AUSTIN, Texas — Tommy Thompson, former Governor of Wisconsin, former Secretary of Health and Human Services and recent U.S. Presidential aspirant — he dropped out of the race in August — sees, as many others have predicted, a "perfect storm" about to hit America's healthcare.
But a storm passes.
What Thompson more grimly described, in a presentation to orthopedic clinicians at the 22nd annual meeting of the North America Spine Society (Burr Ridge, Illinois) last week, was a system much more difficult to put back together, once destroyed.
"If we still practice medicine the same way we do now, 10 years down the road healthcare will collapse," he said.
According to Thompson, one of the initial signals of this collapse will come in less than 10 years — around 2013.
"Each year we shed a portion of Medicare funding to the U.S. Treasury," he said. "Congress gives Medicare IOUs ... come 2013, when there is no longer any money, Medicare is going to come to Congress and say, 'Pay us!'"
Faced with that demand, Congress "can go to a government-controlled [healthcare system], or they can raise taxes 40% to 50%," he said.
He said he didn't like either option, and he proposed a variety of other alternatives needed to change the system.
He said that he will ask the next president to form a commission comprised of government officials and those from the public and private sector to make recommendations on how to best fix Medicare and give Congress a list of options to vote on, up or down.
One of those tough decisions would be to focus medicine and med-tech innovations around the greatest need. "If you're going to fix the system, then you need to go where the money is," he said.
And physicians, Thompson said, need to have a stronger sense of accountability to patients — a theme echoed frequently during the NASS gathering.
"Consumers want more transparency," he said. "They want to systematically check doctors' progress. It's better that [doctors] get involved in leading this movement rather than waiting for congress to do it for them."
And he offered other recommendations as important system fixes:
- Electronic medical records — accessed as easily as drawing money from an ATM. "Your vet knows more about your dog or cat than your doctor knows about your children," he quipped. "If we could have digital information of patients' records that could be accessed by doctors and clinics, we could change the course of healthcare over night."
- physician e-prescribing — prescriptions issued in digital format. Funding for both EMRs and e-prescribing could come, he said, from fraud and abuse funds, which garner up to $2.2 billion annually.
- Greater physician interaction with legislators —Thompson calling the medical sector one of the most under-represented by elected officials.
"Even though the perfect storm is looming out there — we have the ability to fix it," he said.
Thompson's credentials for offering healthcare recommendations are robust. Besides being elected to four consecutive terms as governor of Wisconsin, he created the BadgerCare program, designed to provide health coverage to those families whose employers don't provide health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Through the federal waiver program, Thompson, when he became Secretary of HHS, pushed replication of this type of program in several states.
Thompson left the governership when he was appointed to head HHS in 2001, leaving that position in December 2004.
In product news from the NASS meeting:
- Spinal Elements (Carlsbad, California) reported receiving FDA 510(k) clearance for its Mosaic Spinal System as a cervical Intervertebral Body Fusion Device (IBFD), saying that the Mosaic "is the only implant of its kind marketed in the U.S.
Mosaic is a cervical IBFD coupled with an anterior plate to allow superior and inferior screw fixation and available in 2-, 3-, and 4-screw configurations.
The Mosaic system permits screw fixation at locations both superior and inferior to the implant site, reducing the potential for implant displacement. The system is manufactured from radiolucent PEEK-OPTIMA polymer, allowing the surgeon to better view the fusion site under X-ray.
The configurations of the Mosaic implants allow surgeons to address a variety of anatomies and surgical conditions. "Because Mosaic is a combination device, combining intervertebral body support and anterior fixation, surgery time is typically reduced with surgeons trained on implanting with Mosaic devices," the company said in a statement. Mosaic is accompanied by a color-coded instrumentation system designed to safely and easily implant the product.
Todd Andres, president/CEO of Spinal Elements, said, "The additional IBFD indication for Mosaic's use will enable surgeons to further utilize Mosaic's advanced technology, offering greater versatility and allowing superior fusion site viewing during X-Ray."
Spinal Elements also introduced the Mosaic Gun, an instrument for insertion of the Mosaic Spinal Implant System.
The Gun enables both distraction of the vertebral bodies and insertion of the Mosaic implant. It actuates with a trigger to mechanically distract the vertebral bodies to appropriate disc height according to the size of the Mosaic implant and the patient's anatomy. It then automatically places the implant into the disc space and releases the implant.
Spinal Elements develops fusion and spine motion preservation technologies. Its products include the Zyre facet augmentation device designed to relieve facet joint pain. - Vertebron (Stratford, Connecticut) unveiled a line of spinal implants and design concepts: a PEEK product line, including patented stand-alone ACIF and ALIF interbody devices; anterior lumbar locking plates; and a cervical motion preservation device.
Alexander Vaccaro, MD, a spinal surgeon and member of Vertebron's advisory Council presented the devices to a group of invited surgeons.
Vertebron develops spinal implants, including artificial discs, cervical plates, pedicle screws and interbody fusion systems which integrate spinal, orthopedic and total joint technologies.