Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri announced a plan six months ago to save the state $67 million by transforming the system for providing healthcare to the elderly, poor and disabled. The plan requires a "global Medicaid waiver" from the federal government. The General Assembly even approved a state budget that took the savings into account, but lawmakers and Rhode Island's 186,000 Medicaid recipients have yet to see a written plan. The proposal will likely be submitted to the federal government the end of July or early August, said Department of Human Services Associate Director Murray Blitzer.
Intimate exchanges among people living with disease are part of an unconventional strategy HealthCentral is following in an attempt to provide health information online. The company has unleashed dozens of independent Web sites about health topics, all with the hope of drawing people in search of help from others with similar problems.
Each of the HealthCentral sites features information such as symptoms and treatments, and the heart of the sites is a system connecting visitors with doctors and patient bloggers.
Doctors, physical therapists, and other medical providers are upset about a July 7 decision by the Oregon Workers' Compensation Division to change the way in which fees are paid. Although agency officials call the move necessary, the providers are now warning that if the July 7 decision stands, they could start refusing workers' compensation cases altogether.
Federal officials plan to investigate the health insurance industry, namely its all too common practice of revoking an insured patient's benefits when they develop an illness that may prove more costly to treat. Insurers, however, say such a practice is sometimes necessary, citing cases of fraud or misrepresentation.
The North Carolina Medical Board has decided to publish medical malpractice payouts doctors have made, but the information will not be as comprehensive as initially planned. Answering concerns from doctors, medical malpractice insurers, and defense lawyers, the Board voted to make public only settlements of more than $25,000. The board also decided that rather than immediately post settlements that spanned the previous seven years, the start date of the malpractice profiles will be October 2007, when the legislature made the rule effective.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield have agreed to pay a total of $13 million in fines and to offer new health coverage to more than 2,200 Californians the companies dropped after they became ill. Neither company admitted to any wrongdoing in agreeing to pay the fines, the latest in the efforts by state authorities to curb what they view as an abusive practice of investigating and canceling policies after policyholders run up big medical bills. The insurers also agreed to establish a process for former members to recover medical expenses they paid out of pocket after they were dropped, as well as other damages.