Timothy Murphy, president of Beacon Health Strategies and former Massachusetts secretary of health and human services, writes in this commentary that businesses and consumers are the only ones who can reform healthcare. Buyers must become more demanding in order to improve the system, he adds.
Boston's major hospitals could and should play a significant role in easing the city's budget crisis, according to a new report by Community Labor United, a coalition of union and activist groups. The group found that the institutions pay only a fraction of the cost of providing police, fire, and other services to the $2.4 billion in property the tax-exempt charities own. Community Labor United said that the city's eight biggest teaching hospitals would have owed $64.2 million in city taxes in 2007 if their land and buildings had been taxed like commercial property. Instead, the hospitals made $4 million in voluntary payments to the city in 2007, a year when they collectively had profits of more than $750 million.
Iowa hospital leaders say increasing numbers of uninsured patients are seeking free care in their emergency rooms, and the hospitals are bracing for more such costs as the economy continues to slump. Although Iowa still has fewer uninsured residents than most other states, the problem appears to be worsening and some hospitals are reporting particularly sharp increases. Fort Dodge-based Trinity Regional Medical Center's charity care, for example, jumped from $3.3 million in 2007 to $5.9 million in 2008.
Amid signs that Pennsylvania's insurance commissioner is laying out a course for Independence Blue Cross and Highmark Inc. to follow as they pursue their proposed and controversial merger, members of the boards of the two insurers are meeting. Even though by law an official decision cannot be rendered until next week, the Insurance Department has let the insurers know privately that it will not approve the merger unless the new company agrees to make an important change in how it markets health insurance in Pennsylvania, among other conditions. The marketing change has to do with how the new company, which would become the largest health insurer in the state and one of the largest in the nation, would use the popular "Blue" trademark.
Beginning with their 2008 tax filing, hospitals and other nonprofit entities must complete a newly expanded Form 990 that demands more detailed information in areas such as business dealings of its top executives and board members and even some former executives and board members. And the form will grow yet again a year from now, as hospitals will then have to fill out a special Schedule H to document exactly what "community benefit" they contribute to justify their tax-exempt status. "We will have more accurate information, presented uniformly," Steven Miller, the IRS commissioner for tax exempt and government entities. "We, the states, and others will have a rich vein of data that will help us see nonprofit hospitals more clearly and allow us to make better informed decisions about them."
Burbank, CA-based Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center announced it had laid off 95 of its 2,517 employees and closed four hospital programs as a result of rising costs at a time of economic turmoil.
Providence spokeswoman Patricia Aidem said the cutbacks marked the end for units offering urgent care, foot care for diabetics and treatment for workplace injuries, as well as a transitional-care unit which prepares patients for care elsewhere. Multiple urgent-care centers are within a few miles of the hospital, which helped officials decide what units to close, Aidem said.