With the Affordable Care Act seemingly off to a good start in its first year, increasing access to insurance coverage for adults, attention is likely to turn to an older program for children that will come to an end in 2015 if it is not reauthorized: the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. This program has made a huge difference in insurance coverage for children, so much so that they are not, and did not need to be, the primary beneficiaries of the A.C.A. But that does not mean that children are not a concern.
We don't have enough data to say whether Obamacare is good for the country, but one thing is certain so far: It's been a boon for the healthcare industry. In 2014 companies have mostly benefited from the law, which brought new customers to insurers, new paying patients to hospitals, and new prescription users to the pharmaceutical industry. The ongoing wave of M&A activity and successful drug debuts were also key factors driving the leading sector's sales growth.
In many ways, Kentucky, a poor state with a starkly unhealthy populace, has become a symbol of the Affordable Care Act?s potential. Largely because the state chose to expand Medicaid, the drop in the uninsured rate has been among the sharpest in the nation. Hospital revenues are up, health care jobs are multiplying and far more Kentuckians are getting preventive checkups and screenings, according to state officials. Amanda Mayhew is one of the beneficiaries. She earns little enough to qualify for Medicaid under the new guidelines. She has been to the dentist five times to begin salvaging her neglected teeth, has had a dermatologist remove a mole and has gotten medication for her depression, all free.
Prescription drug abuse has killed more than 20,000 Americans a year, filled jails and treatment centers and spawned a resurgence in heroin use. And nowhere is the pill problem more prevalent than in Kentucky's Appalachians, where officials trace its roots to the aggressive marketing of one potent drug: OxyContin. For seven years, they've forged ahead with a civil lawsuit that seeks to make drugmaker Purdue Pharma pay. As early as next year, it could bring the first-ever jury trial pitting Purdue against an addiction-plagued state over the painkiller, which experts say may lead more communities to file suits. Chicago and two California counties already have.
One of the companies running Kansas' privatized Medicaid program charges a former executive tried to extort $3 million from the business before she filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Overland Park resident Jacqueline Leary, who had been vice president of contracting and network development at Sunflower State Health Plan, a subsidiary of Centene Corp., filed suit in October, claiming a Centene manager responded to poor financial performance of its Kansas operation by blocking assignment of Medicare beneficiaries to medical providers that had contracted for reimbursement rates in excess of Kansas' standard rate.
Patients with diabetes need access to doctors and medicines to help them keep their disease under control. But they also need food in their pantries and enough money in their pockets to pay for necessities like rent and heat, a new study shows. Among a group of 411 patients being treated for Type 2 diabetes in the Boston area, those who suffered from food insecurity and those who tried to save money by skimping on their meds were only half as likely as their more financially secure counterparts to be managing their disease. This disparity turned up despite the fact that in Massachusetts, nearly everyone has medical insurance and prescription coverage thanks to the state's universal healthcare law.