Lets talk about California Healthcare reforms…really it is deformed:

1. California ranks 45th among U.S. states for the percentage of residents who receive health insurance coverage through an employer, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute that used data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Only 55.7% of California workers had employer-sponsored health care coverage in 2006, compared with about 63% of workers nationwide. About 18 million workers in California were covered by an employer in 2005-2006, nearly half a million less than the amount covered in 2000-2001. Almost 40% of California’s uninsured work for small employers.

2. Nearly 1 in 3 uninsured have family incomes of $50,000 or more. The five-year decline has primarily affected middle-income workers, according to the study. Researchers also noted that more than 600,000 fewer children in California were covered by their parents’ insurance last year than in 2000.

Now these uninsured patients become ’self-pay’ when they seek medical care. You would think that, like any other industry, they should have access to cost and quality data. Not really, because the ‘Law’ prevents a healthcare provider or a services company to share this critical information, since they are not part of any insurance network.

Are these laws are meant to ‘protect’ the consumers or the monopoly of the Insurance industry? Unless you are part of one of the insurance network (that you can’t afford or have been denied care from) you have no clue where you should seek care from and how much it will dent your budget.

I appreciate Mr. Governer’s healthcare initiative and the efforts of California endowment, but maybe we should look into reforms to free the Healthcare market and provide access to information and access to care, rather than creating another ‘insurance package’ and let the people fall through the crack and suffer.  

A perspective from a healthcare reform supporter…

Archana Dubey, MD

I had a pleasure to meet the CEO of Sermo, Dr. Daniel Palestrant. What struck to me was his genuine efforts and focus towards his mission of providing a credible physicians networking web-lounge. Sermo provides free exchange of knowledge between physicians of various specialities, improving the process of decision making.

Health2.0 companies like these are bringing a shift in paradigm for healthcare delivery. They work on developing the patient outcome data that eventually have a potential to replace the conventional randomized control trials, hence shifting the medical innovation from a lab to the people.

Cheers,

Archana Dubey, MD