Fact Check
Benefits of Health Care Reform
Thursday, 25 March 2010 10:31
According to the Committee for Energy and Commerce, benefits of the new Health Care Reform bill signed by President Obama will:
* Improve coverage for Americans with health care.
* Give tax credits and other assistance to families and small businesses to help them afford coverage.
* Improve Medicare for beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.
* Extend cover to uninsured Americans.
* Guarentee that Americans with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
* Protect families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
* Allow young adults to obtain coverage on their parent's insurance plans.
* Reduce the cost of uncompensadated care for hospitals and other health care providers.
For more information about how health care reform will effect, follow this link to the U.S. House of Representatives site for Texas Congressional District 26
Health care - when ranked against other states, why is Texas ranked 51st?
Friday, 09 October 2009 15:00
A report issued in October 2009 by the Commonwealth Foundation, a private organization founded in 1918, ranks the states in healthcare against achievable benchmarks.
Vermont, Hawaii, Iowa or Minnesota deliver best. Texas not so good. Overall we rank 46th.
Rankings by criteria
Access: #51 (The District of Columbia is included in the tables.)
Prevention and treatment: #43
Available Hospital use and cost: #42
Equity: #51 (Race, children, nursing homes, etc.)
Healthy lives: #21 (incident of smoking, suicide, breast cancer etc.)
Tables showing state rankings and how Texas fares in the 38 criteria that create the broader ratings are attached.
So who is the Lewin Group?
Sunday, 16 August 2009 13:15
Statistics from the The Lewin Group are frequently quoted by opponents of the Obama Administrationhealth insurance reform. So who is the Lewin Group? It’s owned by United Healthcare, an intensely profitable insurance company that controls aspects of healthcare for 60 million Americans and also distributes pharmaceuticals to 10 million through its Prescription Solutions division.
From the Lewin Group ‘About Us’ page on their website.
The Lewin Group is an Ingenix company. Ingenix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, was founded in 1996 to develop, acquire and integrate the world's best-in-class health care information technology capabilities.
How Texas health statistics compare with other States
Sunday, 09 August 2009 13:33
Click on the picture to read the report.
It was prepared for the Texas State Senate and uses data compiled by various State agencies and national sources such as the Center for Disease control.