The total price tag for ObamaCare's main enrollment portal now stands at more than $2 billion, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg Government. The new total, released Wednesday, includes efforts to construct and then fix HealthCare.gov after serious technical problems threatened to shutter the site last fall. In all, implementation of the Affordable Care Act has cost more than $73 billion since its enactment in 2010, the analysis found. The figures are significantly higher than estimates by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House. Bloomberg Government uses a proprietary database of federal contracts to come up with its numbers.
The Obama administration, which is scrambling to prepare a new push to enroll Americans in health coverage under the federal health law, is reassessing how many more people will sign up, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said Wednesday. About 7.3 million people are enrolled in health plans being sold through marketplaces created this year by the Affordable Care Act, according to federal figures. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which analyzes the effects of federal legislation, has estimated that 13 million people should be in the market in 2015, the marketplaces' second year.
U.S. hospitals may be unprepared to safely dispose of the infectious waste generated by any Ebola virus disease patient to arrive unannounced in the country, potentially putting the wider community at risk, biosafety experts said. Waste management companies are refusing to haul away the soiled sheets and virus-spattered protective gear associated with treating the disease, citing federal guidelines that require Ebola-related waste to be handled in special packaging by people with hazardous materials training, infectious disease and biosafety experts told Reuters. Many U.S. hospitals are unaware of the regulatory snafu, which experts say could threaten their ability to treat any person who develops Ebola in the U.S. after coming from an infected region.
Federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit last week against a network of physician-owned companies. They said it involved 35 doctors nationwide and that it led some of them to perform risky surgeries that were not necessary, reports CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor. Last year CBS News reported a story focused on a doctor named Aria Sabit. He is now accused of overbilling Medicare and harming patients, simply to sell more hardware. Kevin Reynold's mother, Lillian Kaulback, suffered serious complications after Sabit performed back surgery on her. She passed away in May 2011.
Kevin Wiehrs is a nurse in Savannah, Ga. But instead of giving patients shots or taking blood pressure readings, his job is mostly talking with patients like Susan Johnson. Johnson, 63, is a retired restaurant cook who receives Medicare and Medicaid. She has diabetes, and has already met with her doctor. Afterward, Wiehrs spends another half hour with Johnson, talking through her medication, exercise and diet. "So it sounds like you cut back on your sweets, things that have a lot of sugars in them. What about vegetables, your portions of food," Wiehrs asks Johnson. "Have you made any changes with that?" "A little bit," Johnson says. "Ain't gonna lie — a little bit."
A group of hospitals in western Pennsylvania have sued health insurer Highmark Inc. over its reimbursement for patients who have Medicare Advantage coverage. The lawsuit was filed Monday in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, and it alleges Highmark and subsidiary Keystone Health Plan West Inc. began improperly shorting the hospitals 2 percent of Medicare Advantage reimbursement at the beginning of the year. Highmark notified the hospitals in October 2013 it would cut payments by 2 percent as part of an across-the-board federal budget reduction plan called sequestration. Sequestration was mandated by the federal Budget Control Act of 2011, which cut all government spending by 2 percent. In March of last year, CMS began cutting payments to Medicare Advantage carriers by 2 percent.