COVID Vaccine and Privilege: When is it not about you?

Recently, an article from CNN, “A vaccination site meant to serve a hard-hit Latino neighborhood in New York instead serviced more Whites from other areas”, was posted on a medical social justice page of which I am a member. Among a number of others, I expressed my displeasure at this, but I also posted a comment in which I unfortunately said “People are scum”. It did not specifically refer to the white people who had obtained these vaccines, perhaps inappropriately, but certainly could be seen as that. I was called out for that comment, and that was appropriate. People are not scum, for better and worse. Scum is a substance that exists without intentionality. People, however, do have intentionality, and that can make them do things that are very good and very bad and everything in between. Certainly, doing something bad, or wrong, does not make a person bad; many religions have doctrines that are more or less comparable to “hate the sin, love the sinner”.

More to the point is whether the people referred to in the article did anything wrong or objectionable at all. While those quoted in the  article were very critical of this behavior, some of those posting comments on the page felt that these people (presumably people who otherwise met the current criteria in NY for the vaccine, by age or health status) were just trying to do what they could, and not trying to use their privilege to obtain vaccine intended for the minority community. They agreed that the system, and the structure for distributing the vaccine was severely flawed and probably inequitable, but that the individuals pursuing the vaccine should not be condemned. They acknowledged that some people, by virtue of education, wealth, computer-savvy, connections to other family members who may be more computer-savvy, and other characteristics, are more able to avail themselves of benefits. Even when this results in preferentially vaccinating white people rather than the minorities for whom it was intended (by placing vaccination sites in minority communities), it does not mean those individuals (many of whom are sick and elderly) are doing a bad thing, still less are bad people, or certainly scum. Nonetheless, the result is the result; the New York Times on January 31, 2021 reports that “Data showed that while 24% of city residents are Black, only 11% of vaccine recipients were. White New Yorkers received a disproportionate share of the shots.

The CNN report was not the only one critical of people “jumping the queue”. In a NY Times Op-Ed on January 28, 2021, Elisabeth Rosenthal MD, editor of Kaiser Health News, writes “Yes, It Matters That People Are Jumping the Vaccine Line”:

For weeks Americans have watched those who are well connected, wealthy or crafty “jump the line” to get a vaccine, while others are stuck, endlessly waiting on hold to get an appointment, watching sign-up websites crash or loitering outside clinics in the often-futile hope of getting a shot.

She adds, agreeing with some of the points made by the commenters on the site, “I don’t blame the lucky recipients; after all, hospitals would just offer the unused vaccine to the next person on the list,” but also notes that “The problem is that often, people are not really being “offered” the vaccine; in some cases, they are grabbing it through position, influence or deceit.” How often? I don’t know, and probably Rosenthal does not either. Or, for that matter, those who posted comments on the page, although they seem to be from NY and likely to know a lot more about the situation there than I do.

Most likely, the predominantly white recipients of the vaccine being offered in minority neighborhood represent a spectrum of people. They would include those who consciously believe that they are special and privileged and deserve to be at the head of the line, those who believe in equity but let that concern be overcome by their self-interest, and those who are appropriately candidates for the vaccine in the current phase but are desperate, confused, and, with no negative or ignoble intent, found their way to that place and time. Defending the latter, however, does not excuse the former, and there are certainly many of them. Freeman’s Law (which I should probably rename “Freeman’s First Law” so as not to confuse it with Freeman’s Second Law, to which I referred in my blog post of January 28, 2021, “Vitamin D, false nostrums, and conspiracy theories: The world has enough real problems,”) states that in any program designed to help a group of people, no matter how narrowly defined, those with the relatively least need are most likely to benefit. Thus in a program designed, say, to help homeless pregnant teenagers with HIV living under bridges, those who have some greater resources (a bit more education, a slightly less traumatic childhood, etc.) will be the ones who are able to access it first. The larger the universe of people who are targeted, the more people who would qualify for services, the greater the disparity is likely to be. This is of course especially true in the case of COVID vaccine, where the target population is, ultimately, everyone.

Another aspect of the comments posted that was interesting to me was that they referred to those seeking to get the vaccine as “patients”. Perhaps this is understandable on a medical site, and it is quite possible that some of those involved were patients of those doctors who made the comments. I have sometimes been critical of the use of the term “patients”, noting that it was the “medical” word for what in English are called “people”, and that it could tend to diminish their humanity. I am quite sure this was not the intent of those using it, but in this context it has quite another flaw. Calling folks “patients”, especially when they are not your patients, carries a connotation of dependency, needing help from their doctor. Calling them “people” implies more that they have agency, the ability to make decisions, prioritize needs and values, and act on them. While it is often true that many people, particularly the sickest and oldest and least educated and least empowered do need help, it is also true that when the affected universe is the entire population, it includes all of us, all people, adults and children, young and old, Black and White, rich and poor, doctors and “patients”. It includes those who are the wealthiest, most educated, most connected, and most empowered, who are often find ways to get to the head of the line. Thus, prioritizing who should get the vaccine first and enforcing that is critical. Social justice is about promoting equity, which means giving more help to those who have the least and need it the most, and reducing the temptation to give in to those whose privilege or loud voice is most demanding.

Rosenthal writes:

The United States has allowed its public health system to become a hollowed-out underfunded mess, and many vaccination clinics are being run and staffed by contracted private companies. And the private sector has so far proved too vulnerable to private favoritism.

Until the supply is sufficient, the government needs to give the shots to the people and places that need it most, and find ways to ensure that the plan is followed; the system could prioritize ZIP codes that have high Covid-19 infection rates or target low-income populations who might otherwise have a difficult time securing an appointment.

She is absolutely correct, but clearly targeting certain ZIP codes is not sufficient, as the Times describes on February 2, 2021 in ‘Even in Poorer Neighborhoods, the Wealthy Are Lining Up for Vaccines’ (Feb 3 print title: ‘Where poor suffer most, wealthy find vaccines’). And a 52-year old celebrity on-line fitness trainer got the vaccine as an ‘educator’.  Meanwhile the COVID surge most hurts those in the poorest neighborhoods, as in LA. And people behaving as though the doors were opening at a department store the day after Thanksgiving is not just a NY problem. a friend in another city, on seeing the pushing and shoving, both literal and figurative, that went on when they went to get their vaccine, said “I wouldn’t want to be in a concentration camp with those people.”

The problem, if you think it is a problem, of empowered people going to poor neighborhood to get their vaccines is real and ongoing. I think that folks who do so are doing a selfish thing, a bad thing. This in itself does not make them bad people, or certainly scum. However, for the record, I personally believe that there are indeed bad people, and that doing enough bad things often enough, predictably enough, and bad enough does make someone a bad person (see, e.g.,”Nazis”).

We should have compassion for those with need, and the most compassion for the greatest need. And recognize that “me” is not the hallmark of social justice.

Incremental change will not cure our health care system

Earlier this year I discussed (The denominator matters: we only have a quality health care system if everyone can access it!, February 16, 2020) an article from the New York Times by Elisabeth Rosenthal, the editor of the Kaiser Health News and an emergency physician, called “Where the frauds are all legal.” One of those “frauds” I focused on was “surprise” medical bills. “Even though you went to a hospital that was in your insurance network and saw a surgeon who was in your network,” I wrote, “it turns out that the ER group or the anesthesiology group contracted by the hospital, or the assistant surgeon your surgeon picked, is not in network. Boom! $10,000, $100,000 bills! No one is “satisfied” by this.”

In fact, this is not entirely correct. Yes, your insurance company is not happy about this if they have to pay the bill. Yes, you, the patient, are certainly not happy about it if the insurance company doesn’t pay the bill, or only pays a part of it, and you are stuck with the rest. Very likely, the hospital itself doesn’t like this if they themselves are indeed in your network, because it makes them look bad, and they know that you, and your insurance company, are going to hold them in large part responsible. So who likes it? Well, as you might guess, those doctors who are getting the big payments. In fact, probably even if the hospital tried to hire its own, say, anesthesiologists or emergency physicians, they’d have a hard time paying as much as those independent groups do.

But the other stakeholders who are happy with this arrangement are the owners of these physician practices, who are not always the physicians themselves but increasingly private equity funds, which have been buying out physician groups for a few years (‘Specialty physician groups attracting private equity investment’, Modern Healthcare, August 31, 2019). Expanding upon a “research letter” published in JAMA, JM Zhu from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania writes:

Of approximately 18,000 group medical practices, we found 355 physician practice acquisitions across a number of specialties, most commonly anesthesiology (19.4%), multi-specialty (19.4%), emergency medicine (12.1%), family practice (11.1%), and dermatology (9.9%). From 2015 to 2016, there was also an increase in the number of acquired cardiology, ophthalmology, radiology, and obstetrics/gynecology practices. Acquired practices had an average of 16.3 physicians, 4 sites, and 6.2 physicians affiliated with each site. About 44% of acquired practices were in the South. (‘Private Equity Investment in Physician Practices’, February 18, 2020).

Of course, it doesn’t take great acumen to realize that the reason that private equity investors are attracted to buy these practices is exactly the opportunity to profit handsomely from this “loophole”, by what Rosenthal calls “legal fraud”.  In essentially all areas, the whole strategy of private equity funds is exactly this sort of “gaming the system”, finding the margin where the income far exceeds the cost because of some loophole in the law.

This demonstrates several flaws in our current healthcare “system”. The most obvious is the specific problem created by “surprise” bills, one that has been even recognized (although not addressed) by Congress. For example, HR 3502, “Protecting people from surprise medical bills”, introduced in this congress by Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA). It could pass the House, and if both the Senate and White House flip, it could even become law. Of course, it would have considerable opposition from the very equity firms that are making money from the current situation. This is the second flaw – legislation to regulate the system often fails because those who make big money from the very problems such regulation is intended to correct have – big money. They can give contributions to legislators.

Every inequity in health care, every exploitation of the system, results in (and usually from) someone making money, and those “someones” are very interested in preventing the issue from being corrected. This holds true, as I have previously discussed, for hospitals (“health systems”), long term care companies, pharmaceutical and device companies, and insurance companies, as well as equity-owned physician groups. Kansas Congressman and GOP Senate candidate Roger Marshall, according to a recent article in the Kansas City Star by Shorman and Lowry, pushed for aid to physician-owned hospitals (ones not yet bought up by for-profit equity companies) while his wife, as a partner in real estate ventures that owned the land that they were on, profited greatly! In this case it didn’t even require contributions to politicians; the politician was in it for himself.  You can be sure that if there is a buck to be made, someone will be making it. You can just be certain that it isn’t you, the patient, particularly if you are uninsured, poorly insured, or poor. Of course, if you are, you’ve probably figured out by now that the system overall is not designed for you!

The design of the capitalist US, particularly so in this age of corporate “gangster” capitalism is to make money for the wealthiest and everyone else be damned. The only question that might still be open to discussion is whether people’s health, and health care, should be subjected to the same rules of that system as consumer goods. After all, it is your health, your life! Your family’s health and life! The same could, and should, be said for other basic necessities such as food, shelter, and education, but health has special resonance such that every survey of the American people finds overwhelming support for the idea that everyone should be able to get adequate healthcare, and agreement that profiteers such as insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are bad guys (there is less awareness of the role of hospital systems, still less of the private-equity-owned physician groups discussed here).

The third key aspect (I keep wanting to say “flaw” until I realize there are strong advocates for these policies) that this illustrates is the fatuousness of trying to solve the problems of our health care system and its exploitation by profiteers one issue at a time. Each scam that has been exposed and addressed by regulations or legislation (more rarely) has generated another; each loophole that is supposedly “closed” contains exceptions. The problem isn’t “bad apples” (although there are many), it is the whole system and the powerful forces that wish to continue it.

While Republicans policies are often targeted at eliminating any regulation, and indeed encouraging overt corruption and exploitation, “mainstream” Democratic policies are about putting in occasional patches, and then saying “there!” until another scam pops up. The Democratic Party, like the GOP, is beholden to rich donors, and a high percentage of theirs are financiers. Their mantra, clearly articulated by Joe Biden, is that we need to keep the private (read: profit-making) sector, and not change everything. Unfortunately, if the goal is actual to make the health system more equitable and increase the nation’s health, it cannot work.  It certainly cannot contain costs; the very profit that these companies make IS the cost!

The only solution is a comprehensive change to our entire health system, one that eliminates the incentive for profit-making altogether. This will work, is a good idea, and is what we should do, starting with Medicare for All.

The denominator matters: we only have a quality health care system if everyone can access it!

Denominators.

Even if you are not a regular user of statistics, you probably remember that word from arithmetic. You know, the “4” in ¼, as opposed to the “1”, the numerator. Why is this important in the current policy debate? Well, if you know, for example, that a majority of, say, Republicans (or Democrats) like a policy, it would be a mistake to assume that a majority of all people like it. In health care policy, in particular, denominators, and how they are chosen, are important, because by choosing an inappropriate one you can “prove” a point that is wrong.

I recently was present for a debate on the issue of “health care is a human right” in an undergraduate class. The students did well, and although almost all personally supported the “pro” side, the “anti” side was able to find arguments in the literature, often from organizations like the CATO Institute. To a significant degree, however, they were either philosophical objections (“what is a human right?”) or, conversely, pragmatic irrelevancies to the issue (“a lot of doctors don’t take Medicaid”). Many of the assertions are belied by the facts. For example, the Northwestern economist Craig Garthwaite, interviewed in VOX, notes that if drug companies can’t make huge profits, innovation will go down, and most of the world depends upon the innovations discovered in the US. In fact, of all New Molecular Entities (NMEs) discovered, a little over 1/3 are in the US. But even this ignores another important point – many or most of these were not originally discovered by pharmaceutical companies using their hard-earned profits on Research and Development (R&D), on which they spend much less than on marketing, but by government (National Institutes of Health, NIH) supported university research, which the drug companies skim for the most promising ones. So what is the denominator there? All NMEs, or only those funded by drug companies?

The students also cited these opponents of healthcare-as-a-right or Medicare for All who also assert that, in a similar manner, it would cause quality to decrease. If everyone has access, and hospitals and doctors can’t make more money on some, they opine, then those people will not get all the best, most modern and effective care. This is where denominators come back in. Even if it were true that there might be decreased quality for those who currently have unfettered access (very questionable), it is obvious that the quality of care would increase for those who now get little or none! Overall, when the whole population is considered as the denominator, the quality of care would absolutely go up. Denial of care, as asserted long ago by Schiff, Brennan and Bindman, is “the gravest of all quality defects”.[1] If a hospital, for example, reports excellent outcomes for people treated there for heart attack, but only those with good insurance were admitted for treatment and the overall rate of death from heart attack in the community rose, it would be painting a very skewed picture. If what you mean is “I have real privileges, and I am afraid that by spreading access out to everyone I might lose that privilege”, then say that; don’t dress it up by pretending quality would decrease!

A common assertion we hear, particularly from “moderates”, or at least from the politicians, pundits, and media who assert that they speak for moderates, is that “Most people obtain health insurance through their employers and are generally satisfied with their choice of providers, coverages and the amount they contribute to their family’s healthcare.” This may be true, or it may not be. The majority of people current have health insurance coverage through their employer, but whether they are generally satisfied is another question. The main thing is that they are much more likely to be satisfied when they are healthy and do not have to utilize health care very much or at all. Even then, the copays and other surprise costs can prove burdensome, but it is only when something happens that causes them to need to use a lot of healthcare that it becomes critical, bankrupting them and often even making that care inaccessible. When you and the members of your family are not sick, costs can be low (and you can be satisfied) but when you are sick is when all the hidden costs kick in. In this case, the important denominator might be a smaller group, those who used healthcare, rather than everyone.

These excess costs include the various legal scams described by Elisabeth Rosenthal “Where the frauds are all legal” on December 7, 2019 in the NY Times (discussed by me in Scamming Medicare: It's the providers and insurers, not the patients!, December 19, 2019), when her husband had a serious accident. They also include the “surprise bills” that come because, even though you went to a hospital that was in your insurance network and saw a surgeon who was in your network, it turns out that the ER group or the anesthesiology group contracted by the hospital, or the assistant surgeon your surgeon picked, is not in network. Boom! $10,000, $100,000 bills! No one is “satisfied” by this.

Such problems are most often faced by those with multiple chronic diseases, often older people, who have to see the doctor, be hospitalized or be operated on more often. Most people, in most years, are not in need of major or expensive care, so they are the “satisfied well”. But something bad and expensive could happen to any of us any day: Your doctor surprises you by telling you that you have cancer! You are in a car (or bicycle) accident and need big surgeries! Your baby was premature and needs to be in neonatal intensive care! We are all at risk in a system where only some people are covered, and only some of the time, and for some things, and for certain providers.

Recently, there was big news when the large Culinary Workers of America union came out to oppose Sen. Sanders’ Medicare for All plan, which the union suggests would void the excellent health care coverage that they have won for their members. The union deserves tremendous credit for having negotiated this coverage in the current and recent negative environment for unions, especially for a membership that is largely relatively low-paid, minority, female, and often non-English speaking. However, to suggest that it would be a loss for their members is deceiving. For one thing, the coverage of a Medicare for All plan would be at least equal to this excellent plan; it would cover everyone for everything. Health coverage is a great benefit, but the money that employers pay for their contribution (which unlike workers’ contributions is tax-deductible) is money that they don’t pay in wages. The benefits of M4All compared to the CWA plan are well-described in this Quote of the Day by Dr. Don McCanne. And the CWA contract is a relative outlier and not guaranteed to be as good next time; remember the many General Motors workers who were the exemplars of having “Cadillac coverage” during prior healthcare insurance debates, but who lost most of those benefits when GM “restructured” after bankruptcy – if they were not laid off altogether?

At least as important are the relatives, friends, and neighbors of those covered workers who work for small companies without good – or any – health insurance plans, or are disabled, or unemployed for longer or shorter periods. This is the “community”, the “population” that needs to be considered as the denominator. Many CWA (and other union) members realize this; while the union leadership may rightly be proud of their accomplishments in negotiating, this does not bring excellent health coverage or care to all of the people. The denominator needs to be all of us.

Only a universal single payer system, an improved and expanded Medicare for All, will do that.

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[1] Schiff GS, Brennan AB, Bindman TA, A Better-Quality Alternative Single-Payer National Health System Reform, JAMA 272(10):803-808, September 14, 1994.

"Single Payer", "Medicare for All": Good ideas and about time!

The call for a universal health care system in the US is probably greater than it ever has been. While, of course, the Republicans, whose only firm position is completely kowtowing to billionaires and major corporations, are opposed to it, many Democrats have signed on to the “Improved and Expanded Medicare for All” bill in Congress (120 at last count). Democrats running across the country have been calling for “single payer” as well as “Medicare for All”, from outspoken Democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NY (and of course Bernie Sanders) to moderate Democrats running in states and districts that Trump won. They correctly see this as an issue that cuts across traditional liberal-conservative lines, and even racial lines, and may be their path to victory.

Many Republicans (although not the Republican congressional leadership) are reading the same tea leaves, and are hedging, trying to say that they favor the things that people like about the ACA (most important, the protection against insurers denying coverage for pre-existing conditions). Of course this often requires major dissembling for those who, like our Arizona GOP candidate for Senate Martha McSally, voted to gut the ACA, and even Texas senator Ted Cruz who authored the “Cruz Amendment” that would strip virtually all protections for people under ACA. President Trump, never one for nuance, has no difficulty having it both ways: he calls for the repeal of ACA while insisting that his health care plan will protect people’s ability to have health insurance, pre-existing conditions or not (it won’t).

It is in this context that the recent Sunday NY Times’ Magazine article by Elisabeth Rosenthal and Shefali Luthra, ‘“Don’t get too excited” about Medicare for All’ becomes important. For starters, “Don’t get too excited” is not necessarily the opinion of the authors but a quotation from Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN). Rep. Cooper was responding to the surprise of one of his Nashville constituents, Dr. Carol Paris, President of the leading physician advocacy group for single payer, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), that he had signed onto the Medicare for All bill. Nonetheless, the article does raise many cautions about the movement to single payer or Medicare for All, mainly about different interpretations of the meanings of this by different advocates, and incomplete and sometimes inaccurate understanding of them by regular people. The most important thing about it, however, is that it had to be written at all because there is such a movement; long-time activists, including PNHP physicians, remember that it was not too long ago that such an idea was poo-pooed, dismissed. Not now.

Clearly, the quantum step forward was the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. The establishment pundits of both parties were shocked at how popular and successful this old Jewish socialist from Vermont (ok, originally Brooklyn) was across the country. He didn’t win the Democratic nomination, true, but he might have won the general election against Trump. Certainly, his straight talk and the fact that he directly addressed the felt needs of regular people was the main reason for his popularity, and people’s fears about their health risks and costs were central to this (see A majority of Americans are worried about health care costs -- and a majority of Congress doesn't care, October 16, 2018). Bernie had advocated for single payer for decades, as had great leaders before him including the late Representative Ron Dellums of California (see Ron Dellums: Loss of a great leader and a job for the rest of us, July 31, 2018), but the visibility of his presidential campaign skyrocketed the visibility of single payer.

Rosenthal and Luthra utilize a good bit of ink describing what single payer is --the government is the only payer for health care, rather than multiple private insurers; Canada is the best example of this, and Britain has a government-owned national health service. They also note that Medicare for All means exactly that, that everyone, not just those over 65 and the blind and disabled, would be in the Medicare program. Of course, since Medicare is a single payer program, it would be single payer. They describe the misconceptions people have (“would I be able to keep my present plan?”), and also talk about other countries, such as France and Germany, that have universal health care without a single payer but with a heavily-regulated marketplace. They observe that partialist solutions do not generate the enthusiasm of single payer, but that the latter would be the hardest and thus (perhaps) most difficult to institute. Among the concerns they note are the displacement of insurance company employees and the decrease in doctors’ income.

But these are the most important points.

1.       Our health care system is not working. Our life expectancy is much lower than other developed countries, about 43^rd, and a recent article in Smithsonian Magazine covers work that projects that it will drop another 21 places by 2040, to 64! Other measures of access to care and quality of care are comparably poor. Yes, there are heroic and wonderful things that medical care can do for people, but if these are not accessible to everyone, and if the cost of them precludes spending on even basic care for everyone, it is not working.
2.   Our health care system is incredibly costly. By far, we spend more, overall, as % of GDP, and per capita, than any country in the world, as illustrated by the graph from the Kaiser Family Foundation. It is more than twice as much as most of the developed countries, all of which have far better health status.
3. Profit is the problem. Specifically, corporate profit made from providing health care services (or, in the case of insurance companies, not providing health care). This is how we manage to do both #1 and #2 – because the functional goal of the US health system is not to increase the population’s health but to make as much money as possible for insurers, hospitals, drug companies, and providers.

These are the core issues that need to be addressed, and what sets the US apart from all other developed countries. Yes, Canada has a single payer system such as we might have with Medicare for All (and they even call it Medicare). Britain has a National Health Service, with most hospital and health care facilities owned by, and some doctors employed by, the government. Britain, however, allows private insurance for those who can afford it, Canada does not. France and Germany and Switzerland have multiple insurers, but they are not unfettered to maximize profit by denying care. In Switzerland, for example, insurers have to be non-profit, have to offer the same benefits, and have to charge the same amount. They compete on quality of service! Can you imagine that here?

So, while Rosenthal and Luthra repeat the idea that single payer, although the most enthusiasm-generating, would involve the biggest change, it is also, in another sense, the least complicated. Trying to get to a system like that that evolved in these other countries over decades will be more complicated to understand and to implement. Many of the suggestions for incrementalism (“Medicare for More”, “public option”) will not solve the problems we have because they do not include everybody, and because they do not eliminate the incentive for making money on the back of denying care that is the core flaw in our current situation.

“Medicare for All” and “single payer” are popular among people because their core meaning is understandable, and they would address the needs that they have.

• ·        Everybody in, nobody out!
• ·        No profiteering!

Simple message. Needed solution.

High spending, poor outcomes: the health results of inequality in the US

A recent article in JAMA, “Health care spending in the United States and other high-income countries”, by Irene Papanicolas, Liana Woskie, and Ashish Jha, is the latest in the almost continuous series of articles on this topic that have been appearing for decades. The dramatic difference between how much we in the US spend (per this paper, the US spends 17.8% of GDP on “health care” compared to 9.6-124% for the other 10 highest-income countries—United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark) and our health outcomes (e.g., lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality) continues to be striking. This information appears regularly, in one form or another, from reliable sources such as the Commonwealth Fund, the Kaiser Family Foundation and its Kaiser Health News. It is the subject of many academic studies and books by experts, such as “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back”, the 2017 book by Elisabeth Rosenthal, now editor of KHN. I have addressed this topic extensively both in my book, “Health, Medicine, and Justice: Designing a fair and equitable healthcare system” (Copernicus Healthcare, 2015) and in many of my blogs (e.g., US Health Rankings remain low and #Trumpcare will make them worse!, June 18, 2017).

So what is new in this current study? Why is it important? As best as I can tell, it is the spin being put on it by a variety of commentators, and in articles that point out those aspects that seem to be different from what has been published before, such as in "Why Is U.S. Health Care So Expensive? Some of the Reasons You’ve Heard Turn Out to Be Myths” by Margot Sanger-Katz in the New York Times March 13, 2018. The original title of that article, preserved in the hyperlink URL, was “United States healthcare resembles rest of world”, an amazingly hard claim to make given the data that the study itself presents. The Sanger-Katz piece manages to do this by both cherry-picking some data points, including that “…the United States sends people to the hospital less often, it has a smaller share of specialist physicians, and it gives people about the same number of hospitalizations and doctors’ visits... while its spending on social services outside of health care, like housing and education, looked fairly typical.” Maybe, but the important findings, even mentioned in the Times article, are not suggested by the headline, such as “The nation did rank near the top in its use of certain medical services, including expensive imaging tests and specific surgical procedures, like knee replacements and C-sections.”

The article in JAMA is accompanied by four editorial commentaries, taking different approaches; they are well and accurately analyzed by Don McCanne in the “Quote of the Day” piece he wrote on it. The most important is that by Howard Bauchner and Phil B. Fontanarosa, “Health Care Spending in the United States Compared With 10 Other High-Income Countries: What Uwe Reinhardt Might Have Said” (JAMA. 2018;319(10):990-992. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.1879, full text requires subscription). Reinhardt died a few months ago, but the authors do an excellent job of pointing out the important issues that he had already called attention to in previous articles, and would likely emphasize regarding this one.

Importantly, the article by Sanger-Katz goes on to say

There were two areas where the United States really was quite different: We pay substantially higher prices for medical services, including hospitalization, doctors’ visits and prescription drugs. And our complex payment system causes us to spend far more on administrative costs. The United States also has a higher rate of poverty and more obesity than any of the other countries, possible contributors to lower life expectancy that may not be explained by differences in health care delivery systems.

Let us look separately at these two, higher prices and high administrative costs, and high rates of poverty and obesity. Higher prices and higher administrative costs are, shock, a major reason that our medical care costs so much! The higher administrative costs, which the study estimates at 8% compared to 1-3% for other countries, are a huge driver; so are prescription drug expenses, $1443 per capita in the US vs a range of $466 to $939 in the other countries. What all this is about is profit. It is the elephant in the room in all these discussions. In the US, “healthcare” spending includes the enormous profits made by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, device makers, and providers (especially hospitals and health systems, as well as some very expensive specialists). This is money being taken out of the system, and is not about providing medical care, not to mention “health” care or certainly “health”. And while the study shows that US physicians (even primary care physicians, although this is very variable country to country) make more, this important graphic, recently updated, shows how much of this cost is related to the increase in the number of “administrative” personnel compared to doctors in the US over the last few decades. I first saw this graph in about 1995, and while the relative increase was huge

it is dwarfed by the phenomenal increase since then, as shown in the full graphic:

(Note that after the ACA went into effect, the uptick was even steeper.)

The other point identified by Sanger-Katz is that the US has a “higher rate of poverty and more obesity than any of the other countries”. These go hand in hand to some degree (the easy and cheap availability of calorie-dense low nutrition foods to poor people), but both are about blaming the victims. The higher rate of poverty is most important. The damning fact is that the US tolerates this and does not have, like other rich countries, social service programs in place to both decrease the rate of poverty and to mitigate its most malignant effects on health such as lack of food, housing, warmth and education. And, of course, health care, which is available either free or at prices people at different income levels can afford (much less for poor people) in those other nations. The US is very unequal economically; the growth in wealth has been so disproportionately to the top <0.1% that the three richest Americans now have as much wealth as the bottom half of our population. Our inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (HDI) is lower than most of the wealthiest nations of the world (#19).

Arguing that the fault in our cost and quality of healthcare is the result of higher poverty levels (and for the record, I don’t think that this is what either the study’s authors or Sanger-Katz is doing) is somewhat parallel to saying we have worse health because of our ethnic and racial diversity (which has been done). The important 2015 Case and Deaton study, which I have previously discussed (Rising white midlife mortality: what are the real causes and solutions?, November 14, 2015), showed increasing mortality for poor white non-Hispanic people. This was shocking, but it would be shocking even if it included Hispanics, or Blacks, or Native Americans. There is an old joke about the person who murders his parents and pleads for mercy because he is an orphan; this is pretty analogous to the issue of poverty and health.

Bauchner and Fontanarosa note that Uwe Reinhardt was very critical of insurance companies for having, on top of nearly 3% profit, 18% “operating costs” (only 79% was spent on actual health care) that included, among other things, “…marketing, determining eligibility, utilization controls (e.g., prior authorization of particular procedures), claims processing, and negotiating fees with each and every physician, hospital, and other health care workers and facilities. These operating costs are about twice as high as are the overhead costs of insurers in simpler health insurance systems in other countries.”

To say we have worse health status because we have more poor people is an indicting tautology; we should identify and address the causes of poor health which are mostly “upstream”, the social determinants, and very tied to poverty. Our healthcare dollars should be spent on delivering healthcare and not profits; our overall dollars should be spent on decreasing the impact of the tremendous economic and social inequities that exist in the US.

This is the way to both a more healthy and more just society.

"Blockbuster" drug or slanted reporting: never forget "cui bono"

‘Drug Aimed at Inflammation May Lower Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer’, by Denise Grady in the New York Times, August 27, 2017, reports on a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, ‘Antiinflammatory Therapy with Canakinumab for Atherosclerotic Disease’ by Paul M. Ricker, et al. The study, funded by the drug’s manufacturer, Novartis, examined the impact of the use of canakinumab (brand name: Ilaris) on heart attack survivors. The drug is in a class called “monoclonal antibody inhibitors” (as is almost anything ending in “…mab”); in its case, it inhibits antibodies known as “interleukin 1β”. The main effect is anti-inflammatory, which is why it was originally developed for treatment of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory disease. However, research showing that inflammation plays a major role in coronary artery disease (the cause of heart attacks) stimulated this large multi-center, drug-company sponsored, trial.

So what did the study show? Of the over 10,000 people in the study, those who were treated with canakinumab had lower rates of what the study designers defined as the “primary end point”, the main thing that they were looking for, “nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or cardiovascular death.” That is, did patients have another heart attack or stroke, whether they lived or died. The lower rates in the canakinumab groups were statistically significant, with the group that did the best, the middle-dose (they tested 3 different dosages), having 3.86 “events” per 100 person-years, compared to 4.50 for the placebo group. In absolute terms, there were, thus, 0.64 fewer “events” for each 100 person-years (which is a valid concept, one person taking a drug for 100 years, or 100 people for one year, or any combination in between).

There was, however, no significant difference in “all cause” mortality between the treated and untreated groups, mainly because of the increase in deaths from infections in those treated.  This is not surprising because the anti-inflammatory effect of canakinumab also decreases the body’s immune response. It is also not surprising that the people most likely to die of infection were those who were oldest and sickest in the first place. Six people developed tuberculosis.

Given that the cost of the drug is about $200,000 a year (think about that!), 100 person-years of treatment would cost $20,000,000. And for this price, 0.64 fewer people have a cardiac “event”, and no fewer people die. And some untold number suffering serious side effects from canakinumab, including the infections that occurred that didn’t kill them (not reported). These could be really serious – long hospitalizations for sepsis or pneumonia or cellulitis, non-fatal but significant events like amputations, etc. No wonder the Times article quotes Dr. David J. Maron, the director of preventive cardiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, as saying “This is fantastic”! Dr. Maron, I imagine, has terrific insurance.

Of course, it didn’t cost Novartis $200,000 a year for the drug for the study; that is the retail price that it plans to charge hospitals, insurers, and patients. We have no idea what the drug actually costs Novartis to manufacture; the price they will charge is based on the highly scientific formula called “what the market will bear”. For their own bizarre reasons (see Elizabeth Rosenthal’s “An American Sickness” and this commentary by Jacob Hacker) insurers may gladly pay for this drug (they get to keep a percent, and a higher price means a higher percent, and they just raise rates). Or they may get a discounted charge. Certainly, many poor and uninsured people are not likely to get it. Maybe – probably – Novartis will have a program for giving the drug for little or no money to poor people. But, given how common coronary heart disease (CHD) is, they are incredibly unlikely to give it for free to every uninsured person who has CHD. Maybe they’ll give them a discount, say 90%. Then the poor person would only have to pay $20,000 a year out of pocket. To reduce their risk of another coronary event by 0.0064 per year. And have no lower likelihood of dying. And a greater likelihood of severe infection. Maybe this is, after all, a boon to the poor and uninsured, as they are unlikely to get this terrific opportunity.

The other amazing thing is the actual story in the Times, and what that says about health journalism. As noted by the insightful Howard A. Rodman, the

·        Headline says: "Drug... May Lower Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer"

·        The 2^nd paragraph tells us it is a "major milestone"

·        The 3^rd paragraph quotes Dr. Maron saying "This is fantastic."

But then you have to scroll down to find

·        In the 5^th paragraph, that the drug costs $200,000 per year. It's available only from Novartis, and that Novartis paid for the study.

·        And in the 7^th paragraph, that the drug suppresses immune response. In the study, the number of deaths from drug-caused infections equaled the number of lives saved.

Lead with the positives, and then let us down later, maybe after those of us scanning the article have stopped reading.

Is the Times trying to mislead us? I don’t think so. I think that they want, however, to get our attention, get us reading, show us blockbusters. Blockbusters are good for getting attention. It is a big article for the New England Journal of Medicine also. This is why there is a built-in prejudice in medical journals for publishing articles with positive results, and why the authors do their best to “spin” results to positive. As if the incredible amount of work they have put in to the study, not to mention the interest of the sponsor, in this case, a pharmaceutical company that makes the drug in question, was not sufficient impetus. After all, getting our attention is what it is all about; it is why reality TV is so big, and why a reality TV star is now POTUS; see Matt Taibbi’s piece “The Media Is the Villain – for Creating a World Dumb Enough for Trump”. He notes that “If a meteor crashes into jello night at the Playboy mansion, it doesn't matter if you send Edward R. Murrow to do the standup. Some things sell themselves.” Maybe a drug that treats a disease that treats heart disease isn’t that big, but it is big; after all, as Grady notes, “Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and in the United States, where it killed nearly 634,000 people in 2015. Globally, it killed 15 million,” (paragraph 4, if you’re tracking it).

Neither does this mean that published scientific research is unreliable. Some of it is very good science (even this study is generally good science, despite the published report in NEJM and the coverage in the Times being unconscionably skewed to the positive). Some of it actually reports on drugs or other interventions that make a difference. Sadly, however, in addition to the “blockbuster” effect that the media (including medical journals) want to cover, those interventions that will make a lot of money for a company get more publicity. Especially when the company funds the research. Aspirin, by the way, is still cheap, and it is more effective than this drug, recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) for prevention of CHD in adults with greater than a 10% 10-year risk.

I tell medical and other health professions students (at all levels) that, although the Introduction and Discussion sections of the article may seem most interesting, the important parts to read are the Methods and Results, which have the meat (or soy, if you’re vegan) and from which you should draw your own conclusions, without the authors’ spin. If you’re not a health professional, and depend on the mass media for coverage, then you better read the whole article and not stop after the fanfare. It is the reporter’s job to provide the necessary information, but your job to read it wisely.

Certainly, health professional or reporter or consumer, look at who is funding the study. It is important information. And think about conflict of interest. And think, of course, about cui bono. It is likely to be the manufacturers, and maybe the researchers, and sometimes those who are wealthy or well-insured enough to get the drug or intervention (when it is of benefit).

And, surprise, it is never likely to be the poor, uninsured, or those most in need.