Annual Perseid Star Party

Every year since we've been at our house we've had an annual bonfire and star party.  We get some of the neighbors and our friends together, build a small fire and make some smores.   We do it right around the time of the annual Perseid meteor shower.   We tend to miss the peak by a few days, but we always seem to see a few.   And, as we always do, we got out my two telescopes and showed the neighborhood a few night sky objects.

This year Jupiter was the only early evening planet visible; but it is my favorite.   (Saturn's close -- but setting too early in the evening this year's August).  Here's a photo of how Jupiter looked for us through my Meade ETX 125, courtesy of another amateur using the same scope as I have.   Jupiter is great because the kids (and parents) can immediately identify it.  It was really appropriate this year, the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first astronomical use of the telescope.  The kids kept asking what the stars were that surrounded Jupiter.  They loved the fact that they were Jupiter's moons.  They even suffered through me talking about the volcanism of Io, the oceans under the surface ice of Ganymede and Europa and how Galileo confirmed the Copernican world view by asking the same question that they had.



Even with the city lights, we were able to get a few deep sky sights in scope.  After a little star hopping (aided by a new friend to our family - Tom - a geek like me who likes amateur astronomy), we were able to get the great Hercules cluster in my larger 8" home built dobsonian scope.   The cluster (M13) is a globular cluster with about 200,000 stars sitting in the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy.  In the scope it looks like a dandelion fluff.  Impressive when you think that it contains that many stars -- but a bit less identifiable than Jupiter.  Here's what it looks like in a scope like mine after a few minutes exposure.  As I said, in my scope, with city lights and lower magnification -- more of a smudge.

I was also able to get M39, an open cluster, in my larger scope.  Unfortunately, by the time I got it in focus, most of our guests had taken off.  I wish I had gotten it in view earlier, because it probably would have gotten more of a response than the Hercules cluster.  The stars in the open cluster are gorgeous in the scope, almost like jewels.  Here's  a picture of them through a much larger telescope -- certainly not what they look like through mine -- but it very much catches the effect.  

Most important to me, my kids got a kick out the the evening.  They didn't last that long -- my youngest was going to bed only just after sun set.  Noelle got to see most of the sites.  And, of course, she had her fair share of smores.  I'm already looking forward to next year.

Another View - Get Rid of Comprehensive Healthcare Insurance?

Thanks to Paul Levy's Running a Hospital blog for putting me onto this article.  I started reading this too late but could not pull myself away from it.

If you are pondering health care reform this season, "How American Health Care Killed My Father" by David Goldhill should be something you read.  He's an outsider to health care finance and delivery and a consumer that has had the healthcare system profoundly (and negatively) affect his family.

With this personal interest, he's become quite focused on the question: how can a technically advanced, high cost, reputable, New York area hospital with caring, highly educated and highly skilled physicians and nurses allow his father to die from a facility acquired infection avoidable (probably) by adequate hand-washing protocols?  The experience has led him to an "obsession with [the] health-care system" and to start asking how could it possibly be structured the way that it is.   With this background, he asks whether today's proposed reforms actually fix what he understands to be wrong with the American health care system?  His conclusion is no:

The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system. I believe if the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result.

A more consumer-centered health-care system would not rely on a single form of financing for health-care purchases; it would make use of different sorts of financing for different elements of care—with routine care funded largely out of our incomes; major, predictable expenses (including much end-of-life care) funded by savings and credit; and massive, unpredictable expenses funded by insurance.

I take issue with some of what he writes, particularly about hospitals.  Nonetheless, it is worth a read and some serious thought, whether you agree or not with all of his statements, conclusions and his solution.

via How American Health Care Killed My Father - The Atlantic (September 2009).

H1N1, CDC, CMS and EMTALA

In a follow-up to previous posts (here, here) on H1N1, I'm catching up on reading from this week and I must have missed the White House's report on possible effects of a resurgence of the swine flu pandemic this fall and winter.   I read through the report and it is eye opening, although not as dire as some possible scenarios presented by at least some for a pandemic avian flu.  According to the White House advisory panel report a possible scenario would:

•produce infection of 30–50% of the U.S. population this fall and winter, with symptoms in approximately 20–40% of the population (60–120 million people), more than half of whom would seek medical attention.
•lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions during the epidemic, with up to 300,000 patients requiring care in intensive care units (ICUs). Importantly, these very ill patients could occupy 50–100 percent of all ICU beds in affected regions of the country at the peak of the epidemic and could place enormous stress on ICU units, which normally operate close to capacity.
•cause between 30,000 and 90,000 deaths in the United States, concentrated among children
and young adults. In contrast, the 30,000–40,000 annual deaths typically associated with seasonal flu in the United States occur mainly among people over 65. As a result, 2009-H1N1 would lead to many more years of life lost.
•pose especially high risks for individuals with certain pre-existing conditions, including pregnant women and patients with neurological disorders or respiratory impairment, diabetes, or severe obesity and possibly for certain populations, such as Native Americans.

The NY Times later reported that the CDC had indicated that this was not a "likely scenario," which may be reassuring.

Also of note, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services  issued a memo and fact sheet clarifying permissible options under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act for hospitals handling a surge in patients with swine flu.  The fact sheet discusses options for hospitals experiencing surges with and without a declared 'waiver' of EMTALA (requiring presidential emergency declaration and certain other actions), including out of department medical screening exams and off-campus flu screening centers.

PCAST_H1N1_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object).

potpourri podcasts & links

A few noteworthy podcasts/links of the week:

Diane Rehm Show.  On Thursday, hosted Jill Tarter, Director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute's Center for SETI Research.  Jill Tarter also has a neat little presentation when she recently received the TED prize.  I've posted on TED talks before.  Discussion around SETI @ 50 years!

Diane Rehm Show.  On Wednesday, hosted Maxwell Mehlman, professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University and the author of "Wondergenes"; "The Encyclopedia of Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues in Biotechnology"; and "Access to the Genome" and one of my old professors.  The conversation is about his recent book, Price of Perfection.

The Lost Decade.  What's been the economic growth rate over 1999 - 2009 and how does it compare to others during the modern post-War period.  Ouch.

Co-Ops.  What are they and are they a bridge to bipartisan healthcare reform?

Recession bottoming out?  One of the two steel blast furnaces in Cleveland are finally firing up again.  "[W]e are restarting C-5 blast furnace, a steel shop, hot mill, pickle line, tandem mill and galvanizing line at ArcelorMittal Cleveland...However, we do not expect demand to return to the levels seen in 2008 for sometime yet and remain cautiously optimistic for a low and progressive recovery."  When both furnaces were turned off (I think late last year), it was a signal of the unusual depth of this 'Great Recession.'  I've been watching to see when they'd fire up again.  This is a good sign.

Healthcare Economic - Supply/Demand Side Goals to Reform

Over the years Uwe E. Reinhardt has written, lectured and testified extensively on health care economics, alternative health care financing and delivery systems (e.g., here and here) and health care financing and delivery reform in the United States.  He's one of those guys I recall studying back in undergraduate health care economics classes (who can forget a name like Uwe).

In a recent NYT Economix blog post he provides succinct economics supply side/demand side breakdown of what the general economic goals are for health care financing and delivery reform as currently evisioned.  I thought was a useful way of looking at the (rational) parts of the current debate.   I emphatically take no position on health care reform policy initiatives, but in light of so much of the rather less than civil polemics I see around the policy debate, this seems a return to basic analytics of what might be accomplished through reform.

1. Financial barriers should not stand between Americans and preventive or acute health care that they sincerely believe will address concerns over a troubling medical condition, in a timely manner, before that condition grows into a critically serious illness.

2. Having received needed health care, no American family should be so financially devastated by medical bills that it cannot meet routine daily living expenses — for example, make utility or mortgage payments on time or finance the education of the family’s children.

3. The future growth in national health spending should be constrained to fall significantly below currently projected spending growth, which has the United States devoting about 40 percent of its G.D.P. to health care by midcentury.All other goals are subordinate to these three overarching goals, as are the means to reach them.

He breaks it down into into one slide -- which I think, again, fairly succinctly states the targeted supply/demand side areas:

I found it natural to categorize these components into those aimed mainly at reforming the demand side of the health sector, those aimed mainly at the supply side, and those cutting across both sides — e.g., payment reform and overall cost control.health care delivery

He then discusses the time frame for reform.   He feels with good reason that the supply side fix (top left box), while incredibly challenging, would be achievable through current legislation.   He indicates, however, that it would not be particularly successful unless certain core requirements are met to address the adverse selection/moral hazard problems inherent in the fix.

He notes, however, that the right box and the cross-cutting payment reform (bottom boxes) can only be accomplished over a much extended period due to their complexity, lack of current infrastructure (e.g., systemic and cross-functional EHR systems, solid quality measurement systems, systems whereby health care providers can assume and manage financial risk for populations) and a public policy and business driven process of how to actually move from FFS systems to some form of bundled payment or capitation.

If 1) either private or public health insurers must accept all comers and may not base premiums on the applicant’s health status, then 2)  individuals must be mandated to purchase at least a basic package of health insurance, lest they freeload on the system. Such a mandate, in turn, requires that 3) families be publicly subsidized to make the cost of that basic package affordable to them. A sound reform of the health insurance market cannot have just two of these features. It must have all three.

****

Designing and implementing the rest of the reform agenda in the chart — reforming the supply side, payment reform and cost control — is a much longer-run effort that may take an entire decade or more. It is more challenging than was landing a man on the moon, as no moneyed lunar interest groups sought to prevent man’s visit there.

The delema should be obvious.  Given Dr. Reinhardt's core requirements for supply side reform, the ability to subsidize #1 (preventative intervention) and #2 (insurance against catostrophic financial loss due to illness) universally is going to be extraordinarily costly to public fisc.  Without management of #3 (which isn't going to come without significant challenge) the money must come from somewhere.  And, of course, if #3 is not achievable for some unspecified extended period, gap financing is necessary.   Richard Posner recently has a post on just this point.