Thursday, April 6, 2006

I'm 41....and free of student loan debt!

I turned 41 years old today. Perhaps more significant to me, however, is that I finally paid off my last outstanding student loan! I finished medical school in 1992 and residency in 1996 so it took about ten years.

My total debt amounted to about $70,000 for college and medical school combined (without interest). Here are some interesting numbers from back then:

"Median U.S. Medical Schools Tuition and Fees for First-Year Students in 1992-3:
  • $20,597 for private schools
  • $7,544 for in-state residents at public schools
  • $16, 739 for out-of-state residents at public schools

Mean level of Educational debt of indebted graduates in 1992:
  • 19.5% of medical students had no debt
  • $47,088 for public schools
  • $69,479 for private schools
"

And here's the data from 2003:

"Average Educational Debt
  • $115,218 – According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average educational debt of indebted graduates of the class of 2004 (including pre-med borrowing)
  • 63% of graduates have debt of at least $100,000
  • 81.4% of graduating medical students carry outstanding loans, combined with 62.4% with loans on college/premedical education
  • $91,438 – Mean per capita debt for 2003 allopathic graduates
  • $109,457 – Mean per capita debt for 2003 allopathic graduates excluding students without loans
  • $123, 800 – Mean per capita debt for 2003 osteopathic graduates, up 2.3% from the previous year
  • $7,277 – non-educational debt (allopathic)
"

One final note: If I'd stayed in academic anesthesia it would have taken at least another ten years to pay these loans off...



Saturday, January 21, 2006

Can damage caps influence premium growth and physician supply?

The Impact of Caps on Damages: How are Markets for Medical Liability Insurance and Medical Services Affected?

"[This report] provides a summary of research on the impact of caps including those on punitive and total damages in addition to those that apply only to non-economic damages. Our focus is on those papers that employ statistical techniques to control for potentially competing explanations of changes that are observed when simple descriptive statistics are used."

and concludes

"the body of research on the impacts of tort reform shows that caps have resulted in lower growth in medical liability losses in states that passed caps than in states that did not. The more recent literature on premium effects has found that caps result in lower premium growth. And, two very recent papers based on sufficiently many years of the AMA’s Masterfile data have found that non-economic caps and direct tort reforms more generally have a positive effect on the number of physicians per capita in a state."

Insurance Profits Don't Explain Malpractice Crisis

The American Medical Association has released a new article which takes to task the so-called 'Angoff Report' which claimed that the medical liability insurance crisis is caused by insurance companies booming profits, overcharging physicians for coverage, and ballooning surpluses. It refers to two subsequent analyses which point up the flaws in the approach used by Angoff. Revised analysis shows the growth rate of insurance company surpluses was only 3.9% per year, and they were profitable in only one year (2004) when they made 5%



Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Medpundit Looks At His Financials

Ugh: I just spent the better part of the afternoon...:

"Ugh: I just spent the better part of the afternoon doing my least favorite task - reveiwing the financials of my practice. It doesn't look pretty. With Congress electing to decrease my pay by 4%, and my malpractice premium set to increase by 30% you can see it's not going to be a good year. The cost of supplies has been steadily going up, too, as have the cost of services. My medical waste haulers upped their fees by 20% in the past six months due to rising gas prices.

The Medicare cut may not sound like much, but it translates into a loss of about $2-3 per patient visit. And it isn't just limited to Medicare patients. Insurance companies base their rate of reimbursement as a percentage of Medicare fees. They might, say, pay 110% of whatever the fee Medicare pays. A practice that sees 25-30 patients a day will make $50-$90 less a day in 2006. That adds up quickly. Assuming a five-day work week, that adds up to $13,000 to $23,000 less over the course of the year. And despite what you might read in the newspapers, the majority of patients who pass through a doctor's office have health insurance - so the cut goes across the board.

How does that translate into day to day life? It means that my staff didn't get a cost of living raise this year. It means that I'll have to drop their health insurance if the premiums increase. And it means that I'm working harder - double booking patients when I can and adding an extra half day to my work week. Hopefully, I'll break even and avoid a decline in my own wages."



Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Insurance Companies Trying To Curb Anesthesiologist Participation in Colonoscopies

Propofol sedation for colonoscopies is in the news today.

Colonoscopy anesthesia popular but pricey (UPI):

"NEW YORK, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- An increasingly popular and potent anesthetic makes colonoscopies more comfortable for patients but it sharply boosts the cost, reports say."

I've given lots of propofol anesthetics for colonoscopies. Patients go off to sleep before they start, wake up when it's over and ask 'when are we going to start?' The recovery is faster and cleaner than traditional opiate/benzodiazepine sedation, allowing a center to increase the number of patients it can perform an exam on in a day.

A similar report on CNN/Money goes as far as to call the insurance company involved (Wellpoint) and ask if their executives will forego propofol. Answer?

""They'll be covered by the same clinical guidelines," the Wellpoint spokeswoman said."

I have to wonder, wouldn't the same logic apply here as applies to providing epidurals for labor? Are labor epidurals medically necessary? The American College of Gynecology, together with the American Society of Anesthesiologists has opined that "there is no other circumstance where it is considered acceptable for a person to experience untreated severe pain that is amenable to safe intervention." Ask a nurse that works with colonoscopy patients how she'd like hers done. I'll bet I know the answer.

It's not just insurance companies that are clamping down on anesthetists administering propofol to colonoscopy patients. Apparently, a group representing the gastroenterologists have asked for propofol labeling to be changed by the FDA to allow them to administer it (see safepropofol.org for more info). This same group is against Wellpoint's policy change as outlined here.

[Via Yahoo Search: anesthesia]



Friday, May 27, 2005

Average U.S. Family of 4 Will Use $12,214 in Medical Products, Services in 2005

Kaisernetwork.org--Average U.S. Family of 4 Will Use $12,214 in Medical Products, Services in 2005, Study Says - :

" The average U.S. family of four will use $12,214 worth of medical products and services in 2005, up 45% from $8,414 in 2001, according to a new report by Milliman, the Washington Times reports (Higgins, Washington Times, 5/26). The report -- the first on consumer health care costs culled from the new Milliman Medical Index -- was based on health insurance information for more than 15 million insured U.S. residents (Whitehouse, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, 5/26). The report examined medical costs for a family with two adults and two children under age 10 who were covered by a PPO. It focused solely on costs for medical care at the point of service and did not include health insurance premiums (Washington Times, 5/26). The report also did not examine over-the-counter drug spending and the cost of medical treatments not covered by health insurance (Croghan, New York Daily News, 5/26).

The report found that the average family will pay about 17% -- or $2,035 -- of its total health care costs in 2005, with a health plan paying the remainder. "

The whole report is available here pdf.



Saturday, March 12, 2005

U.S. Health Spending Projections U.S. Health Spending Projections For 2004–2014

Health Affairs: U.S. Health Spending Projections For 2004–2014

"By 2014, total health spending is projected to constitute 18.7 percent of gross domestic product, from 15.3 percent in 2003."

Gulp.



Sunday, December 19, 2004

Medicaid's fee-for-service drug expenditures increased 18% per annum

Medicaid’s Reimbursements to Pharmacies for Prescription Drugs (pdf)

This Congressional Budget Office report focuses on the markup paid to pharmacies by Medicaid for buying and dispensing drugs. For example, in 2002 medicaid reimbursed pharmacies an average of $46 per prescription. Of that amount, $14 was for purchase of the drug itself. The $32 difference constitutes the 'markup', which has been increasing at a rate of roughly 10% per year between 1997 and 2002.

" "Between fiscal years 1997 and 2002, Medicaid’s expenditures on prescription drugs in the fee-for-service part of the program increased from $10.2 billion to $23.4 billion. About one-quarter of those amounts went to wholesalers and pharmacies to compensate them for distributing and dispensing the drugs.

Prepared at the request of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, this paper examines recent trends in that “markup”—or the difference between the total amount that state Medicaid agencies paid to pharmacies and the amount that pharmacies and wholesalers paid to purchase the drugs from manufacturers. In keeping with the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the paper makes no recommendations. " "

and

" "Overall, the largest single factor contributing to the rapid increase in markups was the use of newer generic drugs, with their high markups. Another factor was the use of newer single-source brand-name drugs, which had somewhat higher average markups than did older brand-name drugs." "



Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Is Kerry Proposing Government Health Care?

Medpundit opines:

""Any plan that expands Medicaid to include over 50% of the population - which is what the Kerry plan does - is a plan that involves government take-over of the healthcare system. There's just no getting around it.UPDATE: People are asking, "where does Kerry say he's going to put over 50% of the population on Medicaid?" His healthcare plan calls for expanding Medicaid coverage to children families that make up to 300% of the federal poverty level. According to the 2004 Federal Poverty Guidelines, 300% of the federal poverty level for a family of four would be a yearly income of $56,500. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median yearly income in 2003 for family households was $53,991. Assuming that the average family is a family of four, that means that over 50% of families would qualify for Medicaid. And believe me, employers won't foot the bill for healthcare insurance when they know their employees can get Medicaid. So a large segment of the population will be shifted to Medicaid, and that's a government healthcare program.""



Wednesday, October 13, 2004

New York Expands Drug Pricing Website

New York Expands Drug Pricing Website:

"" rxNew York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer rolled out an expanded version of his drug pricing Web site yesterday, hoping to assist those New Yorkers lacking health insurance or prescription drug benefits to comparison shop. From Long Island Newsday:

The online reference guide includes the 25 most popular prescription drugs on the market, and, for the first time, has prices from pharmacies in all of the state’s 62 counties.

”With information from this Web site, consumers, especially seniors on fixed incomes, the uninsured and those lacking adequate prescription drug coverage, can comparison shop and keep their costs as low as possible,” Spitzer said in a prepared statement.

Under current New York State law, each pharmacy is required to carry an expanded version of this guide, known as the Drug Retail Price List, which covers nearly 150 prescription drugs, and customers are able to view it at any time.

""

[Via The Medical Informatics Weblog]



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