Big retail stores, hotels, restaurants and other companies with lots of low-wage and part-time workers are among the main beneficiaries of the Obama administration's latest tweak to health care rules. Companies with 100 or more workers will be able to avoid the biggest of two potential employer penalties in the Affordable Care Act by offering coverage to 70 percent of their full-timers. That target is considerably easier to hit than the administration's previous requirement of 95 percent, but the wiggle room is only good for next year.
CVS is set to quit smoking, but don't expect the drugstore to get all-around healthy. CVS Caremark announced last week that its retail stores would cut out all tobacco by Oct. 2014, citing a commitment to customer health. "Put simply," president and CEO Larry J. Merlo said, "the sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose." That reasoning has raised a few eyebrows in light of other products sold in CVS stores—candy, junk food, and alcohol, for example. If cutting out tobacco is part of becoming a "health care marketplace," then shouldn't unhealthy foods and beverages come next? Apparently not.
One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age. It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the screening had harms: One in five cancers found with mammography and treated was not a threat to the woman's health and did not need treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation. The study, published Tuesday in The British Medical Journal, is one of the few rigorous evaluations of mammograms conducted in the modern era of more effective breast cancer treatments.
DaVita HealthCare Partners said Tuesday it will pay $389 million to settle criminal and civil anti-kickback investigations and plans to end joint ventures with kidney doctors involving 28 dialysis clinics. Denver-based DaVita's CEO, Kent Thiry, announced in an earnings call with shareholders that the company has "agreed to a framework" for settling federal investigations into some of the company's relationships with kidney doctors' offices. He said the exact settlement still is being finalized, but that both he and federal attorneys expect to hammer out the details in coming months.
President Obama said Tuesday the latest delay in implementing his healthcare law is an example of "smoothing out this transition" for a small group of midsize businesses struggling to meet the requirement that they provide health insurance to their employees. "It may take them some time, even if they're operating in good faith," Obama said at a White House news conference. "The purpose of the law is not to punish them, it's simply to make sure that they are either providing health insurance to their employees or that they're helping to bear the cost of their employees getting health insurance."
Parkland Memorial Hospital plans to restore incentive pay for nearly 60 top executives by adding up to $5.4 million in potential pay next year. But the hospital's board of managers treaded carefully Monday as the "pay-for-performance" program was outlined. Officials stressed repeatedly that the payments should not be viewed as bonuses since they would be tied to performance measures. Each manager would have to meet specific goals to get a full or partial payment. "The plan is not a bonus system," said Paul Leslie, an executive vice president and general counsel. "Actual bonuses would be unlawful."