Nikki Canelis of Cazadero learned two important things during her visit Tuesday morning with a Sutter Health-affiliated breast imaging radiologist in Santa Rosa. First and foremost, she got a clean bill of health with no new cyst growth since her breast surgery last August. And while not as dramatic, Canelis also learned Tuesday that she will now have the option of buying Sutter's own HMO insurance. "If the insurance is as good as the doctors are, then I'd love to switch — have it all in one system," said Canelis, 42, who currently is covered by Health Net through her husband's family business.
The state economy and New Jersey taxpayers cannot support the abundant number of hospital beds in the Newark area, according to a report today by a health care consultant, who recommended Saint Michael's Medical Center and East Orange General Hospital be turned into same-day medical facilities. The long-awaited report by Navigant Consulting is expected to be used by state Health Commissioner Mary O'Dowd, who must decide whether to approve the sale of cash-starved Saint Michael's in Newark to Prime Healthcare Services, a large for-profit hospital chain in California that recently purchased two other community hospitals in the state.
The Supreme Court has no shortage of potentially precedent-shattering cases on its docket this term. But the one the justices are hearing tomorrow, King v. Burwell, could be the most consequential. King focuses on the issue of whether low-income people who get insurance under the Affordable Care Act's federal exchanges are entitled to tax subsidies. Much has been said (and written) about what could happen if the justices rule "no": Millions of people in as many as 37 states could lose their health coverage. The political earthquake could be cataclysmic. Yet, few reports have highlighted the role of the Federalist Society, the conservative law group whose ideas are at the intellectual heart of the King v. Burwell challenge.
Female medical students answered medical questions correctly more often than their male counterparts, but expressed less certainty about their answers, researchers reported.
President Barack Obama on Monday said he thinks there is no "plausible legal basis" for the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a key plank of Obamacare, defending his administration's lack of a contingency plan. And he promised to rule on the Keystone XL pipeline before he leaves office, although he would not say whether it will take him "weeks or months" to determine whether the project is in the national interest. Obama touched on two main domestic policy issues during an interview with Reuters.
The majority of people in both parties say they would be opposed to a Supreme Court decision gutting a key provision of Obamacare, according to a new poll. Plaintiffs in the case, King v. Burwell, claim that people in 37 states are illegally receiving subsidies under Obamacare. But 61 percent say they hope the subsidies are upheld, according to a national survey conducted by Hart Research Associates for the Service Employees International Union. Even if the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration, most people believe the subsidies should be available to all Americans. Some 71 percent of people said it shouldn't matter whether states set up their own exchanges in order to qualify for the subsidies.