Black South Carolina lawmakers joined forces with healthcare advocates on the State House steps to push presidential candidates to make healthcare available for more Americans. Leaders of the South Carolina chapter of Americans for Health Care want candidates to offer ideas to extend insurance to those lacking it and improving preventive care without passing along much of the cost.
Grady Memorial Hospital seeks to stabilize its spiraling finances by cutting nearly 500 jobs over six years, according to its Baseline Strategic Financial Plan. The document says Grady would accommodate the losses through greater efficiencies, but does not identify them. Hospital representatives say the job losses could largely be accomplished through attrition and are not tied to plans for layoffs or buyouts.
Democrats backing universal healthcare have long favored a single-payer system, with government replacing insurance companies and providing insurance for everyone. More recently, most have advocated a more modest system that provides universal coverage by building on the employer-based system. The ghost of a single-payer system, however, looms large.
Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards does not discount the possibility that his healthcare proposal could evolve into a federalized system like those in Canada and many European countries. His proposal would allow Americans to buy new government insurance packages modeled on Medicare. But Edwards emphasizes that the choice would be made not in Washington, but by consumers in an open marketplace where private insurance competes with government plans.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's health coverage plan has debuted before a legislative committee to mixed reviews. Some business leaders, healthcare companies and providers have praised the plan, calling it a big step toward reforming a system under which 400,000 New Mexicans remain uninsured. Critics, however, say that the plan goes too far-- or not far enough.
A commission appointed by New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine has recommended that the state establish guidelines for identifying hospitals in financial distress that are worth helping, and those are that are not. Hospitals deemed essential would then be propped by state grants and loans, with what the state health commissioner described as an early-warning system. The report did not spell out which hospitals should be shuttered, but said that a good number of New Jersey's 78 hospitals were poorly managed and inefficient, and that a "large number of hospitals appear headed toward distress in the next few years."