A manufacturer of cochlear implants has agreed to pay $880,000 to the U.S. government to resolve allegations that it paid kickbacks to doctors. The U.S. Justice Department announced the settlement with Cochlear Americas on Wednesday. The Centennial, CO-based company is a subsidiary of Australia's Cochlear Limited.
Struggling to wrap up their business, the two houses of the Tennessee General Assembly failed to find common ground on a bill that would have taken a stand against federal healthcare reform. Using an unusual parliamentary maneuver, the Senate approved a measure instructing the state attorney general to sue the federal government if it penalizes any person for failing to buy health insurance. But the House put up so much resistance that the bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Susan Lynn, finally moved for the chamber to "non-concur" with key language in the Senate bill. The House voted 44-43 to send the legislation to a conference committee made up of members of both chambers, which will try to work out differences, The Tennessean reports.
President Obama used a televised question-and-answer session to attack his Republican critics and remind retirees that a new $250 rebate to help them pay for prescription drugs is about to go in the mail. With polls showing the public confused about the healthcare law and split on whether it is a good idea, Obama traveled to a center for older Americans in Wheaton, MD, where he took questions from the audience and by telephone from around the country, the New York Times reports.
A California judge issued a temporary restraining order barring thousands of nurses from striking this week at University of California hospitals and student health centers. San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch said that a strike would be contrary to public interest and might break the law. The order was requested by the California Public Employment Relations Board, a state regulatory agency that handles public employee relations. Officials at the California Nurses Assn., which had threatened the strike, said they were still discussing next steps.
A new study argues that if the goal of healthcare legislation was to cover the most people at the lowest cost, the bill that was passed was the best option that was also politically feasible. Researchers at Rand Corp. analyzed more than 2,000 policy scenarios that differed on elements such as income eligibility for Medicaid, the size of companies subject to the bill's requirements, and the penalties for companies and individuals not complying with the bill's provisions. They found that to cover an additional 4 million people at the same cost, the penalty for ignoring the individual mandate to purchase insurance would have to be 47% higher.
Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and other CareGroup Inc. affiliates have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit against the hospital chain alleging that workers were not paid for working through lunch breaks or beyond their scheduled shifts. The $8.5 million settlement, if given court approval, will cover as many as 9,000 current and former CareGroup employees. CareGroup, Inc. and its affiliates Beth Israel, Beth Israel Deaconess-Needham, Mt. Auburn Hospital, and New England Baptist Hospital will pay up to $8.5 million to settle the lawsuit, the Boston Globe reports.