Over the holidays I decided to have some minor surgery that I'd been putting off for a while. I intended to keep the whole thing private (you'll read why in a minute) and I planned to be back at work just in time for the Iowa caucuses. Well, as the saying goes: "We plan, God laughs;" and I guarantee He's still laughing over what happened to me next.
More than two years after filing a lawsuit aimed at improving health care for Florida's poorest children, lawyers representing the state's leading pediatric associations will meet for a mediation to settle the dispute with state officials. The class-action suit charges that more than 500,000 Medicaid-eligible Florida children are receiving no preventive health services "because of the defendants' violation of federal law."
A new bill on the table would establish the Vermont Hospital Security Plan, a universal healthcare system that would provide in- and outpatient hospital care to all state residents. Under the bill's provisions, each hospital would negotiate an annual budget and then live within it.
Aetna and the American Medical Association are in a dispute centering on how much Aetna pays out-of-network doctors in some instances and the right of those doctors to bill HMO members for charges the insurer doesn't pay. Millions of dollars are at stake, and physicians say Aetna is violating a provision of its 2003 nationwide settlement with doctors. Aetna says it is only trying to protect members from high charges.
The penalties for Massachusetts residents who do not obtain health insurance this year have been set too low to encourage people to buy insurance, said a director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority. The authority oversees implementation of the state's health insurance initiative, and members are encouraging harsher penalties.
Maryland lawmakers, Prince George County officials and the governor's office have been negotiating toward a long-sought solution to the county hospital system's financial troubles. Leading lawmakers said that if no agreement is reached by the end of the new General Assembly session, they would back legislation to transfer ownership of the system to an independent authority set up by the state.