- Community Catalyst Head Speaks at Mass. Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform
Rob Restuccia, the executive director of Community Catalyst, will participate in a town hall meeting in Brookline, MA with Congressmen Barney Frank and Michael Capuano to discuss health care reform on Sunday, January 11. The event is hosted by Young Israel of Brookline.
For more infomation about the event, please read the flyer.
- Free Care Policies Drastically Different Across the Country
Boston – Millions of Americans can only access health care services with financial assistance from their medical providers, commonly known as free care. As the economy worsens, more people without health care coverage will turn to this critical safety net. However, lack of consistent government oversight and extreme variations in hospital free care policies hurt people already feeling the strain of paying more for insurance that covers less.
Community Catalyst’s new Free Care Compendium web resource summarizes free care laws and regulations in each of the 50 states. It includes a national snapshot of trends across the states, recommendations for free care standards and best practices, fact sheets, and tools.
Our analysis shows that although access to free or reduced-cost care can be the only thing standing between a family and financial ruin, the system is a confusing patchwork of voluntary hospital efforts and unspecific laws. The amount and type of free care available – if any – depends heavily on where you live.
Without clear and consistent state or federal guidelines, hospitals can push people into serious debt through egregious billing and collection practices. Hospitals should not heal patients while bankrupting them, nor should busy Emergency Rooms be overburdened because people cannot access free and discount care services for non-urgent care.
This is a serious problem today, and the economic downturn will exacerbate the number of people impacted.
To read the compendium, please click here.
About Community Catalyst
Community Catalyst is a national non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to making quality, affordable health care accessible to everyone. Since 1997, Community Catalyst has worked to build consumer and community leadership to transform the American health care system. With the belief that this transformation will happen when consumers are fully engaged and have an organized voice, Community Catalyst works in partnership with national, state and local consumer organizations, policymakers and foundations, providing leadership and support to change the health care system so it serves everyone—especially vulnerable members of society. www.communitycatalyst.org
- New Web Resource for Advocates: Tobacco Tax Campaign Guide
Raising Tobacco Taxes to Support Health Access
A Step-by-Step Campaign Guide
Community Catalyst has developed a tobacco tax guide in consultation with experienced advocates who have waged state campaigns to raise tobacco taxes and direct those revenues to health care. The guide provides specific suggestions on, and models for, coalition development, campaign structure, policy analysis, grassroots organizing, media strategy, and lobbying political officials. It is designed to help you be pro-active, as well as ready to respond to opposition tactics. The guide focuses on state-based campaigns but also discusses the benefits of, and best practices for, engaging in a regional effort.
Read the guide here.
- Community Catalyst releases a new handbook on national health reform
With President-elect Barack Obama's appointment of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the new White House Office of Health Reform, it is clear that national health reform efforts are moving forward. Community Catalyst has created Getting Ready For National Health Care Reform: A Handbook for State Advocates, which shares lessons learned from the 1993-1994 health care reform effort and offers suggestions for maximizing your involvement in the 2009 debate. We will continue to provide technical assistance and educational materials to state-based groups involved in health reform efforts and support state partners by helping them build and mobilize coalitions, understand health policy proposals, and create strategies to ensure that organized consumer advocates continue to impact health care reform.
Read the handbook here.
- New Report: Getting What We Pay For: Reducing Wasteful Medical Spending
As medical spending in the United States tops $6.5 billion per day, the nation needs to focus more on getting good value for our money, according to a report from Community Catalyst, Getting What We Pay For: Reducing Wasteful Medical Spending. As much as 30 percent of health care spending is wasted and could be eliminated without the nation's health suffering at all. The big targets include overuse, underuse and misuse of medical care. By starting to address these problems, we can save money and improve quality at the same time. The report analyzes the problems and suggests ways that advocates and policymakers can work for change.
Read the report here.
- The Prescription Project Petitions FDA to Order Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies to Remove Illegal Internet Ads
BOSTON – Pharmaceutical and medical device companies are illegally advertising their products on YouTube, the Prescription Project said in citizen petitions filed today with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The non-profit industry watchdog group is asking the FDA to enforce its rules and require Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) and Stryker (NYSE: SYK) to withdraw YouTube.com video advertisements for medical devices used in heart, hip and neck surgeries.
The FDA regulates prescription drugs, medical devices and advertisements for both. In addition to ensuring that direct to consumer (DTC) advertisements are not misleading or deceptive, the FDA requires them to include “disclosures,” including brief statements of the drug or device’s usage directions as well as any relevant warning, precautions, potential side effects and contraindications.
The four Abbott Laboratories videos currently available on YouTube promote use of the company’s XIENCE V drug-coated stent for use in coronary angioplasty surgery but contain none of the federally-mandated warnings or provisions required of medical device advertisements. Likewise, the Medtronic videos touting the use of its Prestige® Cervical Disk for surgery to address degenerative disk disease and the Stryker video promoting its Cormet™ hip resurfacing technology lack required warning statements. To view the videos, please visit http://prescriptionproject.org/citizen_petition.
“Whether through a TV ad or an Internet video, the promotion of a medical device for use in complex surgery without adequate warnings is a blatant violation of the law and could put lives at risk,” said Allan Coukell, director of policy for the Prescription Project. “The videos raise serious questions about whether drug and device companies are using the Internet to skirt laws that safeguard consumers.”
In addition to calling for the immediate removal of the videos and posting of “curative” videos that correct the misleading messages, the Prescription Project petitions the FDA to:
• Advise all major prescription drug manufacturers and medical device manufacturers that online/Internet drug and device advertisements and promotions are subject to the same requirements as drug and device promotions in other media, and recommend that they review their online advertisements for compliance.
• Issue a Guidance on Consumer-Directed Broadcast Advertising of Prescription Drugs and Restricted Devices on the Internet to clarify how federal law and FDA regulations apply to online drug and device promotions.
The FDA’s role in policing DTC advertising is more important than ever because consumers inju
