The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say. The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending. But some experts say the new policies have also left many Americans scrambling to track expenses from a multitude of sources — such as separate deductibles for network and non-network care, or payments for drugs on an insurer's ever-changing list of drugs that require high co-pays or are not covered at all.
Partners HealthCare System is rethinking its expansion plans in Massachusetts as it seeks to repair relations with competing hospitals and government officials, its newly appointed chief executive said Thursday. "If we're perceived as a bully or we're perceived as arrogant through our actions, I don't want that," Dr. David Torchiana said in an interview. "We know we have to soften our external relations and get ourselves out of this place of being a miscreant in Massachusetts. It's not a place we aspire to be." Torchiana also said that Partners intends to focus on controlling medical costs by operating more efficiently and better coordinating care.
Thousands of more friendly and better-trained call-center employees will be working starting Monday to deal with the expected late onslaught of people signing up before the Obamacare open enrollment ends Feb. 15. A 40% increase, to a 14,000-person workforce, is expected to help with wait times, which averaged about 2 ½ minutes the last week of January, but are likely to get longer as the deadline nears. People who aren't covered by employer-provided insurance and don't sign up by the deadline won't be eligible for insurance this year and will face increasing penalties at tax time.
Cash-hungry hospitals are banking that more brain operations, spinal procedures and other neurosurgery will shore up revenues and profits, diversifying their finances from cancer and heart programs that were once untouchable cash cows, health economists say. Toughening competition to woo the brightest brain surgeons has found a nexus in Western Pennsylvania, where rival hospital networks are trying to lure the best doctors and keep their neurosurgery departments hopping. North Side-based Allegheny Health Network has hired four former UPMC neurosurgeons since January 2013 and wants to keep recruiting, with plans to increase its 7,600 annual neurosurgical procedures by 20 percent by summer 2016.
In Highlands County, the need to provide charity medical care is not uncommon. According to the 2013 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 20 of the county's approximately 99,000 residents live below the Florida poverty line of $11,490 annually, making getting medical care difficult. And that might even become harder by the summer. In reports released in January by Florida Legal Services, a non-profit organization founded in 1973 to provide civil legal assistance to indigent persons who would not otherwise have the access to a lawyer, the state's healthcare providers for low-income residents could lose $2 billion a year.
When it comes to health care, what do women want? It's a question that's increasingly important to the nation's hospitals, given that women are often the family's primary researchers, advocates, caregivers, and decision-makers for health care. Women make over 80 percent of health-care choices, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. They choose their children's doctors (85 percent), take them to appointments (84 percent), and ensure they get recommended care (79 percent), reports the Kaiser Family Foundation. In South Jersey, Virtua and Cooper University Health Care primary-care centers are going toe to toe to attract female patients.