His tattoo read "White Power" in 3-inch calligraphic letters. Emblazoned across his chest for all to see, the ink wasn't something I would normally have missed during my physical exam. In this case, though, his tattoo had been hidden by a bulky neck collar and the array of lines and tubes that come with being a comatose trauma patient. My patient's tattoo was an unwelcome reminder that the skin I inhabit can't be checked at the hospital door. Doctors aren't supposed to be racist.
A national study released Thursday said growing consolidation in the hospital industry is bringing a range of benefits to patients and communities, including larger and more integrated health systems that are better able to contain costs and improve care. Funded by the Federation of American Hospitals, a trade group representing for-profit health care providers, the report contradicts other recent studies that found mergers drive up costs. The new study, prepared for the federation by the Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy, an arm of the advisory firm FTI Consulting, is likely to draw attention in Massachusetts and Washington, where state and federal regulators are weighing whether to block a bid by Boston-based Partners HealthCare, the state's largest hospital and physicians network, to expand by acquiring the 378-bed South Shore Hospital in Weymouth.
The nation's uninsured rate dropped modestly this month as the major coverage expansion under President Barack Obama's health care law got underway, according to a closely watched survey released Thursday. The Gallup numbers could be the first evidence that core provisions of Obama's much-debated law have started delivering on the promise of access for nearly all Americans. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found that the uninsured rate for U.S. adults dropped by 1.2 percentage points in January, to 16.1 percent. The biggest change was for unemployed people, a drop of 6.7 percentage points. That was followed by a 2.6 percentage-point decline for nonwhites.
The federal government's announcement last week that it would begin releasing data on physician payments in the Medicare program seems to have ticked off both supporters and opponents of broader transparency in medicine. For their part, doctor groups are worried that the information to be released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will lack context the public needs to understand it. "The unfettered release of raw data will result in inaccurate and misleading information," AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, said in a statement to MedPage Today. "Because of this, the AMA strongly urges HHS to ensure that physician payment information is released only for efforts aimed at improving the quality of healthcare services and with appropriate safeguards."
Add this to the scary but improbable things people are hearing could happen because of the new federal health-care law: After you die, the state could come after your house. The concern arises from a long-standing but little-known aspect of Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health coverage to millions of low- income Americans. In certain cases, a state can recoup its medical costs by putting a claim on a deceased person's assets. This is not an issue for people buying private coverage on online marketplaces.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that states refusing to run their own health insurance marketplaces under ObamaCare cannot impose additional requirements on the law's enrollment counselors. The decision from the Missouri-based U.S. district court applies to a state law that limited what ObamaCare "navigators" could say when providing advice about health insurance. The law also imposed additional licensing requirements on the workers. Judge Ortrie D. Smith argued that Missouri ceded its ability to create these rules when it allowed federal health officials to construct and operate its ObamaCare insurance marketplace.