The power of patients: better health outcomes begin with you – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

Patient engagement, at its roots, is about ensuring that patients have the information available and access to services that encourage and enable them to be an active member of their health team.

Is patient engagement the key to reform? Are engaged patients capable of improving health outcomes? In short, the answer to both of these questions is yes. An engaged patient does experience better health outcomes, and better health outcomes often equates to lower health costs.

Patient engagement empowers the consumer and allows the consumer to make choices in their health care. It’s about communicating the evidence and options available so that we as patients can work with our care team to determine what is best for us.

Patient engagement is also central to patient safety. When the patient is actively involved in the care process and conversations, there tend to be fewer errors. Patient engagement also pushes the health team to be more transparent about their practices. In the end, the patient’s #1 advocate is the patient.

Health care experience triggers quality of coverage questions – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

I recently experienced the health care system’s shortcomings while seeking out treatment for a condition known as “trigger finger.” That’s when one of your fingers locks up and won’t straighten without much effort – and pain. Though I live in Washington DC, my first consult occurred while visiting my father, a doctor, in Minnesota. He sent me to see his friend, a hand surgeon, to have a look. The hand doctor gave me a shot of cortisone, saying that, while that only works 50 percent of the time with trigger finger, it was the first step before surgery.

The cortisone worked for a few days but soon enough the finger locked up again. So I decided to seek out the surgery option and made an appointment to see a doctor back home in Washington, DC. He was “out of network” for my insurance, but his offices are far closer to me than any of the “in network” doctors on my insurer’s list, and he came highly recommended.

This physician sized up the finger, asked about the cortisone option, and recommended minor surgery, which is apparently very routine. I made arrangements to have the surgery at a local hospital where this doctor is on staff. The whole procedure would take 30 minutes and would be outpatient and, thank goodness, I could go home immediately after its completion. The doctor said his fee for this procedure was $2,000, plus the cost of the hospital. This sounded high for such a minor procedure, but what do I know?

Before I proceeded, I wanted to find out how much coverage my insurance would provide. Believe it or not, my health insurance coverage amounted to only $296 for the doctor’s fee, of which they would pay only 70 percent, and that’s after an annual deductible of $300. In other words, I would receive nothing from my health insurance to cover the cost of this procedure if I went outside their network. However, the facility cost would be covered at 100 percent. Then I called the doc in Minnesota. His fee for this procedure is between $800 and $1,300. A lot less than $2,000 but a lot higher than the $296 my insurance pays.

This experience prompted so many questions for me. First, if the in-network doctors are making little or nothing on this procedure, how can they even cover their own costs? Also, what standards are insurance companies using to determine what a “usual and customary” charge for procedures? If the DC doc charges $2,000 and the Minnesota doc charges between $800 and $1,300, certainly, what should insurance cover? And what about the quality of my insurance coverage? Does this put my insurance company into that loathed category of “junk health insurers” who take your premiums each month but they cover little of your actual health care expenses? Why such a difference between in-network and out-of-network coverage? What are the actual costs of these procedures?

I’m a professional consumer advocate, and I found the experience overwhelming. What’s a patient – who’s lucky enough to HAVE health insurance — to do? I called my dad’s friend and asked for advice. He said his practice would do the surgery for a fee somewhere between what my insurance says it’s worth and what his practice charges. I figured he was willing to negotiate because of our family connection. But when I called the DC doctor to say I was putting off the surgery, his assistant said they wouldn’t expect me to pay the whole fee out of pocket either and we could come to some arrangement.

The lesson learned here is that for those of us lucky enough to have health insurance, it does pay to check into coverage before you move forward with treatment. Actually, it was a pain to wait on hold for 30 minutes while the insurance looked for the amount of coverage they’d provide for this very routine procedure and even then, I wasn’t sure she’d gotten it right. To me, this experience brings home how fraught this system is with pitfalls and traps for consumers. And this was a simple, common, and fairly inexpensive procedure. I feel for those with chronic or life threatening conditions or illnesses who have to deal with this system every day. I honestly don’t know how they do it.

Children in the Fields Campaign gathering steam – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

Our effort to protect migrant farmworker children from potentially harmful child labor through the Children in the Fields Campaign continues to gather steam. A campaign highlight occurred two weeks ago on February 22, when the Congressional Labor and Working Families Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus hosted a briefing on the hidden problem of child labor in U.S. agriculture. The room was packed with about 50 congressional staffers, interns, human rights advocates, and federal officials who work to protect farmworkers.

Norma Flores, who is now a Children in the Fields Campaign organizer, told the audience that she formally began working for wages in agriculture when she was 12, but that she helped out her migrant family in the fields when she was even younger. She spoke about working in 100-degree heat and working with sharp scissors that were so rough on her hands that she couldn’t write when she returned to school. She spoke about the lack of sanitation–days when toilets were not available or located too far away for the workers to use and days when clean water was not available to drink. She also talked about her scariest day in the fields when a plane spraying pesticides flew over the crew and dropped the pesticide spray directly on them. “My dad…was freaking out. He told us to run,” said Lopez.

Flores said she often migrated before the school year was over and returned to Texas months after it started up again. Many migrant children, she noted, end up dropping out from school due to the fatigue associated with migrating and working in the fields.

Maria Mandujano, who is now a college student and one of the lucky ones who managed to make it through school to graduation, told attendees that she started working in the fields when she was only 11, helping to harvest onions, sugar beets, corn, and zucchini. She recalled 13-hour shifts in 98-100-degree heat and said the work has left her with a bad back. “It is wrong that farmworker youth are the only youth exempted from U.S. child labor laws,” said Maria. “I hope that Congress will act to protect others like me.”

Zama Coursen-Neff, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, told briefing attendees that she has found a great deal of evidence that child farmworkers continue to work under very difficult circumstances that leaves her wondering whether the United States is in compliance with Convention 182, the international agreement signed by the U.S. that prohibits the “worst forms” of child labor that endangers the health, safety, and morals of children. Inaccessibility to good drinking water, pesticide contamination, exposure to hazardous jobs at young ages, and the sexual harassment of young female workers were among the problems she said young workers told her about. She interviewed child workers who work seven days a week for less than $150, she said. “I’ve seen kids working barefoot and without gloves,” she added. “Some kids are too tired to change their clothes at the end of the day.”

Coursen-Neff said she also believes that U.S. child labor laws are discriminatory because the exemptions that allow children to work at 12 and younger in agriculture primarily impact Latino children. She reminded participants that for many farmworker children, farm work is a way of life and not a temporary farm job that older Americans tend to remember fondly as a part of their youth. “One mother told me that she felt she had stolen her 11-year-old daughter’s childhood,” she said.

Filmmaker Robin Romano showed a trailer for his upcoming film on child farmworkers called “The Harvest.” He told attendees that the agricultural exemptions reminded him of “Jim Crow” laws, arguing that the treatment of migrant kids is “separate and unequal.” He agreed with Coursen-Neff’s assessment that the United States is not in compliance with Convention 182 and he said that the attempts to deal with abusive child labor in African cocoa fields under the Harkin-Engel protocol “require stricter rules than we have.”

“This is stunning to me,” Romano added. He noted that most of the migrant child workers he met were born in the U.S. “These are American citizens….Our children deserve better from us.”

Please consider calling your Congressman and urging them to cosponsor The Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, HR 3564. Email Reid Maki at reidm@nclnet.org if you have any questions.

Patient safety starts with you – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

Update: Scary must-read in the New York Times re: hospital safety

Happy National Patient Safety Week!

Nationally, this week marks an opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of and highlight ways in which we can all help improve patient safety.

As a patient, you can take five easy steps towards being a safer patient – and preventing infection and complications when you visit your local hospital or point-of-care:

  1. Hospital Infection Protection 411 – know your hospital’s infection control practices and talk to your health care team about infection protection.
  2. Antibiotics – the misuse and overuse of antibiotics can lead to drug resistance, including MRSA, which can lead to very serious infections. Make sure any antibiotics prescribed are necessary, and then be sure to follow the prescription and take as directed.
  3. Catheter Caution – 25 percent of hospital patients have a urinary catheter. The risk of a urinary tract infection increases the longer the catheter is in place (particularly if more than 2 days); if you’ve had a catheter in for more than 48 hours, ask if and when it can be removed.
  4. Know Your Care Team – see if your hospital has an Infection Preventionist; if you’re feeling really eager or interested in the practices of your hospital, ask to meet with the preventionist.
  5. Keep Your Hands Clean – not only should you keep your hands clean while in the hospital, but feel free to ask that anyone touching you wash their hands well.

Happy National Consumer Protection Week! – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

National Consumer Protection Week 2010 has begun, running from March 7 to the 13th. NCL is an NCPW Steering Committee member, working with our consumer protection colleagues to provide free resources to help people protect their privacy, manage money and debt, avoid identity theft, understand credit and mortgages, and steer clear of frauds and scams. This year, NCPW partners—which includes AARP, Better Business Bureau, Consumer Federation of America, and a handful of federal government agencies and others—are focusing Dollars and Sense: Rated “A” for All Ages on highlighting consumer education for every stage of life – from grade school to retirement.

At NCPW’s official Web site and blog, readers can view President Obama’s *NCPW Proclamation and visit the *NCPW Events Page to find local NCPW events across the country. Bloggers are examining issues of utmost importance to consumers these days: understanding the new credit card rules; personal privacy; seeing through the deception of fraudulent “miracle cures” and more.

NCL has long sought to educate our youngest consumers on a variety of issues, and our 16-year-old LifeSmarts program captures the nuts and bolts of growing up consumer savvy. NCL runs LifeSmarts at the national level and is grateful for the support from volunteer state coordinators across the country facilitating the program in their states. LifeSmarts is a national program for high school and middle school youth, testing students in grades 7-12 with questions about real-life marketplace issues ranging from personal finance, health and safety, the environment, technology, and consumer rights and responsibilities. So far in this 2009-2010 season, the program has recorded the highest numbers ever in its 16-year history.

State competitions are heating up across the country, and as winners are determined, champion teams are prepping for their trip to Miami, Florida for the 2010 National LifeSmarts Championship. Follow the excitement of the coming weeks at NCL’s LifeSmarts blog.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings

Bipartisan deal on Federal Reserve may not be best deal for consumers – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Yesterday’s papers indicate that one house of Congress – the Senate – has reached a bipartisan deal to give the Federal Reserve primary responsibility for protecting consumers from abusive and deceptive financial products. But it may not be the best deal for consumers. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), the House Chairman of Financial Services, whose committee oversees the financial community, said he was “dumbfounded” by the idea: “When I first heard it, I thought it was a joke.”

In February of this year, a broad coalition, of which NCL is a member, sent a letter to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT), thanking him for his strong efforts to enact an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The coalition, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), argued that existing bank regulators had “utterly failed to protect consumers from abusive lending practices in the marketplace because they were not independent of the lenders they regulated and because they subordinated consumer protection concerns to a dangerously shortsighted focus on the near-term profitability of these institutions.”

So, this news coming from the Senate to give the Fed heightened consumer protection powers has been received with very mixed reviews, particularly from consumer advocates. The Fed has been accused of turning a deaf ear to consumer protection time and time again. The Fed has also at times appeared to be a federal agency far more concerned with the health of the business community and keeping interest rates low than with the protection of the little guy. However, others disagree. A former Fed governor, Mark Olson, believes the Fed has made a new commitment to carry out rigorous consumer protection and bank supervision.

We’ll see how this plays out in Congress. The point is that consumers need a tough, unyielding watchdog to reign in the abuses of the credit card company and banks. I’m willing to listen to the arguments, but I too am skeptical that the Fed and its thousands of staff could have become pro-consumer overnight.

Foodborne illness victims lobby Washington for passage of food safety reform legislation – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Courtney Brein, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow

Today, as part of the Make Our Food Safe coalition’s coordinated events this week, 45 foodborne illness victims and their family members are meeting with senators from their 23 home states to advocate for the passage of FDA food safety reform legislation,  S. 510.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions unanimously passed this bipartisan piece of legislation in November 2009. Now, in order to make food safety reform a reality, the Senate must bring the bill to the floor for a vote as soon as possible. In July, the House overwhelmingly passed H.R. 2749, its version of the FDA food safety reform, which does even more to strengthen the food safety system than does the Senate bill.

For the individuals who traveled from across the country to urge their senators to act, the pending legislation is highly personal. At a dinner following the advocates’ training session yesterday afternoon – an event that both first-time and seasoned advocates attended, to prepare for their legislative visits and share their stories – I had the opportunity to speak at length with a number of the incredible people with whom senators are currently meeting. Their stories are heartbreaking.

The woman to my right, a vivacious stay-at-home mom from Virginia, told me all about the various athletic pursuits of her ten-year-old twins, children she felt particularly lucky to have in her life. In her fifth or sixth month of pregnancy, she contracted listeriosis from a contaminated food product, an infection that spread to her unborn babies and sent her into early labor. The twins faced severe medical complications and an extensive hospitalization. Thankfully, both mother and children recovered. Across the table sat two girls, chatting with each other and the group alternately: a 12-year-old who contracted E. coli O157:H7 during the 2006 spinach outbreak, fell deathly ill, and recovered to become a seasoned advocate; and a college senior visiting Washington, DC to lobby for the first time after spending a week in the hospital last year fighting illness caused by contaminated Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie dough.

What none of these incredible individuals mentioned over our pasta or bread pudding were the medical consequences that remain for many who suffer from foodborne illness: life-changing conditions such as paralysis, kidney failure, seizures, and hearing impairments. Furthermore, these survivors are the “lucky” ones. Another advocate, a soft-spoken dad from Tennessee, came to DC. on behalf of his six-year-old son who passed away from foodborne illness in 2004. With the pain that comes from the loss of a child clearly written on his face, he said to me, “He got sick, and two weeks later he was gone.”

As the brave advocates will underscore to their senators today, no one should have to suffer, or watch a loved one suffer, as a result of something as necessary and basic as eating. Many of the individuals in the room came to DC this week – and return again and again – to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves: parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, whose lives were cut short by eating contaminated commonplace foods such as peanut butter or spinach.

In addition to the human face of foodborne illness, this week the Make Our Food Safe Coalition has drawn attention to the economic consequences of foodborne illness outbreaks. Utilizing data from a new report that places the cost of foodborne illness in the United States at 152 billion dollars annually, Make Our Food Safe has created an interactive, online map that enables users to explore the costs of foodborne illness state by state. Both the report and the map underscore the financial consequences of a food safety system that does not adequately protect the public from contaminated products.

On Tuesday, HELP Committee Chair Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) stated that, if all goes according to plan, food safety legislation is likely to reach the President’s desk by May. It is the hope of the National Consumers League, the Make Our Food Safe Coalition, and the victim advocates on the Hill today that our efforts this week will rededicate the Senate to vote on the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, S. 510, and move food safety reform one step further towards becoming a reality.

Health reform a reality through ‘reconciliation’? – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Mimi Johnson, NCL Health Policy Associate

President Obama just released his proposed plan for health reform. This proposal follows last Thursday’s bi-partisan summit to explore health reform compromises and solutions.

In agreement with many Americans, the President suggests we have little time to waste in passing this bill and must move quickly. A likely solution for getting the bill to the President’s desk is to use reconciliation, which was also echoed by Senator Harkin. The reconciliation process was designed by Congress to quickly get legislation through Congress and is often used to reduce the federal deficit. It requires only a majority vote in the House and Senate, and debate is limited.

According to Senator Harkin, the House must first pass the health reform bill that was passed by the Senate in December before it can go through the reconciliation process in the Senate. Some on the Hill suggest this can be done before the President leaves for international travel on March 18; others suggest something might reach the President closer to Easter.

As the President’s plan to Congress reminded us, the reforms proposed will provide consumers with greater choice and control over their health care and lower costs (including reduced premiums), and will end discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.

End of an era for Illinois LifeSmarts – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Lisa Hertzberg, LifeSmarts Program Director

I just returned from a very successful Illinois state LifeSmarts competition at West Chicago High School in West Chicago, Illinois, hosted by State Coordinator Don Zabelin at his home school. Zabelin coached the winning team that will represent Illinois in Miami Beach in just seven weeks! Before heading to Florida, the West Chicago 1 team members will be studying up on 529s, simple interest, and mattress flammability, but they had a very strong showing in all other areas and ran the table to go unbeaten in the double-elimination competition.

For years, Zabelin has always had a great group of volunteer competition officials representing organizations such as the IL AGO, FTC, IL Securities Commission, Money Management International, Bridgestone, and DeVry University. He makes time during the competition to allow students to hear from all of the officials, and Wally Kleinfeldt of the BBB had perhaps the most direct message of the day, encouraging the students to always do their homework as consumers before any major purchase: “You’ll be doing homework for the rest of your life.”

This competition marked the end of an era, as Zabelin passed the torch to Debra Bartman, who will take over the role of Illinois state coordinator this summer. We wish Don the best as he retires after 33 years of teaching – congratulations on a wonderful career! Don, stay in touch – and don’t forget to write several hundred LifeSmarts questions for us in your newly-found spare time!

Reigning Florida champs en route to Miami – National Consumers League

/in imported/by

By Brandi Williams, LifeSmarts Program Assistant

There is nothing better than seeing LifeSmarts in action!

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to travel from the National Consumers League’s office in Washington, DC to attend the Florida state LifeSmarts competition in Tampa. As NCL staff prepares for the National LifeSmarts Championship in April, also to be held in the state of Florida, we are always excited when we have the chance to attend a state LifeSmarts competition and visit with our state partners.

The Florida LifeSmarts program, coordinated by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumers Affairs, hosted its 2010 state competition at the Florida State Fairgrounds on President’s Day, February 15, 2010. On a day where many students were out of school for the 3-day holiday weekend, 13 student teams from all over the large state of Florida were in attendance to compete for the title of LifeSmarts State Champion and to represent Florida at Nationals.

Teams traveled for five to six hours from far-away cities including Jacksonville and Freeport to showcase their dedication—to not just LifeSmarts, but also to consumer literacy—affirming their commitment to learning the necessary skills to be educated, savvy consumers in today’s changing marketplace. The rounds of competition were tough, culminating in a neck-and-neck battle between the reigning state champs, Seminole County 4-H team and Paxon SAS Varsity from the Paxon School for Advance Studies. While the match was close, Seminole 4-H once again took the title will be on their way to Miami in April.

Florida state champs declared in Tampa.

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumers Affairs Commissioner Charles H. Bronson was there to cheer teams on. He also gave remarks and congratulations to all 13 teams in attendance, and presented the winning team and coaches with a check for $3,300 on behalf of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumers Affairs.

State Coordinator Gwen Worlds recalled how enthusiastic Commissioner Bronson was when he attended the 2008 LifeSmarts National Championship held in Orlando, FL. “He jumped up from his seat and cheered the Florida team on,” Worlds said. “It was encouraging to the Florida team.”

Congratulations to all teams at the Florida LifeSmarts Competition, and the best of luck to Seminole 4-H in Miami Beach in April!