The first thing my new patient did when she walked into my office was breathe an enormous sigh of relief. "It was so hard to get this appointment with you," she said. "It took weeks!" Unfortunately, my patient is not alone in her struggles. It is increasingly difficult for patients to find doctors and to get appointments with primary care physicians like myself, and it is likely to get worse, not better, as millions more gain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The medical field has long been fretting about an upcoming doctor shortage.
Magic Johnson says an early checkup saved his life – warning him that he had HIV in time to start taking medication to stay healthy. Alonzo Mourning says a regular physical showed him he had kidney disease. The two former basketball stars are kicking off a full court press by the White House to recruit young adults – specifically, young men – to sign up for health insurance. Look for a lot more of this sort of thing, the White House says. The window of opportunity to sign up for health insurance on the federal and state exchanges closes March 31, and the administration is under extreme political pressure to sign up as many people as possible.
A federal judge rejected a legal challenge on Wednesday to a central part of President Obama's health care law, ruling that millions of low- and moderate-income people could obtain health insurance subsidies regardless of whether they bought coverage through the federal insurance exchange or in marketplaces run by the states. Critics of the law had said that a literal reading of it would allow subsidies only in the 14 states that ran their own exchanges. But the judge, Paul L. Friedman of the Federal District Court here, said that was absurd and contrary to the whole purpose of the Affordable Care Act.
Federal prosecutors filed a record number of health care fraud cases last fiscal year, perhaps reflecting the greater emphasis the government has placed on combating the crime costing taxpayers billions of dollars per year. According to Justice Department statistics obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by a Syracuse University-based nonprofit group that tracks federal spending, staffing and enforcement activities, prosecutors pursued 377 new federal health care fraud cases in the fiscal year that ended in October. That was 3 percent more than the previous year and 7.7 percent more than five years ago.
It's a familiar problem for families with an elder trying to cope with chronic health conditions: Doctors don't talk to each other, and sometimes they prescribe drugs that work at cross purposes. Nobody seems to look out for the overall health of the patient. With chronic illnesses like heart problems, diabetes and cancer taking a toll on seniors as well as Medicare's budget, a bipartisan group of lawmakers Wednesday proposed a new approach aimed at keeping patients healthier and avoiding hospitalizations. They're calling it the Better Care Program. Teams of doctors, nurses and social workers would get a flat fee per Medicare patient, with fewer strings attached.
Officials at Jackson Health System say they do not know what has caused a surge of uninsured patients to flood emergency rooms in the past few months, leading to nearly a $1 million loss for December. On Wednesday, the Public Health Trust that runs Jackson asked hospital administrators for weekly updates on the influx of uninsured. The change in the financial picture could potentially threaten the success story pitched last fall to Miami-Dade voters, who approved $830 million in taxpayer financing to upgrade the county's aging hospital network.