The next big shift is coming in U.S. health care, and Republicans are doing their best to speed it up. What's not clear is how carefully they've thought through the consequences. A defining feature of U.S. health-care policy is that most Americans get insurance through their employers. That has frustrated liberals' attempts to rally voters behind Obamacare's modest reforms, let alone the single-payer model that works so well in most developed countries: The average person has no incentive to support changes that might jeopardize their situation.
A tense contract dispute between Blue Shield of California and the Sutter Health network of doctors and hospitals may leave nearly 280,000 Northern and Central California consumers searching for someplace else to get health care. Blue Shield notified more than 139,000 customers last week and plans to tell 140,500 more later this month that they should be prepared to find health care providers outside the Sutter Health system. If a contract agreement isn't reached, those policyholders would have to pay higher out-of-network rates if they choose to stay.
A nurses union reported over the weekend that its 18,000 members in Central and Northern California have reached a tentative contract with Kaiser Permanente and its hospitals and clinics, a settlement that also will affect Southern California Kaiser nurses, a union representative said. The California Nurses Association said the new contract would give a 14 percent pay increase over three years for nurses in the northern part of the state. Kaiser nurses in Southern California expect similar treatment and have filed for certification to be represented by the same union, union spokeswoman Debra Grabelle said Saturday.
A much-anticipated state study on the number of nurses required to provide safe, effective patient care in Minnesota hospitals fell short of its goals after hospitals failed to provide the data to answer key staffing questions. The lack of hospital participation drew fire Monday from the state's nurses union, which hoped the study would fortify its negotiating position on the need for lower patient-to-nurse staffing ratios. "Are they just unwilling to cooperate with a study they themselves agreed to with our lawmakers?" said Linda Hamilton, president of the Minnesota Nurses Association. A spokeswoman for the Minnesota Hospital Association said its members cooperated with the study, but simply lacked the detailed data that researchers sought.
Dr. Paul Abramson is no technophobe. He works at a hydraulic standing desk made in Denmark and his stethoscope boasts a data screen. "I'm an engineer and I'm in health care," he says. "I like gadgets." Still, the proliferation of gadgets that collect health data are giving him pause. Abramson is a primary care doctor in San Francisco and lots of his patients work in the tech industry. So it's not surprising that more and more of them are coming in with information collected from consumer medical devices — you know, those wristbands and phone apps that measure how much exercise you're getting or how many calories you're eating.
Just like Doogie Howser, this teen doctor wasn't real either. A 17-year-old boy dressed in a white lab coat, face mask and stethoscope around his neck told West Palm Beach police he was a doctor at St. Mary's Medical Center and had been practicing for years, according to a police report obtained by The Smoking Gun. But Dr. Sebastian Kent and several nurses immediately contacted police Tuesday after seeing the young man — who isn't much older than the fictional TV character Doogie Howser — when he entered their OB/GYN office.