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posted by martyb on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the ham-and-mayo-on-wry? dept.

Mayo Clinic, one of the country's top hospitals, is in the midst of controversy after its CEO said that the elite medical facility would prioritize the care of patients with private health insurance over those with Medicare and Medicaid.

The prioritization by the Rochester, MN-headquartered medical practice was recently revealed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And it has quickly drawn out some sharp critics—as well as sympathizers.

In a statement to the Minnesota Post Bulletin, Dr. Gerard Anderson, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, compared the prioritization to policies seen in developing countries. "This is what happens in many low-income countries. The health system is organized to give the most affluent preference in receiving health care," he wrote.

Likewise, Minnesota Department of Human Services Commissioner Emily Piper, expressed surprise and concern by the statements of Mayo's CEO, Dr. John Noseworthy. "Fundamentally, it's our expectation at DHS that Mayo Clinic will serve our enrollees in public programs on an equal standing with any other Minnesotan that walks in their door," she said. "We have a lot of questions for Mayo Clinic about how and if and through what process this directive from Dr. Noseworthy is being implemented across their health system."

Specifically, Noseworthy said in a video to Mayo employees late last year:

We're asking... if the patient has commercial insurance, or they're Medicaid or Medicare patients and they're equal, that we prioritize the commercial insured patients enough so... we can be financially strong at the end of the year.

In statements, Mayo has confirmed Noseworthy's prioritization and added that about 50 percent of its patients are beneficiaries of government programs. "Balancing payer mix is complex and isn't unique to Mayo Clinic. It affects much of the industry, but it's often not talked about. That's why we feel it is important to talk transparently about these complex issues with our staff."

Source: Ars Technica


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:04PM (8 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:04PM (#482358)

    Something I find infinitely amusing about your Canadian system is our politicians who have never been in the US military describe it as anti-american and commie and all that ridiculous stuff, at least the neocons used to. Yet having been in the .mil a long time ago, basically the Canadian experience is the US military active duty experience. Now you can get tremendous TV ratings by possibly truly or possibly falsely complaining about post-active duty VA medical care, but regular army medical care is basically your canadian system. You sick or hurt, we fix you best we can in the middle of nowhere. Bill? Whats a bill?

    But is the U.S. really a first world economy?

    I should have given dates. Say, pre 1970s. Before boomers came to power, roughly. I was just a kid. Imagine what it must have been like to be an adult in America in the 60s. Even the parts that sucked were across the board better than the same more sucky parts today.

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  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 22 2017, @12:45PM (7 children)

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @12:45PM (#482677) Journal

    Something I find infinitely amusing about your Canadian system is our politicians who have never been in the US military describe it as anti-american and commie and all that ridiculous stuff, at least the neocons used to. Yet having been in the .mil a long time ago, basically the Canadian experience is the US military active duty experience. Now you can get tremendous TV ratings by possibly truly or possibly falsely complaining about post-active duty VA medical care, but regular army medical care is basically your canadian system. You sick or hurt, we fix you best we can in the middle of nowhere. Bill? Whats a bill?

    Well that makes perfect sense. Leaving your soldiers to hobble around on broken legs when you have important military stuff to get done would be counter-productive, right? A inefficient use of your human resources - not to mention bad for morale. You've invested however much time and money in this soldier to enable him to do a job for you, it makes sense to invest a little more when he needs it to keep him working.

    Now let's switch back to civilian healthcare and apply the same principles. Your economy is the thing you have to keep running, think of it as a metaphor for the military. Workers in the economy (be they are burger-flippers or million-dollar CEOs - a front line grunt has as much of a role to play as a senior general, right?) are your soldiers. You want to keep those people working, keep them at high efficiency. That takes investment. Can you see how universal healthcare makes sense?

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:53PM (4 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:53PM (#482785)

      This is going to be one of those things where we agree on the goal but I know the counterexample will be that in a world of 75% obesity and hipster nu-males even a off the shelf bog standard 11B infantryman is a valued commodity. However that same world has like 320M people (and growing) and only 70 million full time jobs (and shrinking fast) and maybe only 30 million "real good jobs". So when your cannon fodder is kinda irreplaceable you take care of it, but when you have like 10 people or 3 college grads for every "really good job" then you don't have to worry so much about how to replace when there's a line out the door of unemployed or starbux mcjob workers.

      For example, you know why public school teachers are treated like trash? Because there's about 2 or 3 times too many of them. Now if the teachers union did the AMA thing and made certain there was just barely enough K12 teacher grads to barely make the system work, they'd have sane salaries and bennies and decent management, but thats obviously observationally not really necessary to staff a school now and generally is not provided anymore. Someday they'll be a shortage of teachers and market will fix it.

      I like where you're going, just I can see that specific rhetoric isn't going to work. You can't have a country with ten times as many people as "good jobs" and expect them to worry about the supply of workers.

      • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:26PM (3 children)

        by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:26PM (#482840) Journal

        The problem with that argument (and admittedly it's kind of my fault from the way I phrased my metaphor) is that you are dividing the population into "those who are part of the economy" (ie those with jobs) and "those who are not part of the economy" (the unemployed). This is simply not true. EVERYBODY, whether employed or not, is a part of the economy, and not just as a consumer. Many 'unemployed' people provide valuable services, for free. For example, how many people do you know who are only able to work the hours they do because their retired parents look after the kids a couple days a week? Loads, probably. Are those grandparents getting paid for their childcare services? Unlikely. Non-workers contribute all sorts of other 'services', (even simple friendship, community) that are less easy to put a price on but whose absence would soon have a financial impact. Everybody, whether contributing directly, indireclty or not at all is still part of the Big Equation. If someone can't afford the healthcare they need and as a result does something desperate (commits a crime, or self-medicates using illegal drugs) then how does that impact the economy? Who pays the cost? Remind me how much you guys spend on law enforcement / judiciary / incarceration / War on Drugs..? If some unemployed person dies because of a preventable but expensive illness, who loses out when their brothers and sisters have to take time off work to grieve? It can take months, years to fully get over something like that, maybe even lead to depression. How is a grieving, depressed employee any more effective than a soldier with a broken leg?

        I guess what I'm saying is, you have to see the economy not simply as a giant spreadsheet of the incomes and expenditures of businesses and their employees, but as a function of society, because that's exactly what it is. It might sound trite but people are more than just numbers. Broken society == broken economy. And to keep your society running smoothly, one of the first things you need to do is to keep your citizens healthy and happy.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:47PM (2 children)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:47PM (#482846)

          That's a good argument. I've seen it, or similar to it, expressed as the purpose of welfare programs isn't to be nice to poor people but to permit rich people to live without fear of the guillotine and kidnapping.

          Its a good argument because on the left side obviously you can sell morals and ethics as a justification and on the neocon-legacy-right you can sell you don't want your kids kidnapped type of argument. The national socialist point of view is when the people aren't getting their needs met, their jackboots get stomping as they should, and serving the people by nationalizing health care is an easy way to keep out of the oven. It sells well to everyone under the sun.

          The main problems implementing are we got no money for the pie, their slice of the pie is bigger than our slice of the pie, I like my job of deciding who gets which slice of the pie, I paid that politician so my pie slice would be bigger now where is it, that type of squabbling.

          • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)

            by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:05PM (#482914) Journal

            permit rich people to live without fear of the guillotine and kidnapping.

            I'd say it's more than just lessening the chance of rich of poor-on-rich violence. It's about the fundamental productivity increases you can achieve if you allow your workforce to live relatively happy, healthy, balanced, stress-free lives rather than scrabbling to survive in some kind of urban dystopia as envisioned in a bad 80s science fiction film. For an extreme example look at Japan, where they squeeze their workers like sponges, but don't actually extract any more useful productivity per person than anywhere else.

            The rest of your post is salient. The alt-right like to shout about how the left has steered discourse with political correctness to the point where people feel they can't talk about immigration without being labelled racists and all of that, but I think its sad that the right has brought us to a point where we can only talk about things like "improving quality of life for our fellow humans" and "showing basic compassion" if we can somehow tie it to an economic argument.

            • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:16PM

              by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 22 2017, @09:16PM (#482946)

              if we can somehow tie it to an economic argument.

              I see it as a way of silencing beancounter opposition. If you can prove its revenue neutral or positive, thats a whole swath of arguments just gone.

    • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:37PM (1 child)

      by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:37PM (#482879) Journal

      Your economy is the thing you have to keep running... You want to keep those people working, keep them at high efficiency.

      You seem to think an economy needs someone to "run" it. Central (state) planned economies often fail because politicians are not gods who know everything and can wisely dictate who should produce how much of what.

      The economy will run itself if you just leave it alone. People will willingly trade what they can offer for what they want. About all you have to do is make sure thieves, cheaters etc. know there will be consequences.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:08PM

        by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:08PM (#482917) Journal

        False dichotomy: There is plenty of room between "fully controlled planned economy, comrade" and "no holds barred law of jungle economic free-for-all".