Ponying up for club-level care

I’m back on the job today after an illness prompted me to visit my beloved doctor for the last time. It was my last encounter with her because as of Jan. 2, she’ll have left her Columbia practice – and all insurance participation – to form her own “membership practice,” as many popular physicians have done recently.

And, boy, does it sound nice – almost like a health club membership.

For $1,800 a year (or quarterly payments of $475), I’d be one of only 400 patients under her care. I’d receive the convenience of in-office blood draws, vaccines, and personal e-mails from my doctor; all services she has cut from her current practice due to increasing costs. As she writes in her letter, “There are no copayments, no deductibles, and no insurance paperwork.” By cutting out the insurance companies, she can do more for each of her patients.

At least, the ones who can afford to keep seeing her.

The choice is mine: pony up for “old-fashioned” service, or join the masses hunting for a qualified physician who accepts my insurance.

I wonder which is the lesser of two evils?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Toxic game consoles?

In our most recent Uncover story, Nintendo and Microsoft are put under the microscope by Greenpeace for toxic chemicals used in manufacturing their game consoles.

Eighteen leading electronics companies were ranked on a 10-point scale, with Nintendo being the first and only company to score zero.

The creators of Mario and Luigi provided no information to consumers on the substances it uses in manufacturing or on its plans to cut hazardous materials. Those aren’t the Mario Brothers I grew up with! And my folks thought playing the cutting-edge game Pitfall on Intellivision was bad for my health.

With all the recent recalls of toys with lead in them, do holiday shoppers really need any extra worries at this point when shopping for the gamers in their family?

Anyhow, the chemical culprits to be aware of are a vinyl known as PVC as well as fire retardants that can be a hazard when released into the environment.

Of course, your children could be a hazard when released into the environment this holiday season if they don’t get their Xbox or Wii from Santa.

-FRANCIS SMITH, Special Publications Assistant Editor

Call us if health care bill will affect your business

So who here knew that a health care expansion bill snuck through at the last second of the special session? It was not one of the highest-profile issues of the marathon, three-week legislative blitz overshadowed by the slot machine debate and measures to raise $1.4 billion in new revenue.

But it could be important for small business. Legislative analysts wrote that a plan to subsidize employee health coverage for small businesses could help add 15,000 people to the rolls of the state's insured, with a price tag around $30 million.

The coverage isn't for everyone - just businesses with between 2 and 9 employees that want to offer insurance with "wellness" options like health club membership assistance. And the source of the money is not necessary solidified forever. It could change within a few years.

Will this affect your business? If it doesn't, do you think you're being unfairly left out? Or is this a good start on helping small businesses keep their workers healthy?

I'm working on a story about this for Friday. Want to get in on it? Call me at (443) 524-8175.

-ANDY ROSEN, Business Writer

Doctors get hooked up for Web

If you subscribe to the notion that your Web site is like an online version of your office, then doctors should have a waiting page before visitors are allowed in.

Not so with members of the International Association of Dental and Medical Disciplines. In case you’re wondering what the mission is of such an organization, the group states its membership is “comprised of dentists and physicians who are working together to empower doctors to wrestle back control of medicine from insurance companies.”

One such treatment for the plague of insurance companies?

The group sets up its members with a Web site equipped with online bill pay and prescription refill orders (and Flash).

After all, an online parenting magazine polled parents last month and 76 percent of respondents said they would use a Web site to ask for refills if possible, and 56 percent said their physicians didn’t have a Web site.

The cost of an IADMD membership is $1,899 per year. For a full-service Web site alone, that’s not bad.

Come to think of it, I have no idea whether my doctor has a Web site. I sign up for yoga classes online, but have never bothered to Google my primary-care.

A quick search turned up empty.

Does your doc offer web services? Would you like her/him to?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Is $18 million too much?

The new Maryland Insurance Commissioner, Ralph S. Tyler, said Wednesday he will convene a hearing to see if the $18-plus million severance package for former CareFirst CEO William L. Jews (at right) is too much.

Tyler is specifically looking to see if the $17.6 million plus $800,000 in interest package violates state insurance law requiring payment to former employees be “fair and reasonable.”

The company, which saw $5.5 billion in revenue in 2006, says it did not just come up with the figure out of thin air and claims it is in line with other nonprofit Blue Shield and Blue Crosses.

“The $17.6 million referenced in Commissioner Tyler’s release is made up of about $12.6 million in retirement benefits and deferred compensation earned over 13½ years as CEO and about $5.0 million in severance payments,” CareFirst said in its statement. “Further, several expert compensation consultants retained by our board have independently concluded that the benefits due Mr. Jews are reasonable compared with those provided by similar not-for-profit Blues Plans.”

Who’s right?

—BEN MOOK, Assistant Business Editor

Weighty talk for lawyers

Talk about finding — and filling — a niche!

We received an announcement of the opening of Leventhal Weight Loss Inc., which describes itself as “the first in the nation executive weight loss coaching service for attorneys by an attorney.” According to the Washington-based company’s literature, “Lawyers in the Washington, D.C. area will now be able to lose weight even though they have briefs due, trials coming up, depositions to take, and clients coming in from out of town.”

Founder and President Mark Leventhal says he “lost over 50 pounds while practicing international trade law in a Washington, D.C. law firm and has since run and completed eight marathons, earning him the moniker Marathon Mark. … As an attorney, he fully understands the hurdles that attorneys must overcome in order to lose weight.”

Do attorneys really need an attorney to teach them how to lose weight?

Could the same be said for engineers, teachers, doctors or journalists? What do you think?

-PAUL SAMUEL, Associate Editor

Montel hosts crowd at Lexington Market

Montel Williams' message to citizens of his native Baltimore? Help is Here.

At Lexington Market this morning, the talk show host addressed uninsured Americans' access to prescription medicines.

He rolled up with the "Help is Here Express" national bus tour, which launched in April 2005 and has visited 1,500 cities to deliver information on patient assistance programs. (Williams has toured since January 2006).

One such assistance program? The everpresent State Children's Health Insurance Program. According to the release:

"America's pharmaceutical research companies support the reauthorization of SCHIP, and more than 40 of the assistance programs through PPA (the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, which is responsible for the bus tour and for which Williams is national spokesman) focus on the medication and healthcare needs of children."



Your thoughts?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Photo by Eric Stocklin.

Pendergrass ponies up $1,000 for Howard health care

The message from Del. Shane Pendergrass Tuesday was, “Do as I say AND as I do.”

The Howard County Democrat made an appearance at the end of a news conference at which County Executive Ken Ulman unveiled his partially funded plan to open access to health care for many of the county’s 20,000 uninsured residents.

Ulman’s program would cost $2.8 million in its first year, with $700,000 of that to come from yet-to-be-collected donations from private corporations, foundations and individuals.

Pendergrass, the new vice chair for the House of Delegates’ Health and Government Operations Committee, thanked Ulman for his efforts and invoked her very own checkbook in praising the plan.

“The right thing for me to do today is to write the first check for $1,000,” Pendergrass said as she took the podium at Howard County Community College.

The amount is equal to what insured Marylanders pay in extra health costs each year to cover their 800,000-some uninsured neighbors, according to county health officer Dr. Peter Beilenson.

Ulman said about two dozen people had pledged money to the program, but the delegate’s was the first check cut.

“I hope that what I do will send a message,” Pendergrass told the crowd.

There was no sound of rustling checkbooks in the room after her announcement.

Tell us: Would you crack your piggy bank to help support a plan similar to what they’re doing in Howard County?

—KAREN BUCKELEW, Business Writer

Another reason for employer-sponsored healthcare?

Apparently our jobs are contributing to the obesity epidemic: a survey of almost 6,000 workers by CareerBuilder.com found that more than half have gained weight since their hiring date.

The culprit? Work lunches.

Some 58 percent of the surveyed employees eat lunch outside their office at least once a week... 12 percent eat out daily, and 13 percent have affairs with vending machines.

Of course, eating at your desk has hazards, too: office desks have 400 times more bacteria than toilet seats, according to researchers at the University of Arizona.

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Clooney and HIPAA

When ER-veteran George Clooney landed in an actual ER after a motorcycle crash last month, the last thing on his mind, no doubt, was the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Known by the far catchier nickname HIPAA, the federal regulation is what’s behind those lengthy privacy forms your doctor has been making you sign every now and then for the past several years.

HIPAA, a notorious tangle of bureaucracy for the health care industry, not surprisingly was omitted from the flashy, action-packed world of medicine depicted in the hour-long NBC drama for which Clooney is best known.

But now that more than two dozen employees of Palisades Medical Center in New York have been suspended for violating the actor’s HIPAA-given rights to privacy after his biking spill, the actor seems to have become the face of a privacy regulation many Americans likely have never heard of.

The hospital employees were suspended for peeking into the actor’s medical records without permission, a HIPAA violation.

And now Clooney is appearing on various gossip and entertainment blogs and Web sites commenting about the incident. I’d say it’s a safe bet this is the first time HIPAA has been mentioned on TMZ.com or E! News online.

"While I very much believe in a patient’s right to privacy, I would hope that this could be settled without suspending medical workers," the actor said in a statement.

One key question remains — how many times will gossip columnists and bloggers misspell the acronym HIPAA in the next few days? (The Daily Record already has received one e-mailed news release on the Clooney debacle with the word "HIPPA" in the subject line.)

-KAREN BUCKELEW, Business Writer

A "quiet" veto?

Ever since President Bush's controversial veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP), an expansion for children's health insurance, critics and talk show hosts have delighted in forecasting what impact this will have on the 2008 presidential campaign.

The AP story on our Web site begins:

President Bush rejected a politically attractive expansion of children's health insurance, triggering a fierce struggle with the Democratic-controlled Congress certain to reverberate into the 2008 elections.

"Congress will fight hard to override President Bush's heartless veto," vowed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Comedy Central's coveted "fake" news shows, took aim at the decision in their broadcasts this week. (Click here to watch a clip of Colbert's segment, which uses clever video editing and child actors to have children "question" politicians about SCHIP.)

Now WebMD has jumped into the fray, providing a new feature that compares head-to-head the candidates' campaign promises on health care. (To save you a trip, most Dems' positions read: "Supports universal coverage" while most Republicans' positions state: "Believes answers to health care problems should be found in the private sector.")

Mitt Romney, however, has stated he wants to place the burden to reduce health care costs on the individual states and their insurance markets.

Anyone out there agree with either the veto or the emphasis on individual states? We'd love to hear from you.

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

No questions for health

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department, is the latest guest blogger to present his "audacious idea" on the new blog of the same name.

Sharfstein centers his post on his frustration with the dearth of health-related questions raised at community meetings:

But that first question went to the Department of Transportation ....Then the second did too. As the minutes and then hours went by, I sat like a stone. No questions for Health.

According to Sharfstein, the few questions he has fielded are mostly concerning rat eradication. Reminds me of colleague Andy Rosen's post about dead pigeons.

We all know the city of Baltimore faces a host of problems, all of which are pressing; but is health really at the bottom of the list?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Feds, states fight for health insurance control

I stumbled across an interesting post this morning (thank you, Google Alerts!) that questions whether federal health insurance laws should pre-empt state ones.

The State Policy Network, which blogged on the topic, bills itself as the “professional service organization for America’s state-based, free market think tank community.” The post centers on the federal ERISA, or Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

From the post:

Organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are concerned that some legislators want to punch holes in ERISA. Most of these legislators are on the wrong side of things: they are unhappy that a court found that a Maryland law that would oppress Wal-Mart's ability to freely negotiate health benefits with its workers violated ERISA.

Nevertheless, such federal intervention unsettles free-market activists. After all, if your state government is messing up health insurance, vote them out and get better lawmakers. If you can't do that, and Wal-Mart bails out of Maryland, go to one in Virginia or Pennsylvania. Eventually, the state will feel the economic pain and improve its policies.

What, ideally, should Maryland do -- legislatively or otherwise -- on this issue?

And is there a viable compromise between state and federal regulation?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Stem cell debacle

The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission heard last week that none of the $15 million in research grants it approved four months ago had been awarded because scientists were late submitting paperwork and university review processes were slow.

Now, they are hearing a different story. Karen Buckelew reports today that University of Maryland officials have refused to sign grant agreements because they are burdensome, onerous and unsuited to this kind of research.

What’s going on here? Why can’t we lock a couple of assistant attorneys general in a room and tell them not to come out until they have an agreement everyone can live with?

-TOM LINTHICUM, Executive Editor

What’s up with the stem cell money?

Reporter Karen Buckelew reports today that more than four months after the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission announced recipients of its first $15 million in grants, the group still has not cut checks to any of the 24 winning projects.

Late paperwork from scientists and internal bureaucratic delays at universities are the main reasons.

Several commission members were angry. One, Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, a professor of biological science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, had a suggestion.

“If people don’t get all their paperwork in in six months, this offer is no longer open,” she said.

What do you think of her idea? What else should be done?

-TOM LINTHICUM, Executive Editor

Montgomery menus

Undeterred by the legal setback of similar legislation in New York City, Montgomery County officials are moving forward with a proposed bill that would require chain restaurants to post nutritional information on menus.

For example, Ruby Tuesday locations in the county would be forced to disclose that its "Handcrafted Classic Cheeseburger" weighs in at a whopping 1,074 calories and 78 grams of fat.

The next step is a public hearing at the Council Office Building at 100 Maryland Avenue in Rockville. Do you think the law should move forward?

—BEN MOOK, Assistant Business Editor

Doctors to roll up their sleeves

According to a report by the Associated Press, British hospitals are revising their dress codes — and making doctors dress down. Physicians will be banned from wearing neckties, long sleeves and jewelry, and even the ubiquitous long, white coat.

Why, you ask? It’s an effort to curb the spread of hospital-borne infections.

Think it will work? And would you trust a dressed-down, short-sleeve wearing doc more than a traditionally attired one?

-BEN MOOK, Assistant Business Editor

Attack of the giant nuns

It sounds like the premise for a bad horror flick, but it's all too real: there are 28 giant nuns on the streets of Baltimore's central business district.

Seriously.

Don't panic, though. They're just 8-foot-tall cardboard cutouts (whew!) of the Sisters of Mercy.

Their mission? To guide troubled drivers to safe harbor, aka Mercy's Saratoga Garage (227 St. Paul Street).

See, the medical center has closed its Old Pleasant Street Garage, which will face the wrath of the wrecking ball this fall.

Maybe the powers that be at Mercy figured it's harder to grumble about parking woes to an instrument of God?

Or maybe it was just a thinly veiled (get it?) attempt to grab a headline.

Either way, it's all to make way for Mercy's new $400M inpatient building, which should grace downtown Baltimore in 2010.

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Photograph by Stephanie Miller.

Sick kid? Try Johns Hopkins.

In its ongoing effort to rank just about everything, U.S. News & World Report has released its list of America's Best Children's Hospitals. Hold your breath (but not for too long), folks.

Baltimore's Johns Hopkins placed third, just behind Children's Hospital Boston. D.C.'s Children's National Medical Center was a lowly 11th place.

The top 15 appear below.

1. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
2. Children's Hospital Boston
3. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
4. Children's Hospital, Denver
5. Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, Cleveland
6. Texas Children's Hospital, Houston
7. Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
8. New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
9. Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle
10. Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Palo Alto, Calif.
11. Children's National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
12. Columbus Children's Hospital
13. Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
14. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta
15. St. Louis Children's Hospital

Thanks to our sister blog in Long Island for pointing us to this story.

-JACKIE SAUTER, Daily Record Multimedia Editor

Snuff: More dangerous than smoking?

It’s a toss-up which is more distasteful — blowing cigarette smoke in the faces of your friends and loved ones or spitting tobacco juice profusely in their presence.

But a new study has found one might be more dangerous for you than the other.

A report published this month by the American Association for Cancer Research has some frightening findings for users of the smokeless tobacco known as snuff, a powdered variation of chewing tobacco tucked just behind the lip.

The study at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center found that snuff delivers to its user even higher levels of cancer-causing chemicals than cigarettes.

Compared to smokers, the snuff users in the study were receiving more of the carcinogenic molecules known as nitrosamines, known to cause lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, cancer of the nose and liver.

Westminster construction worker John Schneehagen, 45, learned first-hand the dangers of smokeless tobacco.

Several years ago, after two decades of using smokeless tobacco, Schneehagen noticed a bump on his tongue. He elected to ignore it for a few years.

By the time he encountered Dr. John Saunders Jr., a surgeon at Greater Baltimore Medical Center and medical director of Greater Baltimore Head & Neck Associates, Schneehagen required surgery to remove the tumor on his tongue and the lymph nodes in his neck where the cancer had spread.

Schneehagen, who has been cancer free for 2.5 years, describes himself as “lucky.” “The worst thing that happened was I lost part of my tongue, but I’ve gotten used to that,” he said in a news release from GBMC.

More than 55,000 Americans will be diagnosed with head and neck cancer this year, and the disease will kill 13,000, according to the American Academy of Otolarygology — Head and Neck Surgery.

Do you or people you know use smokeless tobacco? How dangerous do you think it is? Should it be regulated more stringently? Tell us what you think.

-KAREN BUCKELEW, Daily Record Business Writer