The founder of Prime Healthcare Services Inc. defended his decision to pull out of a deal to buy six Catholic hospitals, saying critics were wrong to suggest that he placed profit over patients. "It's the most callous and irresponsible statement," said Prem Reddy, a cardiologist who founded the Ontario-based hospital chain in 2001. "It has nothing to do with profits." For more than a year, Reddy and other executives at Prime had worked on the deal with Daughters of Charity Health System, which owns the six financially struggling hospitals, including two in L.A. County.
The visit started out ordinary enough: a new patient, a healthy man in his late 30s who hadn't seen a doctor in years. When we got to preventive health, I recommended the flu shot. He politely declined. "I don't do vaccines," he said. I glanced at the clock, debating whether or not I should wade into those waters. Given that we are knee-deep in flu season, the flu-shot conversation comes up at every single visit every single day, and it can be exhausting. For those who decline vaccines on principle, I've learned from experience that they are unlikely to change their minds no matter what I say.
House Republican leaders are considering a vote next week on legislation that would abolish cuts to Medicare payments, a policy change that could cost upwards of $174 billion to enact. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team are quietly coordinating a bill, four sources say, in hopes of ending the decades-long battle over how much doctors and healthcare providers should be paid for treating Medicare patients. But bringing up the legislation would be a huge gamble because it could spark a revolt among fiscal conservatives who are likely to balk at legislation that adds to the deficit.
The Affordable Care Act most likely met its fate on Friday, when the Justices of the Supreme Court met in conference, though we mere mortals won't know what happened until nearly the Fourth of July. So nothing written in the press at this point is likely to have any effect on the result. The inside-baseball chatter goes on, and this week it centers on two comments made from the bench by Justice Kennedy. They raise the prospect that Kennedy might decide the case for the government on the grounds that a victory for the challengers would raise constitutional problems.
Health insurers would be banned from making patients pay higher out-of-pocket costs for oral medication taken at home than for chemotherapy received in a health care facility, under a bill moving through the Mississippi Legislature. One version of House Bill 952 passed the Senate after more than an hour of debate Wednesday. It will likely go to a final round of House-Senate negotiations later this month. Republican Sen. Terry Burton of Newton said more than 30 other states already do what Mississippi is proposing. He said it is unfair to patients that insurers won't cover a big portion of the cost for cancer-fighting drugs that are available only in pill form.
It could be a breakthrough in Oregon health care reform. The next time you go to the doctor, how would you like to know the price of your procedure before you get it? We usually know prices of other products and services before we buy, so why not at hospitals? Portlander Michael Rees can't remember how much his last trip to the doctor's cost. "The thing that ends up being discussed in my house is what the deductible is," he said. But we're not talking about the deductible. We want to know the total cost. How much did the hospital charge your insurance company? How much was that last medical procedure? Is the price the same at every hospital?