California lawmakers acted to curb some of the most extreme practices of the state's healthcare industry this session, but failed to fix some widespread problems such as high costs and uneven quality. The Legislature's two-year session resulted in incremental tinkering with California's healthcare system instead of the wholesale restructuring that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dedicated himself to shortly after reelection. After the Senate rejected the governor's $14.9-billion plan in January, healthcare advocates hoped that improvements could be enacted. But aggressive lobbying by insurers and doctors and internal feuds among Democrats killed most of the proposals in the final weeks of the session, which ended without a budget in place.
Uninsured patients being treated at St. Louis-based BJC Healthcare hospitals could pay less for services under a proposed class-action settlement between the hospital system and a group of its uninsured patients. A judge was scheduled to give final approval, but several other members of the suit have filed objections to the settlement. They say the ruling does little to address the excessive prices billed to patients without insurance. Concerns include that self-pay discounts of 25% are insufficient considering the underlying charge can be three times what an insured patient might be billed.
People living in the most deprived areas of England are less likely to survive cancer, according to government figures. Cancer patients in poor areas of the country have less chance of being alive five years after diagnosis, according to the national statistics office. Its study of National Health Service trusts in England found "significantly lower" survival rates for both men and women across a range of cancers in the 62 most deprived areas of the country.
Sick Americans who travel far or frequently to get medical treatment are skipping or delaying appointments, leaving support groups, and applying for grants to defray high gasoline prices. People with chronic diseases who visit the doctor multiple times each week or month have been hardest hit. At the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, for example, some skin cancer patients are delaying appointments because they can't afford gasoline, said Center representatives.
A Champaign County judge will allow the Illinois attorney general to continue pursuing a lawsuit that accuses two eastern Illinois hospitals of turning away Medicaid patients to force bigger state payments. The judge denied most of a series of motions filed by Carle Clinic Association of Urbana and Christie Clinic of Champaign seeking to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit piece by piece. The Attorney General's office accuses the hospitals of conspiring to deny primary care to Medicaid patients to push people toward more expensive emergency rooms.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether artificial hip and knee maker Stryker Corp. illegally paid surgeons to induce them to use company products, according to a court filing. The Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department's Office of Inspector General is probing the nature of $40 million in payments that Stryker made last year to almost 200 physicians through consulting agreements and other financial relationships.