Did you know we recently improved our email alerts?  Now, you can choose to receive weekly or monthly Ways to Save alerts and/or Activity updates.  The Ways to Save alerts are sent to you to alert you of ways to save money on your healthcare expenses. When new savings opportunities are identified, we email them to you.  The Activity updates include updates about your friends, doctors, prescriptions and health issues. These updates can be profile comments, ways to save opportunities and more.  If you do not want to receive any emails, that’s an option too.  You can also sign up to receive our periodic newsletter about change:healthcare, site updates and new features.

To personalize your email settings, start by selected the Profile settings link just below your user name on the upper-left side of the screen.  Then, you will be brought to your main profile settings.  From here, click the Email Settings tab.

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We hope that this new feature improves your experience as a change:healthcare user!

Besides the new interface that is part of the new change:healthcare design, another great feature is the “What’s New” section located on your dashboard.  When you view “What’s New,” you will see recent activity from friends, updates to your doctors profiles and ways to save money.  We have added this and other new features to help make the site easier to use and understand.  With this better understanding, we hope you continue to engage in the various components of the site- both saving you money and making you a smarter healthcare consumer.  Check out the video  below to learn more about “What’s New!”

Thought I’d share this article I read in the NY Times this past weekend.  It talks about an “telescope” that can be implanted in a person’s eye to help correct retinal damage caused by advanced macular degeneration.  It has already been approved for use in Europe. FDA approval for use in the states is expected by the end of this year.  Although the device does not cure macular degeneration, it has proven to be very beneficial to patients thus far in the clinical trials.  The only downside- there is no set price tag on the tiny telescope just yet and similar medical devices are generally not covered by health insurance.  Other than that, it’s pretty neat, huh?

Check out the whole article here.

Left: Vision Care, Right: James Gilman (Source: NY Times)

If you have picked up a newspaper or turned on any news station during recent weeks, I am sure you have heard a lot about President Obama and health care reform. I am also sure that much of what you have heard about has been the lack of any resolve between Democrats and Republicans. Divided as to what the appropriate step towards improving the US health care system should be, the disagreement has made it difficult for policy makers to develop a bipartisan plan. At this point, President Obama has started directing more of his energy towards engaging the states and individuals in this national issue. Following the health care debate can definitely become confusing and overwhelming. So, we’ll briefly outline the status of health care reform as it stands now.

Currently, the main push by the White House and most Democrats is to provide a public option for the uninsured that will compete with private insurance companies. Essentially, those without an employer-provided option would be able to choose either a different private health care insurance option or the public plan. President Obama has argued that if the insurance companies are telling the truth and doing the best they can for their customers, then the implementation of the public plan should not affect their business.

Last Thursday, Democrats released a revised plan that estimated $611 billion over the next decade would be required to overhaul the healthcare system and provide coverage for 97% of Americans. This proposal calls for most employers to provide health coverage for their employees and the development of a public option. In addition to the funds outlined in the proposal, the expansion of Medicaid (which would be the expected first step in the process) could add several hundred billion dollars more in legislation costs. President Obama and Democrats want to cap initial costs in healthcare reform to $1 trillion over the coming decade. This limit, however, is not set in stone.

Clearly, there are two big issues surrounding reform: how much this change will cost and how involved the government will become in the healthcare market. Surveys by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation, and Quinnipiac all indicated a nearly 50/50 split in terms of people who are willing to pay and not willing to pay to provide coverage for the uninsured. Two surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and CBS and the NY Times produced contrasting results that Americans are not and are willing to pay for reform respectively. The prospect of increased income taxes and/or taxes on employer-based health coverage makes many Americans hesitant to support the spending the government proposals would require. Moreover, various interest groups oppose the implementation of a government plan that could interfere with the healthcare market. For example, insurers and drug companies, along with Republicans, fear that the public, government option would drive private insurers from the market and would eventually lead to a single-payer system. While Republicans have been quick to criticize proposals, they have been slow to provide suggestions of their own. Without support from both parties, moving healthcare legislation through Congress will be difficult. Luckily, there has been growing optimism from both sides that an agreement will be met by the end of August.

So, that was pretty much the simplest rundown on reform imaginable, but hopefully it got any newcomers up to speed.  Keep in mind that you as a consumer and voter have the power to influence what happens in Washington.  If you support or oppose any proposed legislation or you want your elected officials to know your opinion, call their office or write them a letter.  You may not realize it, but it does make a difference.  They are in office to make their constituents voices heard.  So, tell them what you think.  Trust me, they want your votes and know they have to respect their voters to get them.  Want to contact your congressman? your senator? your governor?  Find out who they are (in case you don’t know) and how to contact their office here.

While we would love to help keep you up to date on the changes and news with health care reform, that topic deserves an entire blog of its own. Plus, while I like to think of myself as well-informed when it comes to health care, I’m thinking the experts might have one up on me when it comes to the complexities associated with the reform process.  There are lots of good sources out there that tackle the many issues wrapped up in changing our healthcare system. A good place to start is Jane Sarasohn-Kahn’s blog, http://www.healthpopuli.com/, which provides daily updates on health care reform.  Happy reading.

Hi all- I’m Sara, the new summer intern at change:healthcare. I’m only two weeks in, but it has been great so far! Katrina asked me to write a blog post about anything my heart desired involving healthcare. So, I’ve decided to share some of my experiences from the last four weeks I spent doing medical work in Kampala, Uganda. This blog presents a unique opportunity to express some of what I experienced because most people only want to know if I saw a lion or if it was scary. While both of my stays in Africa have been full of adventures (like a safari during which I did see a lion, bungee jumping over/rafting the Nile, and climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro- no big deal), these in no way sum up my time there. This summer my work helped me understand the flaws and successes of the Ugandan healthcare system. I worked at a place called Meeting Point (MP), a rather unique site assignment. It is hard to sum MP in one or two words because it provides so many services to the surrounding community. The assistance MP provides includes adherence counseling; home visits to their HIV positive clients; a welcome home for 40 AIDS orphans; vocational education for older children who never received any formal education; and primary level education to local children. They also supplied food to many of their clients until the resources they received from the World Food Program (WFP) were cut due to the need in the Northern region of the country. Obviously, they cover quite a bit of ground.

Part of my daily routine consisted of accompanying an HIV counselor on home visits in the communities surrounding their offices. Over the course of four weeks, I must have visited over 70 homes and families. The complaints of most involved hunger due to the lack of support from the WFP or the need for school fees to keep their children in school (MP also sponsors hundreds of children’s school fees). I learned so much about the indirect effects the HIV/AIDS epidemic has on the lives of those affected. I met numerous parentless families where children were fending for themselves or families run by grandparents who are now responsible for multiple generations of children. I often met women left caring for as many as eight children on their own due to abandonment (Uganda has the third highest birthrate in the world with a fertility rate of 6.6 children per woman, so large families are the norm). Talk about being a single parent. It was not until I visited a woman named Miriam on my third day of home visits that I saw firsthand the devastating effect HIV/AIDS could have on a person physically.

Miriam is a woman in her mid-twenties who is HIV positive and has developed tuberculosis because of her weakened immune system. She has been taking both antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and TB medication for the last four months. The combination of ARVs and TB meds has had a significant effect on her mobility and strength. When I visited Miriam, she could only sit up in her bed and her entire collarbone and all her ribs were visible. The combination of both powerful medications has resulted in peripheral neuropathy (paralysis) on the left side of Miriam’s body and she said she could feel the right side of her body succumbing to paralysis as well. Sitting up took nearly all of her energy. She knew she needed to get to the hospital because of her weakened state, fever, and because her lungs were filled with fluid, but she didn’t have money for transport or any phone credit to call a MP counselor (keep in mind, transport to the hospital would cost roughly 5 USD and a phone call 20 cents). She simply had to wait for someone to visit her. Luckily, the day after our visit the staff arranged for Miriam to go to the hospital to receive care.

While Miriam was the first of many HIV/AIDS patients I met who were suffering a great deal physically, there was a common thread connecting all of their situations- a lack of access to care due to physical and economic barriers. Without the help of the MP counselors and community workers, it is unlikely many of the clients would be able to access the care they need. While numerous HIV/AIDS programs throughout Kampala provide free clinical services and medications, (the running joke is that there are more NGOs than children), what good are they if the services are not accessible? This issue of access does not pervade only the developing world. US residents of urban areas with poor public transportation systems or of scattered rural areas also experience difficulties accessing care. Citizens of both countries face varying levels of economic struggles to receive healthcare services as well. An HIV test at one of the private hospitals in Kampala costs 20,000 Uganda shillings (roughly 9.50 USD), but the average Ugandan makes less than 30 USD each week. If the choices are getting an HIV test or feeding their children, which do you think they will choose? Luckily, MP has worked to overcome both of these barriers by getting out into the communities and ensuring their clients can gain access to the services and care they need.  This practice of meeting people where they are has been the hallmark of the work and projects of Partners in Health, who initiated a similar project here in the US to assist marginalized HIV patients in Boston. Learn more here. (Remember, HIV/AIDS hasn’t skipped over the US. A report published by the District of Columbia’s HIV/AIDS Administration just a few months ago estimated that 3% of people residing in the nation’s capital are HIV positive. Check out the report here.)

While the US healthcare system is anything but perfect, my time in Uganda made me appreciate our system as broken as it may be. The battle against HIV/AIDS in Uganda is one of the continents greatest successes with a national infection rate of “only” 5.4%. Rates, however, are increasing and experts are working to understand why. While I can do a fair bit of complaining about the cracks and flaws of our system, witnessing the healthcare struggles experienced by those in the developing world has definitely given me a new perspective as to how lucky I am to have access to the 37^th best healthcare system in the world. (Uganda is ranked 149^th out of 190 by the WHO.) To learn more about the current HIV/AIDS situation in Uganda and worldwide, you can check out the UNAIDS 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic.

Some of the students who attend MP's primary school.

My place of work for four weeks in the district of Namuwongo.