About Health Care Law

The federal budget requested by President George W. Bush for 2009 is being considered by health experts as disastrous to the health of Americans and are looking to Congress for help in order to change it. The spending plan is proposing a seven percent cut in the funding of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and less allocation for Medicaid and Medicare which are the state health insurance programs for the elderly and the poor.

The increased funds for the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health are too small to address rising costs. This lack of concentration in health care comes in a time where medical care costs are skyrocketing and the health of more Americans becoming more of a problem.

Plainly defined, health care or health care, includes the treatment, management and prevention of illness with the intent to preserve the physical and mental well being of an individual through the various health services available. Health Care therefore embraces the preventive, palliative and curative aspects of health whether are it specific to a certain individual or a target population.

Therefore, health care encompasses anything and everything that has to do with the well being of a person which includes but not limited to health care professionals and health organizations. In majority of developed countries, health care can be availed of regardless of socio-economic status, gender, age or race. Health care is a basic right that must be accorded to citizens of every country.

The Microsoft HealthVault Fund has increased from $3 million to $4.5 million to give more substantial awards for the winners of the online health applications contest. This contest encourages the creation of solutions that address health issues such as childhood obesity, diabetes management, medication reconciliation and health management. The judges represent leaders from the health field, including Adam Bosworth, Newt Gingrich, Mark Liponis, M.D., Valerie Montgomery Rice, M.D., Leslie Nowralk, Mark Pierson M.D., and Brent Ridge, M.D. The winners will be revealed at the Microsoft HealthVault Solutions Conference which will be held from June 9 to June 10 in Bellevue, Wash.

Do you remember the game you played when you were kids? The game wherein you had to save only 5 – 10 people (placed inside the boat) out of, say, 20 (depending on the rules of the game), and lay off the others who are “worthless”, all of which have special cases?

Doctors in Chicago are pretty much doing the same right now. A group of medical professionals, together with some prominent people in the academe, have come up with a list of who won’t join the boat if ever something like that will happen. They included in their list the elderly, victims of trauma, patients who have had 3rd degree burns and those who are mentally challenged. They actually did this list so that all hospitals will adopt the same roster of patients.

Sounds familiar? It’s like the 3rd sequel of the Titanic.

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A lot of people consider “health is wealth” but David Williams of the Health Business Blog thinks otherwise: he thinks that preventing illnesses is more costly than getting sick. His points of view indeed are radical as it avoids the traditional take on health care. He deeply relied on Washington Post’s article that basically has the same context, and has cited his quantitative sources as well to prove his point of view.

Bob Coffield, a health care lawyer himself, does not agree with Williams as he said that people with healthy systems will have little problems in the future.

Maybe it was just a matter of seeing things in a short term or long term manner.

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Are you a drug store regular? If you are, then probably you’ll be more than happy to know that you don’t need to line up in your local store anymore just to buy your daily doses—you can do it online. Also, if you take legend drugs that require rigid prescriptions, then perhaps you’ll be more than too to know that you don’t need to go to the doctor and ask for the drugs—once again, you can do it online.

This is known as e-prescribing. Normally, legend drugs are harder to get since wrong doses (or wrong drugs, for that matter) can lead to some fatal repercussions. But, legend drug prescriptions have now been made more accessible to the public since it can be done online. It doesn’t mean though, that you can just get these things just like how you obtain over the counter drugs; it’s basically the same process (you have to have a specialist) but the transaction is done online.

This service however is only legal in West Virginia and will only apply to emergency cases.

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An earlier post was made here a month ago regarding the beta testing of Google’s Health and surely, as predicted, a test run would be available after a month or so.

Now, Google has chosen its partner in making the test run possible: the Cleveland Clinic. The said hospital, ranks as one of the best in America according to U.S News and World Report. Cleveland Clinic patients can put their medical profiles on the internet (Google’s database) so that their medical history will be available for search via Google Health.

A certain Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum questioned the process since this concerns the privacy of the individuals who will join the test run.

It is but important to note that the putting up of medical profiles on Google Health is on a voluntary basis.

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In the race of becoming the world’s number 1 free web service provider, Google has once again made it to the headlines.

It was accidental really. Computer geeks were able to get a glimpse of a screenshot of a webpage that says, “Google Health Beta”. Perhaps Google found out about the website and they immediately removed it from their server but the said computer geeks were able to take a short tour of the log in page. It features a handful of services like you can create your own online health profile, obtain records from doctors and pharmacies as well, find competent medical professionals online and many more.

Since it is in “beta” mode, I am sure that about a month from now, Google will be doing a public test run on it.

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A month ago, a brief introduction about HIPAA was made (click here to read it). After the 9/11 attacks in WTC and Pentagon, there was a sudden increase of people who want to be under the HIPAA’s roof, perhaps due to the fear the attacks imposed upon the people.

But in the past years (not more than 3 years - present), the said sudden increase of HIPAA clients that were seen after the 9/11 attacks, aren’t anymore as evident as it was before. In fact, it is dwindling. Some experts say that this is due to the worries of the people regarding technology.

Technology, as we all know, advances every minute. Just as you were buying a new phone in the cell shop, another company is manufacturing a new one that’s better, bigger and more hip than the one you’re holding now. People fear that the technology might be abused and used against them since they are already “identified” with an alphanumeric combination (the national security vs. civil rights debate).

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HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, has been ratified by the United States Congress 12 years ago to protect and administer the health insurance of all the residents of the United States. The first target of the said act is to protect the health insurance of those who lose and/or change their occupations. Employers and insurance service providers could be very tricky this time and HIPAA is there to protect them from any con these companies might pull off on them.

Second, is that of the national identifiers card. This card will umbrella all the insurance companies (even Medicare, Medicaid etc.) and will provide an alphanumerical system of identification.

Although it has been ratified 12 years ago, it was only made effective in 2006 and has been running since then.

Photo taken from http://healthcare.zdnet.com