Health Bill Would Cut Drug Spending for Many on Medicare, Budget Office Says — New York Times, By Robert Pear (August 30, 2009)

Fixing Health Care Is Good for Business — Wall Street Journal, By Gary Locke (August 28, 2009)

Rebutting the CBO’s Preventative Care Cost Analysis — Huffington Post, By Chris Fey (August 27, 2009)

Baucus Says Deficit Projection Demands Action on Health Care — Roll Call, By David M. Drucker (August 25, 2009)

Prevention key to health care reform — The State, By Donna L. Richter (August 25, 2009)

Krauthammer misses mark on preventive care — Asbury Park Press, By James J. Florio (August 23, 2009)

Editorial: Doing nothing is not an option –  Los Angeles Times (August 24, 2009)

Bipartisan Negotiators Plan More Cost-Cutting in Senate Overhaul Bill – Congressional Quarterly, By Jane Norman (August 21, 2009)

Rumors influencing health care debate – CNN, By Tom Cohen (August 20, 2009)

Health care cost burden for obese getting heavier — Reuters, By Anne Harding (August 19, 2009)

Ken Thorpe appeared on CNN American Morning on August 18, to discuss health care reform and chronic disease. Watch the clip.

We’ve got to go back to the basics. Three-quarters of what we spend in this country in health care is linked to patients that have chronic health care conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol.

And in the Medicare program, we have 20 percent of patients are readmitted to the hospitals within 30 days. We need to rebuild the delivery system in this country to make sure that we’re doing a better job of working with patients to keep them out of the hospital, keep them from being readmitted to the hospital in the first place.

If we did some simple things in Medicare, just cutting readmission rates in half, we could save $100 billion in the next ten years. That’s the discussion we need to be having on how to control health care costs.

We’ve become off-center here by an exclusive focus on the public option. It’s a good discussion. But we need to go back to the basics.

Where do we spend our money? How do we control health care costs and it really starts with people that have chronic health care conditions.

LTE: The Real Benefits of Prevention — Washington Post, By Eric J. Hall, President of The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (August 19, 2009)

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Health Reform Without Cost-Cutting Isn’t Worth It — Time Magazine, By Michael Grunwald (August 19, 2009)

 

What’s the Value of an Ounce of Prevention? (July 2009)

Health care reform’s tab – CNN, By Jennifer Liberto (August 18, 2009)

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Coverage vs. Costs – Washington Post, By James Kwak (August 17, 2009)