The Senate has unanimously confirmed Regina Benjamin, MD, as the U.S. surgeon general. Benjamin, 53, a family physician from Bayou La Batre, AL, gained national attention after Hurricane Katrina for her monumental efforts to reopen her rural health clinic. Benjamin was also the first African-American woman to head a state medical society. She has received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, and last year received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant."
After months of work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama's arms-length strategy on healthcare appears to be paying dividends with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans, reports the New York Times. Debate in the House is expected to begin this week, and the Senate will soon take up its version. Democratic leaders and senior White House officials are sounding increasingly confident that President Obama will sign legislation overhauling the nation's healthcare system, according to the Times.
Republicans are preparing an alternative healthcare bill to Democratic legislation, House Republican Leader John Boehner announced. Boehner said the Republican bill would extend health-insurance coverage to "millions" of Americans but wouldn't try to match the scope of the House Democratic bill unveiled last week. The GOP plan would likely be less costly to taxpayers and involve less government intrusion into the private sector. Boehner said the bill would take "a step-by-step approach" to expanding coverage. It would, among other things, propose new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits and make it easier for individuals and small businesses to pool resources to purchase insurance.
Plans by two popular primary care doctors to leave Boston-based Caritas Christi Health Care for Mount Auburn Hospital led to a dispute over who keeps their patients' medical records that landed in court. The two doctors asked Superior Court Judge Christine M. Roach for a temporary restraining order to stop Caritas Christi from taking 3,000 to 4,000 records from their Watertown, MA, office. The disagreement highlights the intense competition among hospitals in the Boston area to hire and retain established physicians, especially primary care physicians, the Boston Globe reports.
All 214 Illinois hospitals have been toiling since April to ready themselves in case the H1N1 virus sickens a large percentage of the population, the Chicago Tribune reports. To prepare for a possible rush at emergency rooms and clinics, hospitals are holding drills, refining emergency plans created after Sept. 11, 2001, and making sure they can tap into local, state and national stockpiles of medical provisions. Hospital administrators also have been studying reports from the winter flu season in the Southern Hemisphere from June to August. In Australia and New Zealand, H1N1 patients clogged emergency rooms and put nearly overwhelming demands on intensive care units.
For the past two weeks, thousands of people have been calling doctors' offices in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, bombarding doctors' offices with queries even though doctors don't know when they will get more, or any, of the H1N1 vaccine. Officials say they divvy up supplies among pediatricians' offices, obstetricians and others who can reach those most at risk the fastest. Virginia officials have been allowed by the federal government to order more than half a million doses so far, although the state wants more than 4 million.