Take Care Health Systems has contracted with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Inc. to cover services for members at all Take Care clinics in Florida. Take Care Health Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Walgreen Co., has nearly 50 walk-in professional healthcare centers in select Walgreens stores in Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. With the addition of the Florida Blues, 80% of insured individuals in Florida can visit a Take Care clinic for the cost of a normal co-payment or co-insurance amount, according to a release.
Mayo Clinic announced it raised $1.35 billion in its first sustained philanthropy campaign. Mayo raised the amount in five years instead of the seven years initially set for the campaign, and exceeded its target of $1.25 billion. A portion of the money will fund research on cancer and depression. Some funds will go toward a subspecialty pediatric clinic in Rochester, a new hospital in Florida, and a new campus for cancer and transplant patients in Arizona.
South Florida's healthcare institutions announced their Haitian relief efforts during the monthly meeting of the Public Health Trust. The University of Miami medical school, which has established a 300-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince, is spending "at least a couple of million in the first month," said Dean Pascal Goldschmidt. Meanwhile, the financially strapped Jackson Health System has treated 97 earthquake victims as of Jan. 25. Jackson reports that many of the first patients did have some kind of insurance, but the system doesn't yet know exactly how much the Haitian effort is costing, and how much is yet to come, the Miami Herald reports.
The CBO budget report says the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending during the next decade "will be somewhat slower than the average rate seen over the past 10 years." However, its cost estimates build in savings that are planned under current law. In the case of Medicare, CBO's calculation of a slowdown in Medicare growth includes a substantial 21% cut in payments to doctors now slated to go into effect in March. Both political parties have said they want to block the planned pay cuts to doctors, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports.
The question of equality, or inequality, among states is a major reason President Obama's overhaul of the healthcare system, and the legislation in Congress to make it happen, seemed to reach the brink of collapse last week, writes David M. Herszenhorn in his Prescriptions" blog for the New York Times. And it is a reflection of one of the biggest challenges President Obama and Congressional leaders have faced since they began tackling healthcare last year: how to devise a national solution for a problem that varies sharply from state to state, he writes.
America's largest insurance companies spent millions more on lobbying last year as lawmakers debated healthcare reform, lobbying disclosure records show. Overall, the companies increased lobbying spending by an average of 24% from 2008 to 2009, according to an analysis of disclosure reports. The list includes insurance giants such as Aetna and Wellpoint along with the industry's major trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans, The Hill reports.