart problems. Measuring is a good thing in general. People come in with congestion, but could be pneumonia; go to doctor, stethescope, doctor says fine; hospitals do x-rays so as not to miss it, but that's expensive. Hand-washing data versus reality: probably a good idea but not in the habit. BJC has organization called center for health care quality and effectiveness, measures everything. Timeliness of service is directly correlated with outcomes. Last four years. Have 68 black-belt trained technicians, lean--trained to eliminate waste--and six sigma--eliminate variability. Aspire to get it right. Example of improvement: might have been in upper quartile, now in top ten for speed of administering. Timeliness, accuracy, completeness. Effect on outcomes? Use national indicators: evidence-based-medicine, use what you know and do it consistently. Doctors uncomfortable with that? Over 2000 physicians, over 1000 academic; trained at different times; some more facile with new technologies than others. More senior physicians have accumulated experience; learn from each other. Learning and innovation feed off of each other. What kind of regulations keep you from making those improvements? Some may slow down the process. Health insurance privacy and portability act (HIPA): information not always shared that perhaps should be shared. Want to ensure confidentiality but make it available, say, in emergency room at a time it's needed. Personal health records, as differentiated from electronic health records. BJC, myhealthfolders.com, medications lists online in family folders, would be available from any emergency room in the world. Security issue. Software changes pin number every two weeks. Electronic chip in one's arm. Could be scanned by anyone walking by. |
| 57:38 | What would you change in the current regulatory environment? Max Baucus, 89-page white paper on everything wrong with the American health care system. Volume and complexity. Change: recognize that founding fathers didn't create those branches of government to design and implement our health care system. Federal Reserve model: Board legally chartered by Congress, commissioned with guaranteeing access to health insurance, affordable; and give individuals choice. Set up U.S. Health Board, delegate supervisory responsibility. By setting up the board, could begin to tackle real problems like administrative cost burden. Wouldn't have to set pricing nationally, could just create the units of service. Would be more consistency, less fragmentation. Take long-term planning horizon. Cannot be election cycles, even 2 or 4 or 8 years, not long enough planning horizon. Hayek, from The Fatal Conceit: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know really know about what they imagine they can design." Surfeit of design in the current system. Board might be step in an improved direction. Governors in Fed Board of Governors appointed for 14 years. Buffered from political concerns, not lobbied directly about Fed Funds rate. Not best month to use the Fed as an analogy. Probably been spared some mistakes in health care by lobbying. Fed has acted fairly deliberately. Without central bank might be in worse position than today. No answer to which is better: explicit lobbying or implicit? |
