Should Doctors Be More Sensitive To Costs?

Interesting article written by  Alicia Caramenico on the value of training interns on being aware of the cost of their decisions for medical care. It's a fine line but an interesting idea. See what you think!  Here is the article as it appears in Fierce Healthcare. 

The Hippocratic oath requires physicians to abstain from doing harm--but does that include financial harm?

With medical bills as the number once source of personal bankruptcy, teaching hospitals are encouraging students to consider health costs, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Some, including the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine, want to take it a step further and add "do no financial harm" to the Hippocratic oath.Vineet Arora, an assistant dean and associate professor of medicine, is developing training videos to make medical students more aware of how the costs of their decisions will affect patients.

"We are totally insulated from price, what medical care actually costs the patient," Andrew Levy, a recent med school graduate who is working with Arora, told the Tribune. "I can't tell when a test I order becomes a bill or if and when my patient gets charged by it, and that's absurd."

Medicals schools already have started incorporating cost control into future doctors' curriculum, according to first-year Harvard Medical School student Ilana Yurkiewicz. But in her Scientific American blog post, she acknowledged that it may be more difficult to include cost in decision-making when face-to-face with patients than during hypothetical scenarios in a classroom.

Moreover, cost considerations can become a slippery slope between reducing unnecessary medical costs and rationing care. So healthcare educators emphasize teaching medical students to look for alternatives that their patients can afford, the Tribune noted.

However, it's not only prospective doctors that can benefit from cost awareness. Reminding practicing physicians how much money blood tests cost could cut unnecessary medical spending, according to a study published last year the journal Archives of Surgery.

California Health Insurance Rate Regulation News!

This is important for all to know regarding California health insurance.  The article is written by Sandy Kleffman of the Bay Area News Group. Here you go ..... 

An initiative that would bring health insurance rate regulation to California has qualified for the November 2014 ballot, setting the stage for a vigorous and costly battle between insurers and consumer groups. The measure, sponsored by Consumer Watchdog, would give the state insurance commissioner the power to deny certain premium increases if they are deemed excessive. The insurance commissioner has little control over such rate hikes now.

The initiative would apply to the individual and small group health insurance markets, but large employer group plans would be exempt."We're thrilled that voters will get the chance to decide whether or not it's time to rein in outrageous rate hikes," said Carmen Balber, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Watchdog campaign."We expect a battle royale," she added. "We have no doubt that the health insurance industry will throw down tens of millions of dollars to oppose this."

Opponents have already begun to organize their campaign.

"This flawed, costly measure is not real health reform," said Patrick Johnston, president and CEO of the California Association of Health Plans, in a statement. "This measure would give one politician too much power over health coverage, do nothing to address the underlying costs driving health care premiums and create an expensive and duplicative state bureaucracy that will be paid for with higher health insurance premiums."

Consumer Watchdog had hoped to qualify the initiative for this year's ballot. But after a random sample of petitions failed to produce enough valid signatures, counties did a full signature check, pushing the count past the deadline for this November's election. On Thursday, the Secretary of State's office announced that Consumer Watchdog had gathered the required 504,760 signatures.
Balber said having the election in 2014 may be good timing because it will occur as the national health reform law takes full effect, including a mandate that most Americans have coverage."The price and affordability of health insurance will be at the top of Californians' minds," she said."