Wal-Mart Stores Inc has announced said that the number of its workers without health insurance has fallen over the last year after being helped by new health plans. Company representatives also said it will commission a study to better understand why some workers declined health coverage and to identify things that can be done to encourage them to accept it in the future.
Dearborn-based Oakwood Healthcare System has joined Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids to become Michigan's second health system to post its price and quality measurements. Spectrum, which began posting its prices in fall 2006 on its Web site, will also soon publish average prices paid by Medicaid, Medicare and commercial insurers. In December 2007, the Michigan Health & Hospital Association began an online database that lists charges and payments for 50 common Medicare procedures at 146 nonprofit hospitals in the state.
The Washington state Senate's healthcare chairwoman has unveiled an ambitious universal healthcare plan, bankrolled by payroll taxes, that she hopes to implement by 2010. The "Washington Health Partnership" would levy new taxes on businesses and workers, using the proceeds to extend health benefits to all Washingtonians not covered by a federal program.
The city of Miami Beach and Mount Sinai Medical Center have again joined forces to try to obtain state financing to build workforce housing for nurses at the hospital's main campus. The goal is to get $5 million in state money to cover a portion of the costs associated with renovating two floors of an existing hospital building into rental apartments for nurses. The new housing would be a tool for attracting new nurses and retaining current ones.
Representatives from StoneCrest Medical Center in Smyrna, TN, say construction will begin in April on a $15.8 million expansion that would give it another 26 beds and four surgical suites. Stonecrest has seen admissions grow 30 percent since 2004, while the number of surgical cases performed annually has risen by about 25 percent.
As the debate over the residency status of the nation's illegal immigrants boils, another battle is simmering over what benefits they deserve. Some of the most heated arguments on the issue focus on healthcare. Illegal immigrants can get emergency care through Medicaid, but they can't get non-emergency care unless they pay. One thing is clear--undocumented immigrants are driving up the number of people without health insurance.