Obama administration to announce effort to expand health-care workforce

[alp227]

Source: Wash. Post

The Obama administration will announce Monday as much as $1 billion in funding to hire, train and deploy health-care workers, part of the White House’s broader “We Can’t Wait” agenda to bolster the economy after President Obama’s jobs bill stalled in Congress.

Grants can go to doctors, community groups, local government and other organizations that work with patients in federal health-care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The funds are for experimenting with different ways to expand the health-care workforce while reducing the cost of delivering care. There will be an emphasis on speed, with new programs expected to be running within six months of funding.

“This will open the inbox for many innovators and organizations that have an idea to bring to the table,” Don Berwick, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in an interview. “We’re seeking innovators, organizations and leaders that have an idea to bring into further testing.”

Health-care employment is growing steadily, with more than 300,000 jobs added in the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It has been one bright spot in the economy as unemployment has hovered around 9 percent. The bureau projects total employment in health care to grow by 3.2 million jobs by 2018, more than in any other sector.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obama-administration-to-announce-effort-to-expand-health-care-workforce/2011/11/11/gIQAxXfpIN_story.html

[juajen]

1. Great! Bring on the popcorn. NT

[babylonsister]

2. I think it's great they're thinking outside the box, trying to

come up with innovative ways to employ AND help people while keeping costs down.
If rethugs had their way, we'd be going backwards.
Rec'd.

[eilen]

3. Reducing medicare reimbursement to hospitals and providers

will not incentive them to hire a larger workforce. Buying more horses and reducing the number of carts will just keep more horses out to pasture so to speak.

[Peace Patriot]

4. One of the best ideas in a century is home health care.

Disabled, elderly, ill or convalescing people are much better off in their own homes, if they can get the help they need to live at home--nursing care, housekeeping assistance. 'Warehousing' people who need such help in a central facility--a nursing home--is among the worst ideas of the last century. If you wanted to assist pathogens in spreading infection among people, that's the way to do it--cram sick or incompetent people into over-crowded, understaffed, for-profit facilities, and if you further wanted to assist said pathogens in mutating into resistant strains, you would choose what appears to be the only remedy available in such circumstances--bombarding the inmates with antibiotics. Guaranteed poor care--no matter the benign intentions of health care staff, who often make heroic efforts to give good care but are defeated by the circumstances (for profit facility, understaffed, overcrowded, breeding ground for germs).

In addition to being the best option for the sick and disabled, if possible, home health care is also vastly LESS expensive than nursing homes. The medical care financial system thus doesn't have to pay for food, rent, electricity, laundry, transportation, facility upkeep, facility insurance, some aspects of restorative care and numerous other costs of running a hospital, including costs of satisfying state and federal regulators who are trying to enforce good care standards in these overcrowded, understaffed, for-profit facilities. Nursing home owners and managers complain about regulations--and use regulatory costs as an excuse to underpay their staff--but the circumstance REQUIRES regulation, or else patients are (and have been) abused. That's the nature of capitalism--to abuse the weak until they are forced not to.

But key to this whole syndrome of the poorest possible regulated care--no matter anyone's intentions--is the very notion of centralized care for the elderly, sick or disabled. It was not prevalent a hundred years ago and is not prevalent--indeed, is unheard of--in many other countries and cultures today. It is our own special brand of social malevolence--and reminds me of the U.S. "war on drugs." Idiocy for profit! Bad policy because somebody is making lots and lots of money off it.

A nursing home is sometimes the only option for particular patients but MANY patients would be much better off at home, in familiar surroundings. Among the things they are more likely to have access to, at home--and NOT in a nursing home--are fresh air, a healthy amount of space, freedom, children, pets, plants, gardens, parks and the outdoors, more personal choice in all aspects of life including both entertainment and quiet, and food, and all the motivations that make life worth living. Also, restorative care (working with patients to maximize their independence and self-respect) is an uphill battle when they are crammed 2 and 3 to a room that is really only adequate for one patient and when they are surrounded by other ill, disabled and needy people in the highly unnatural circumstance of a nursing home.

There is much to say about the social/economic conditions that make it impossible for our working people and families to care for their own. There is much to say about a society that basically is organized to discard "unproductive" human beings, and that, for instance, requires years of agitation and advocacy, and lawsuits and lobbying, to achieve minimum humane care for the medically needy. I salute those who have made those efforts--including the nurses' unions--and the political leaders who have responded. Some funding for home health care is one of the results of that agitation--but it is being severely cut back in the current Great Depression For the Poor/Enrichment of the Rich. Overall, we need to face the reality that some of our society's solutions are WRONG--malevolently wrong, or merely ill thought out, contrived as end-runs around the profiteers. We need to RE-THINK all health care.

Unfortunately--tragically--our political system has been rendered unresponsive to THOUGHT. Common sense ain't in it. Profit for the few is the only rule. And that is not going to change until we take some critically important basic steps, starting with throwing the corporate-run, 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines into 'Boston Harbor' where they belong.

I hope that this Obama infusion of funding into health care--if it is passed by this Scumbag, Diebolded Congress--gets directed at the better ideas, such as home health care. It is RARE, however, that such funding doesn't end up in the wrong pockets for the wrong purposes.

I don't trust our filthy political system to create "an open inbox for many innovators and organizations that have an idea to bring to the table." I can't imagine some of the better ideas making it to that "table." (Is that the same "table" that they took impeachment off it? The "table" that the American people are excluded from?) I hope, at a minimum--the least we should expect from our Democratic Party political leaders--that the nurses' unions have a prominent place as "the table"--but it is a wan hope. More likely, they will have lots of union-busters at "the table." That is the tragedy of our era--that most people in this country no longer have any representation in our government whatsoever, from either party.

-------------------------

Note on the Washington Psst (=CIA): This dirty Corporate rag vastly understates the rate of joblessness in this country. "Hovering" at 9 percent, my ass! And, beware! They may be entirely misstating what is really going on with this new funding--i.e., that is less a job creation program than it is a corporate profiteer program, like every other use of our tax dollars. Will these new jobs provide decent wages and benefits? Will new programs be run like for-profit nursing homes (minimum humane care, forced by regulation), or private prisons, or privatized everything else? Will it be a wormhole of BAD ideas, rather than common sense and good, democratically achieved, government policy? The Washington Psst is an evil corporate/war profiteer propaganda sheet. What are they NOT saying? What are they NOT investigating? WHO is going to profit? The American working class? Right.)

[grilled onions]

5. Home Health Care Helped Me

I had no way of getting to any medical facility until a ramp was built and here it was January. I was able to get a nurse to care for my wounds,a PT person to help get me stronger and one to help with my showers. A nursing home would not have had quite the one on one I got. Much of it was paid for by Medicare and I, of course had to pay for the rest.
Many seem to think that home care is a huge blood sucking machine. From what I saw it was just the opposite. Everything they did was written down and I had to sign it. I had wound care for months and she was caring and answered every question I had. They came only as often as Medicare allowed and they had a tough job since most of their job was driving and not helping the patients. But they seemed to love their job.
Before that I did have to go to a nursing home while waiting on a hospital bed(!) and while they were good it never compared to home care. I would like to see this form of care expand.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Thanks for posting your story! Very helpful and enlightening info!

This is what I've heard from others--home health care workers are highly skilled and motivated, and this is the best possible, and the least expensive, rehabilitative or maintenance care--at-home care. It should be available to every convalescent patient who is able to live at home.

Common sense combined with cost effectiveness! How often do we see these things in our corporatized society? Virtually never.

I would argue that cost effectiveness is irrelevant. Even if it were more expensive, the best care should be given to the ill, the elderly, the weak, the disabled. Corporate cruelty should be entirely removed from our health care system. We are one the most backward countries in the world, in this respect. We allow people to be treated inhumanely because there is profit in cruelty and neglect. For shame!

But with home health care, we have the best possible solution from almost every perspective. If we could, say, halve the population of nursing homes, we might also be better able to fight infections that spread from patient to patient and that are increasingly anti-biotic resistant. The obstacles to the best care are the medical profiteers--nursing home corporations, pharmaceutical corporations, etc. And they rule the government, so I don't have much hope that the best care will be a priority. But home health care also answers the "cost" issue, for those who think that there isn't enough money to do the right thing (bullshit!). Home health care is, in fact, cheaper, by far.