For two decades, a Pennsylvania agency has published death and complication rates from more than 50 types of treatments and surgery at hospitals. The state has found that publishing results can prompt hospitals to improve, and that good medical treatment is often less expensive than bad care. The Senate Finance Committee's sweeping health bill would make available $75 million annually for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop methods of improving quality, including potentially publishing outcomes.
Hospitals and insurance companies are pushing back against changes to the latest Senate healthcare bill that ease the penalties for Americans who don't carry health insurance. Hospitals say the changes leave too few people covered under the bill—a shortfall that could undermine a cost-cutting pledge by the industry. Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, said the deal was based on lawmakers passing a bill that would leave 94% to 95% of Americans with health insurance.
Every proposal now before Congress to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system includes creation of an insurance "exchange" marketplace. In theory, the exchange would fix a fundamental flaw in the present system by giving small businesses and individuals a broad choice of insurance policies at competitive prices. But policy experts say few lawmakers have yet paid enough attention to what that new marketplace should look like, and whether it would actually work as promised, reports the New York Times.
The U.S. Supreme Court delayed action on employer fees in San Francisco's healthcare program and instead sought advice from the Obama administration. The Bush administration had urged two federal courts to overturn the city law, which requires companies with more than 20 employees to provide health insurance benefits or pay fees that cover the employees' healthcare at city hospitals and clinics. In February, President Obama generally praised San Francisco's program, which the city calls Healthy San Francisco, in a White House speech before an audience of mayors.
Los Angeles County officials are questioning the cost-effectiveness of rules aimed at screening those trying to get public health services. Since July 2008, when Los Angeles County began implementing tougher federal verification rules, health workers have gone back to check the documents of more than 100,000 recipients of Medi-Cal, the public healthcare program for low-income residents.
The county has received nearly $28 million in state and federal funds to cover the cost of the program and posted 81 people in 27 social service department offices to check documents, officials said. So far, they have not found one illegal immigrant who posed as a legal resident to get benefits, according to Deborah Walker, the county's Medi-Cal program director.
Bethesda, MD-based Coventry Health Care announced that it has agreed to acquire health plan Preferred Health Systems of Wichita, a move that would boost the managed-care provider's presence in the Midwest.
Under the deal, Coventry would add Preferred Health's roughly 100,000 members to its rolls, giving it more than 1 million members in six Midwestern states, Coventry chief executive Allen F. Wise said in a statement.