Health Care

When Maria and Vadim Brodsky's then-7-year-old daughter needed an MRI two years ago to examine a tumor in her head, they took her to a hospital in their health plan's network and were dismayed to receive a $4,500 bill. The couple had a $6,000 deductible on their family plan. And even though the bill was reduced to $3,000 - the price the provider and insurer had agreed to by contract - the Brodskys had to cover all of it. The next year, when their daughter needed another MRI, the Huntingdon Valley couple took her to a stand-alone facility and put the procedure on a credit card.

Within a few weeks, President Clinton will unveil his proposal for reform of America's health-care system. Millions of words already have been spoken and written on behalf of one plan or another. And as the national debate focuses on the best approach, only brief public mention is given to why such reform is needed. The reasons for health-care reform are so obvious to analysts from Jackson Hole to Foggy Bottom that they tick them off in sound bites. But, to the consternation of these policy wonks, the public is only now paying attention to the "whys.

AS THE OWNER of a small business, it's clear to me that the debate over health-care reform has reached a critical moment. Over the summer, a shrill minority monopolized the public stage by playing on people's fears in their attempt to derail much needed change. It's time to take back the debate. The owners of small businesses must sift through the flurry of falsehoods and misstatements to discern the truth. We are sinking under the weight of health-care costs and the cost of not insuring all our employees.

YOUR editorial "Corbett's Move Could Make Some Sick" makes a mockery of real issues pertaining to federal health-care legislation. You imply that Attorney General Tom Corbett is pandering to the "conservative base of his party. " Yet every single Republican, and many Democrats, voted against the bill, and according to the latest Rasmussen poll, 58 percent of Pennsylvanians opposed the bill. If anything, Corbett is pandering to the center of public opinion. You expressed no similar outrage when President Obama and Gov. Rendell used taxpayer funds on their public-relations blitz touting health-care reform.

Spiraling health costs, millions uninsured and uncertainty of keeping one's health insurance continue to dominate the news and (President) Clinton's view of the health-care system. The administration's proposal merely replaces one bloated bureaucratic mess (the insurance industry) with another over-grown, insensitive system (government managed insurance). Consumers, under either system, cannot exercise much control in determining what services they receive and at what cost. Reform which empowers consumers and weakens the health-care monopolies will stem the increasing costs and improve quality.

The Health Care Cost Containment Act signed last week by Gov. Thornburgh is a worthy first step, but certainly no panacea, in bringing health-care delivery costs under control in Pennsylvania and defining more precisely who is in need of state assistance. Resulting from more than a year of work by business, labor, legislators, the Thornburgh administration, the health-insurance industry and health-care providers, the act creates a Health Care Cost Containment Council. Its 21 members will include the state secretaries of health and public welfare and the state insurance commissioner.

A woman in western Pennsylvania tells her political commentator husband that if there's a single issue that will win her vote, it's health care. A man in central Pennsylvania writes his local newspaper, saying national health insurance is "the same old song" and wonders who pays, "the tooth fairy?" So it goes. National health insurance has become a hot issue in the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Harris Wofford and challenger Dick Thornburgh. Some call it a "pushbutton" issue.

Medicine is "the science and art dealing with the management and cure of disease. " Disease, not health, is the focus of modern medicine. Our current medical system is a system organized against disease, not for health. In the United States we have an extremely sophisticated, well-structured medical care system - but no coherent, well-defined policy directed toward the health and welfare population. We share this dubious distinction with one other industrialized nation - South Africa.

A tug-of-war over who is going to pay the ever-increasing bill for employee health-care benefits is expected to be the workplace issue of the '90s. Employers claim they can no longer afford to bear the burden alone, while a recent study by Metropolitan Life Insurance reported that more than half the country's labor leaders consider preserving health benefits more important than pay scales in coming negotiations. And most major industrial disputes last year turned, at least partly, on health care costs.

S.A.M. Crawford, director of Kennedy Memorial Hospitals' new Gerontology Center in Stratford, found it easy to explain why the atmosphere at Friday's ribbon-cutting ceremony lived up to the advance billing. The hospital had touted the opening of the center as "a community event for all to celebrate. " "A lot of the people you see here are health-care and community workers who work with the elderly," Crawford said. "What this means to them is that the system is reaching out to them and saying, 'You've worked with the elderly and so have we: Now, let's do it together.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey says he doesn't have an answer to the national need for balance in creating health-care financing solutions, but he knows that National Institutes of Health funding helps put and keep jobs in the Philadelphia region. "I focus on NIH funding for a couple reasons," Casey said in a meeting with Inquirer editors and reporters. "No. 1 is because this region of the country has made great progress, but also there is no region more at risk than Southeastern Pennsylvania because of the dollars the state gets.

When Maria and Vadim Brodsky's then-7-year-old daughter needed an MRI two years ago to examine a tumor in her head, they took her to a hospital in their health plan's network and were dismayed to receive a $4,500 bill. The couple had a $6,000 deductible on their family plan. And even though the bill was reduced to $3,000 - the price the provider and insurer had agreed to by contract - the Brodskys had to cover all of it. The next year, when their daughter needed another MRI, the Huntingdon Valley couple took her to a stand-alone facility and put the procedure on a credit card.

WITH three first-degree murder verdicts against Kermit Gosnell, we can call him a baby-killer without the political freight that that term usually carries in the fight over abortion rights. There was no ambiguity in his actions, no debate over when a fetus becomes viable when he performed his illegal late-term abortions of some babies who were born alive. No one would defend his actions as legal, or protected by Roe v. Wade. The verdict may bring to a close the gruesome and horrifying details of Gosnell's butchery practice.

L EO SAFRO, 34, of Ivyland, Bucks County, is CEO and owner of MultiCare Health System, based in Willow Grove. Launched last year, the company provides primary-care services to about 100 homebound patients, most of whom are seniors. Q: How did you come up with the idea for MultiCare? A: I was a consultant and started in home health care. I saw that lots of patients didn't have a primary-care physician or weren't seeing one. That increases hospitalizations and doesn't give people comfort about their health.

TRENTON - Spending on prescription medicines in the United States fell for the first time in decades last year, slipping as cash-strapped consumers continued to cut back on use of health-care services. Patients also benefited from a surge of new, inexpensive generic versions of widely used drugs for chronic conditions such as high cholesterol, according to a new report. Total spending on medications dipped 1 percent, to $325.8 billion last year from $329.2 billion in 2011. Likewise, average spending per person on medicines fell by $33, to $898 last year, according to the report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

TIME HAS not been kind to the library, city health center and recreation center at Broad and Morris streets in South Philly. Each of the properties could be described in less than glowing terms - old, small, rundown, outdated, take your pick. But the future for the heavily-used site is looking decidedly brighter, thanks to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. CHOP is planning to partner with the city to reimagine the one-block chunk of Broad Street and make it home to a pediatric care center and a completely new playground, library, rec center and health center.

Bruce Broussard President and CEO , Humana Inc. Managed health-care company and insurer in Louisville, Ky. Age: 50 Tenure: CEO since Jan. 1, president since Dec. 1, 2011. No. of employees: 45,000. No. of Humana members: 12 million medical, 8 million specialty. Finances: $1.2 billion net income on FY2012 revenue of $39.1 billion. Regular reads: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fortune, Cycling World, Sailing World. Recent book: How Will You Measure Your Life ?

WASHINGTON - Thousands of people with serious medical problems are in danger of losing coverage under President Obama's health-care overhaul because of cost overruns, state officials say. At risk is the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a transition program that's become a lifeline for the so-called uninsurables - people with serious medical conditions who can't get coverage elsewhere. The program helps bridge the gap for those patients until next year, when under the new law insurance companies will be required to accept people regardless of their medical problems.

This story has been updated. IN A MOVE that the LGBT community called "historic," City Council approved a bill yesterday that would require the city's health plan to pay for transgender city workers to complete "gender-confirmation surgery. " The bill also would require newly constructed or renovated city-owned buildings to have gender-neutral bathrooms. "We're continuing on the American road to full equality and civil rights for all of our citizens," said Councilman Jim Kenney, who sponsored the bill at the request of the LGBT community.

THE NUMBER of Philadelphians who need free or low-cost health care has increased, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Northeast, home to a severely underserved, uninsured, high-risk population, according to health-care advocates. At Health Center 10, on Cottman Avenue near Bustleton, the average wait for first-time adult patients is 251 days, city Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz told City Council during a budget hearing Wednesday. That's 15 fewer days than last year, but still much higher than the average at all eight city-run health centers, 83 days, he said.