The Senate on Monday approved Vivek Murthy to serve as U.S. surgeon general despite opposition from Republicans and the gun rights lobby for his political advocacy work and statements calling guns a public health concern. The near party-line vote, 51-43, secured a four-year term for President Obama's nominee. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., joined Democrats in support. His nomination had been pending for more than a year. Obama made no reference to gun policies or Murthy's politics in a statement on the confirmation vote. Obama said his priorities would range from "stopping new diseases to helping our kids grow up healthy and strong." He will also work on the effort to combat the spread of Ebola.
ObamaCare's main enrollment site is facing its first big deadline since relaunching last month, a crucial test for a system that will help define the law's performance in its second full year of implementation. People shopping for health insurance must sign up by Monday at midnight if they want their coverage to start Jan. 1. HealthCare.gov appeared to be enrolling users successfully Monday morning and over the weekend, a good sign with user traffic expected to rise significantly. The Obama administration is engaged in a full-court press to encourage people to visit the site prior to Monday's deadline.
Tennessee is the latest conservative state to pursue Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. It just doesn't want to call it that. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam unveiled a proposal Monday morning to expand coverage up to 138 percent of the poverty level as spelled out in the federal health law, opening the door to billions of dollars in federal funding through the Affordable Care Act. Yet like several Republican governors before him, Haslam faces uncertain prospects as he tries to secure legislative approval in 2015 for the plan, called Insure Tennessee. His state is not eager to embrace the president's health law, or even its language.
Len Charlap, a retired math professor, has had two outpatient echocardiograms in the past three years that scanned the valves of his heart. The first, performed by a technician at a community hospital near his home here in central New Jersey, lasted less than 30 minutes. The next, at a premier academic medical center in Boston, took three times as long and involved a cardiologist. And yet, when he saw the charges, the numbers seemed backward: The community hospital had charged about $5,500, while the Harvard teaching hospital had billed $1,400 for the much more elaborate test. "Why would that be?" Mr. Charlap asked. "It really bothered me."
For cancer patients already dealing with the extreme stress of their illness, a myriad of surging costs can add to the worry of treatment. UnitedHealthcare, the biggest U.S. health insurer, is taking aim at controlling costs of treatment with a new pilot program that will provide a set sum for a patient's coverage. The plan is being developed with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and will enroll about 150 patients at first, the insurer said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. Terms of the contract are confidential, but the idea of paying a set sum for treatment is a shift away from the typical per-service payment that Americans are familiar with.
Despite a national crackdown on prescription drug abuse, doctors churned out an ever-larger number of prescriptions for the most-potent controlled substances to Medicare patients, new data show. In addition, ProPublica found, the most prolific prescribers of such drugs as oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine and Ritalin often have worrisome records. In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, Medicare covered nearly 27 million prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers and stimulants with the highest potential for abuse and dependence. That's up 9 percent over 2011, compared to a 5 percent increase in Medicare prescriptions overall.