Managed Care Spy Games

Aetna is funding research to find out whether a daily lottery with cash prizes will get patients to be more compliant in taking their meds. They are giving the University of Pennsylvania $400,000 to see if a two-arm randomized trial will determine whether a 1-in-10 chance of winning $10 or a 1-in-100 chance of winning $100 will get patients regular on their Coumadin. Brilliant. Why not give them real lottery tickets or cartons of cigarettes if they are really looking for appropriate incentives? I think the most ridiculous part of this study is the electronic monitor, Med-eMonitor, that tracks whether the meds were taken. It seems obvious that this study is more about trying to prove that this device is the best way for insurance companies to spy on patients. More and more managed care companies are becoming like big brother and trust me, it isn’t to make the patients healthier, but instead it is going to be used to deny some future benefit. Think I am going too far? Can you see a time where patients who have a stroke while on Coumadin get denied for their bills because they weren’t complaint via the electronic monitor and therefore their INR was low (or blood not thin enough)? Yeah, they don’t call me Nostradougus for nothing.

Platform Boredom

I am enjoying some of the summer Olympics when I get a chance to put it on the tube. Unfortunately, I realized pretty quickly how boring most of it is. Every four years I have to remind myself why I end up turning it off. It is not the Olympic games itself that are the problem. It is the damn network that shows only a few sports: swimming, gymnastics, swimming, track, gymnastics, men's basketball, and swimming. I actually saw them put on synchronized diving last night (a form of swimming in my book) and could not believe how ridiculous it was. I am sure the network spends years studying the habits of Americans and decides what to put on based on statistics and focus groups.

In another boring platform meant to please the masses, the Democrats shaped a set of principles recently that commits the party to guaranteed health care for all . Yeah, that's going to work. It will be as successful as pulling the troops out of Iraq, campaign reform and fixing the energy crisis; all of which they promised when they came in to power in Congresss. Anyway, they did give up on a government run, socialized medicine plan to instead state they are "united behind a commitment that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed to have affordable, comprehensive health care."

Here is a little secret: you can't have affordable, comprehensive health care. It is like that old sign hanging at a diner that states "Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two". If we want affordable health care then it can't be comprehensive. Sorry folks but the R word applies. It is called rationing and it's life. Any promise otherwise by either party is a load of crap. We shouldn't allow them to force feed us bogus content just because that is what they think we want to see or hear. That is why I hate watching the Olympics.