In a Buffalo News editorial they point out a number of things that can be done that could actually reduce the cost of health care without reducing the quality of care we receive.

“One of the reasons why real health care reform has seemed such a tough nut to crack is that it involves two seemingly contradictory goals.We want better care. And we want it to cost less.

But, in at least one area of medicine, there is reason to believe that cost-cutting, intelligently done, will actually improve the long-term health prospects of many Americans.

As outlined in an Associated Press investigation that ran on the cover of Sunday’s Viewpoints section, doctors in the United States order, and their patients receive, many more X-rays and CT scans than do their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

These methods of looking inside the body without making incisions or resorting to wild guesses are rightly considered among the most useful miracles of modern medicine.”

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The New York Post reports - “One year in the making, a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street rules forged in the aftermath of a financial crisis cleared congressional negotiations early Friday and headed to the House and Senate for final votes.

Lawmakers hope to have a bill on President Barack Obama’s desk by July 4.

Success came at 5:39 a.m., hours after Obama administration officials helped broker a deal that cracked the last impediment to the bill — a proposal to force banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives trading business.

The legislation, the most ambitious rewrite of financial regulations since the Great Depression, touches on an exhaustive range of financial transactions, from a debit card swipe at a supermarket to the most complex securities deals cut in downtown Manhattan.

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The Kingston Daily Freeman reports on a forum for businesses on federal health care reform.

They write:  “To review details of the new health care reform law, the changes that will be made by the year 2014, and what this new system will mean for business owners, the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce hosted a panel discussion Tuesday.

“This is a long-range document where the changes occur over time,” according to Margaret Moree, director of federal affairs for The Business Council of New York State.

“Businesses will need to be planning about their benefit plan design in health insurance, but they also need to have a lot of (human resources-) and personnel-related changes in terms of their practice and in terms of how they inform employees,” Moree said.

Moree said changes in documentation and reporting to the federal government, taxation, and W-2 forms will bring increased responsibilities for business owners and require them to have well-laid plans for years ahead. “There are responsibilities of plan design in terms of the kinds of health benefits they offer to their employees, and if they make changes there are consequences to that,” she said. “There are cost-sharing responsibilities that the law asks employers to undertake and, if not, the individuals may be eligible for subsidies by the year 2014.”

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The Wall Street Journal’s Jacob Gershman writes, “New York’s unemployment−insurance system is borrowing money from the federal government at an explosive pace −− sinking $1 billion deeper into debt since the beginning of the year −− and that has businesses bracing for a sharp increase in taxes.

As New York continues to shed private−sector jobs, the fund that pays unemployment claims is now $3.2 billion in the hole, the largest deficit in the nation after Michigan and California.

Since the fund dipped into the red a year and a half ago, the state has accumulated a deficit more than four times greater than the widest gap it faced during the last recession nine years ago.

Gov. David Paterson and lawmakers are considering legislation that could raise taxes to cover the deficit and to increase the maximum weekly benefit of $405 by more than 50% by 2013.

Currently, employers pay the state a rate of 1.5% to 9.9% −− with higher levels paid by businesses with more layoffs −− on the first $8,500 of wages. Lawmakers are considering raising that over the next two years to $13,500.”

He adds, “Business advocates say they’re trying to negotiate a compromise that doesn’t further knock down recession−scarred employers.

“It’s a real possibility that the size of the repayment to the federal government is such that it will hinder economic growth, and that’s before we talk about any changes to the benefit levels,” said Margaret Moree, director of federal affairs for the New York State Business Council, a lobbying group based in Albany.

New York is now paying jobless benefits to more than 500,000 residents as of May, according to state data. New York’s unemployment fund pays for the first 26 weeks. The federal government covers up to another 73 weeks.”

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According to Politico.com, “The Obama administration issued strict rules Monday under which even some small changes to existing health care plans will make them subject to the requirements of the new health care reform law.

The president promised repeatedly during the health care debate that individuals who like their current plans would be able to keep them. To meet that goal, the health care law envisioned that some plans would be “grandfathered in” under the old law — and therefore would not be required to meet some of the mandates of the new law, such as no-charge preventive care screenings.

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Jennifer Haberkorn writes on Politico.com - “Part of the health care overhaul due to kick in this September could strip more than 1 million people of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of President Barack Obama’s reforms.

Under the provision, insurance companies will no longer be able to apply broad annual caps on the amount of money they pay out on health policies. Employer groups say the ban could essentially wipe out a niche insurance market that many part-time workers and retail and restaurant employees have come to rely on.”

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The Associated Press report in the Boston Globe - “Medical device manufacturers are bristling over a key provision in the nation’s new health care law which they say forces them to shoulder an unfair cost of expanded insurance coverage.

A 2.3 percent excise tax on companies that supply medical devices like heart defibrillators and surgical tools to hospitals, health centers and ambulance services will cost medical device manufacturers an estimated $20 billion in new taxes over the next decade. And they say that will force them to lay off workers and curb the research and development of new medical tools.

“Many small to midsize medical device companies will owe more to the federal government in taxes than they make in profits,” said Mark Leahy of the Medical Device Manufacturers Association. “We’re talking about a 2.3 percent tax on total sales irrespective of whether a company is making a profit.”

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N.C. Aizenman of the Washington Post writes - “At the Department of Health and Human Services, the team charged with writing new health insurance rules has ditched the fridge and microwave in their break room so they can have more work space.

At the Labor Department, a clue to the hours staff members are keeping is offered by the motion-activated lights in the hallways. They are on by 6 a.m. and don’t flicker off until long after dark.

The health-care overhaul may have slipped from the headlines since President Obama signed the bill into law in March. But the gargantuan chore of putting the statute’s more than 2,000 pages of provisions into practice is keeping Washington’s policymakers and bureaucrats busier than ever.”

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Reed Abelson and Gardiner Harris write in the New York Times how health care reform savings may not be what was promised. - “In selling the health care overhaul to Congress, the Obama administration cited a once obscure research group at Dartmouth College to claim that it could not only cut billions in wasteful health care spending but make people healthier by doing so.

Wasteful spending — perhaps $700 billion a year — “does nothing to improve patient health but subjects you and me to tests and procedures that aren’t necessary and are potentially harmful,” the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, wrote in a blog post characteristic of the administration’s argument.”

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Kevin Sack of the New York Times writes - “The new health care law does not allocate nearly enough money to cover the estimated 5.6 million to 7 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions who will qualify for temporary high-risk insurance pools, according to a report scheduled for release on Thursday.

The government-operated insurance plans are intended to serve as a stopgap until 2014, when insurers will be prohibited from denying coverage to people with health problems. But an analysis by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group, concluded that the $5 billion earmarked for the pools might cover as few as 200,000 people a year.”

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