The Arkansas' experiment, known as the "private option" marks the first large-scale attempt to enroll Medicaid recipients into the same private health insurance plans that any consumer might buy in the health law's online insurance marketplace. That's different from how Medicaid typically works where enrollees must join state-operated programs or private managed care plans designed exclusively for the poor -- and which pay doctors less, sometimes a lot less. As a result, private option enrollees like Fant will have access to a larger network of doctors and hospitals than is usually available through Medicaid.
Despite efforts by the Obama administration to ease shortages of critical drugs, shortfalls have persisted, forcing doctors to resort to rationing in some cases or to scramble for alternatives, a government watchdog agency said on Monday. The number of annual drug shortages — both new and continuing ones — nearly tripled from 2007 to 2012. In recent years, drug shortages have become an all but permanent part of the American medical landscape. The most common ones are for generic versions of sterile injectable drugs, partly because factories that make them are aging and prone to quality problems, causing temporary closings of production lines or even entire factories.
When I first was introduced to the infosec subculture in the1990s, there seemed to be very few of us in healthcare provider organizations with official security roles. And we were mostly "stuckees" who just fell into the job. (You know, someone in charge pointed at you and said, "You're now our security person.") You'd think patient privacy, and, thus, security, would be embraced, but it wasn't so. Doctors and nurses swore they already were privacy sensitive. And, after all, we weren't banks holding money to be stolen… Who'd want to steal our databases with a few million boring medical records?
A Winston-Salem hospital apologized Monday after improper sterilization exposed nearly 20 patients to a rare neurological disease. Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center President Jeff Lindsay told a news conference that 18 patients may have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. A neurosurgical procedure was done on Jan. 18 on a patient who was later confirmed to have the disease, a degenerative fatal brain disorder. The other 18 patients, all neurosurgical patients, were exposed to surgical equipment that had been cleaned using a typical sterilization procedures, but not the enhanced sterilization procedures used for Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
Trying to sell young adults on the idea of health insurance before an upcoming deadline, Illinois officials announced Monday they are launching an ad campaign with the satirical online newspaper The Onion. Banner ads on The Onion website will depict a toy action figure with the words: ''Man without health insurance is forced to sell action figures to pay medical bills.'' The ads say: ''Get Covered. Don't sell your action figures.'' The Onion has run humorous news articles about President Barack Obama's health law in the past. One headline read: "Nation recalls simpler time when health care system was broken beyond repair."
Trying to sell young adults on the idea of health insurance before an upcoming deadline, Illinois officials announced Monday they are launching an ad campaign with the satirical online newspaper The Onion. Banner ads on The Onion website will depict a toy action figure with the words: ''Man without health insurance is forced to sell action figures to pay medical bills.'' The ads say: ''Get Covered. Don't sell your action figures.'' The Onion has run humorous news articles about President Barack Obama's health law in the past. One headline read: "Nation recalls simpler time when health care system was broken beyond repair."
Lost in all the debate last week about whether or not the Affordable Care Act will hurt the economy is the fact that health care is already imposing a drag on growth. The health care sector has repeatedly helped to pull the economy from recession in recent decades, but this time around it is lagging behind the recovery. Health care spending grew more slowly than the economy in 2011 and 2012 and will probably be found to have done so again in 2013. Meanwhile, health care employment also expanded more slowly than overall employment last year — and the government estimates that in January employment actually shrank for only the second time since 1990.