A handful of doctors providing medical services to students at UC San Diego — and their colleagues at nine other University of California campuses — went on strike Tuesday. It's the first time in 25 years that fully licensed doctors are picketing a U.S. employer, according to the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, which represents the physicians at the UC schools. The work stoppage began at 7:30 a.m. and is scheduled to last one day. It involves 150 health center doctors who manage the primary care and mental health needs of students.
Yesterday's announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services, setting firm targets for shifting Medicare away from fee-for-service payments, has for the most part generated positive reviews. That makes sense -- that payment structure provides incentives for excess care, and HHS is right to move past it. But that shouldn't mean the Medicare agency gets a pass on the details. There are a few reasons to wonder just how serious HHS is about these changes. First, the alternative payment structures highlighted by HHS haven't yet succeeded in pilot programs. The whole point of changing Medicare's payment method is to cut costs while increasing (or at least not hurting) quality of care.
Indiana has received federal approval to expand health coverage to about 350,000 uninsured residents through a state-run program Gov. Mike Pence said Tuesday will help the state's working poor families. Surrounded by state officials and staffers at an Indianapolis hospital, Pence announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had approved Indiana's waiver request for the plan his administration calls HIP 2.0. The approval makes Indiana the 28th state to expand Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health care law, and the 10th state to do so with a Republican in the governor's mansion.
Federal Medicaid officials and the state's attorney general on Tuesday confirmed that Tennessee could end Gov. Bill Haslam's proposal to cover 200,000 low-income people without penalty. Attorney General Herbert Slatery, who was Haslam's chief legal adviser before being named attorney general last year, said in a legal opinion that the state "would retain the ability to suspend or terminate the demonstration program" as long as it provides proper notice and phase-out procedures. But Slatery said his office lacks "sufficiently specific information" to determine how long it would take to process 200,000 people off the state's health care rolls.
He's been free for nearly two years after posting an astonishing $10 million bond. But most of the patients who ended up at Ed Novak's West Side hospital weren't so fortunate. Poor, elderly and vulnerable, many found themselves driven by ambulance across the city, past countless better hospitals, to Sacred Heart, the maggot-infested, substandard facility where some of them died, federal prosecutors say, the Sun-Times is reporting. Their doctors would never have sent them to Sacred Heart if Novak, who owned the hospital and acted as its CEO, wasn't dishing out illegal kickbacks so that he could reap millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid payments, the feds say.
Judges of the New Mexico Court of Appeals will determine whether doctors can help terminally ill patients end their lives. New Mexico would join Montana, Oregon, Vermont and Washington as states that allow physician-assisted suicide because of terminal illness. Aja Riggs' case was presented to the court on Monday. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2011, which is in remission. If the cancer comes back, she wants to be able to end her life. "To require somebody in that case to suffer and withhold that option we know is safe and is compassionate and legal in other places, is just not right," Riggs said.