As many as 6 million people will have to pay a penalty under ObamaCare for going without health insurance in 2014, federal officials suggested in projections released Wednesday. That means between 2 percent and 4 percent of all taxpayers lacked medical coverage for all or part of the year and do not qualify for an exemption under the individual mandate, according to the Treasury Department. Another 10 to 20 percent of taxpayers — or 15 million to 30 million people — were uninsured but will qualify for an exemption from the mandate, shielding them from paying $95 or 1 percent of household income when they file their taxes.
The country's second-largest health insurance company said Wednesday that it far outpaced its enrollment expectations last year, with most of that growth coming from the expansion of Medicaid in dozens of states. Insurance giant Anthem enrolled 1.8 million new customers in 2014, with nearly half of the new plans coming from Medicaid programs, its chief executive told reporters Wednesday. A total of 28 states have expanded their Medicaid programs in the last two years. The expansion of the low-income program is a major part of driving down the country's uninsured rate under the Affordable Care Act.
Well, that was quick. Maura Healey has been on the job less than a week, but we don't have to wonder where she stands on the biggest health care conflict in Massachusetts. The new state attorney general made it clear Monday that she doesn't like the proposed merger of the giant Partners HealthCare System with South Shore Hospital in Weymouth and two other community hospitals north of Boston. The deal was explicitly endorsed by her predecessor, Martha Coakley, with lots of strings attached. Critics of the arrangement — including the state Health Policy Commission and Partners' rivals — say it will allow the giant to become even bigger, making medical care more expensive for everyone in Eastern Massachusetts.
Hospitals took extraordinary measures — and faced tough choices — as New England was frozen into place Tuesday by howling winds and relentless snowfall. From ferrying patients home in four-wheel-drive vans to fashioning temporary rooms out of waiting areas, hospital administrators got creative. At South Shore Hospital, two Chevrolet Tahoes were rented to drive roughly two dozen discharged patients to their homes, with emergency medical technicians doubling as the van drivers and even shoveling out some of the patients' walkways to gain access to their homes, hospital spokeswoman Sarah Darcy said. In Boston, Brigham and Women's Hospital teamed up with Fallon Ambulance Service for door-to-door service for some patients who lived as far as 45 miles away, said that hospital's spokeswoman, Lori Schroth.
Shocked and saddened by last week's shooting at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dr. Miranda Fielding wrote a blog post that appeared on KevinMD, a popular site that gets 5 million clicks a month: "The Legacy of Dr. Michael Davidson." KevinMD, as founder Dr. Kevin Pho puts it, aims "to share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system, but are rarely heard from," including practicing physicians. He adds: "The public often doesn't know what it's like to work in our health system. KevinMD.com gives them an unfiltered view of our world."
Patients should be able to trust that their doctors are making unbiased medical decisions, but administrators at a West Side hospital "turned that trust upside down" by doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks, a federal prosecutor told a jury Wednesday as a fraud trial got underway. "There was a secret behind the doors at Sacred Heart Hospital," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said in her opening statement. "The secret was that the most sacred thing at Sacred Heart was money." But attorneys for the three former administrators on trial told jurors that underlings were to blame for the misconduct, pointing the finger at two other former executives who are expected to be key witnesses for prosecutors.