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Rationing Health Care

Please read the entire assignment before starting

Background

There are many critical issues to think about this week. For example:

• Should we ration health care in America? Are we already doing that?
•  Can Medicare stay viable as the numbers of older adults continue to increase? Actually Medicare is in more financial trouble than Social Security. Read this http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-03-16-medicare-riddle_x.htm  And this link is the history of Medicare: http://www.ssa.gov/history/corning.html
•  The cost of health care for older adults-does aging increase health care costs? Are you sure?
   

ASSIGNMENT

• You are going to publish a short editorial ( write it like you were writing for a newspaper ) to this week's discussion link outlining an issue to your readers, regarding health care for older adults. But you must first pick and then research your topic. How long should this post be? What ever it takes to tell your readers about the subject. Be brief, editorials are not supposed to be long papers. They are a way to tell people about a complicated issue in a short format.

   You must also include  your informed opinions. In other words first write about the issue, then tell the reader your opinion on the subject based on your readings. For example, if you say that Health Care is more costly for older adults you must tell them how much more costly and why.

  This is going to take some research on your part to get the issues correct. As always, you must cite your sources.  Remember to use SWAGS and not WAGS. If you have forgotten what those are check the orientation link.

  Here are some other ideas. You can also look at your text and lecture readings for ideas. Choose one or two to report on.
  
  • The growth of Medicare, the history of the program, quality of access issues.
  • You might instead consider the role of technology and the ethics involved.
  • Or you might focus on the idea of rationing health care and Callahan's argument ( you must of course go beyond what the text tells you. 
  • You are free to explore other topics related to health care and older adults. Factual material should be invoked at all points. 

You can chose any perspective of this wide topic you like. Remember, although editorials are opinions, those opinions have to be grounded in facts and cited.. 

Here is a link explaining what an editorial is if you need help. click here  OR copy this link into your browser: http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/pbmiddle/environment/editor.htm

Resources:

1. This site is a good overview of what happens to doctors around the Medicare issue. Skim the list and find one that interests you.  http://www.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=doctors+medicare
2. There are a multitude of resources at this link. http://www.sagepub.com/moody5study/07HealthCareRation_WebLinks.pdf
3. This is a must  read -- more about Calahan here http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n3/age.html
4. DOES AGING INCREASE HEALTH COSTS? http://www.ben.iss.it/pre_2002/febbraio02/2eng.htm
5. "Does The Aging Of The Population Really Drive The Demand For Health Care?" by Uwe E. Reinhardt

• ABSTRACT: In the debate on health policy, it is widely believed that the aging of the U.S. population is a major driver of the annual growth in the demand for health care and in national health spending. This essay draws on the research literature and on data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys (MEPS) to debunk that myth. Although in any year per capita health spending for people age sixty-five or older tends to average three to five times that for younger Americans, the aging of the population is too gradual a process to rank as a major cost driver in health care.

6. "Getting Serious About Excessive Medicare
   Spending: A Purchasing Model" by Robert A. Berenson

• ABSTRACT: It is now well documented that Medicare spending varies widely across the country and that higher spending does not produce differences in quality, access, or even patient satisfaction. Yet for various reasons, policy analysts have tended to minimize the importance of the fact that as much as 30 percent of Medicare spending might be excessive and unnecessary. There is an imperative to transform the traditional Medicare program from that of a claims payer to that of a strategic purchaser, able to adopt a broad array of approaches and to use a comprehensive set of tools used by private plans, but in a more transparent and accountable way.

Both articles appear in the Dec 2003 issue of The Journal HEALTH AFFAIRS (Vol 22, 2003). 

Link to ARC Library- http://www.arc.losrios.edu/~library/ 

Be sure to respond to your classmates editorials.