The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively ending two common industry practices that critics have long assailed as troublesome conflicts of interest. The announcement appears to be a first for a major drug company, although others may be considering similar moves.
President Barack Obama will meet executives from leading technology companies like Google and Apple on Tuesday to discuss ways to improve the functioning of the health care website, HealthCare.gov, the White House said. A White House official said the meeting would cover capacity issues with HealthCare.gov, which has not worked well since its since its Oct. 1 rollout. Many people who have had their private insurance plans canceled face a Dec. 23 deadline to get signed up in order to have insurance on Jan. 1.
Insurers responded softly if not sweetly to the Obama administration's latest requests and rule changes for individuals trying to buy coverage in online marketplaces by Jan. 1. Moody's Investor Service, which is watching Obamacare from the outside, isn't so tactful. The latest changes "impose additional financial risks" on the companies, Moody's said in a Monday report. The guidelines disclosed Thursday, are "credit negative," meaning they're not great news for people who have lent money to insurers. The timing is "especially troublesome" because it gave insurers less than three weeks to change procedures and computer programs to accommodate the changes, Moody's said.
Most retirees or would-be retirees have heard the stories–about doctors who no longer accept Medicare patients, or who have opted out of the program entirely. But a new study indicates that fears about not having access to health care in later life are largely overstated. About 47 million Americans are already enrolled in Medicare, and the bulk of the baby-boom generation has yet to reach 65, the age at which a person normally qualifies for federal health insurance. The growing demands on the program – and repeated threats by Congress to cut Medicare payments to doctors – have sparked media reports in recent years about fed-up physicians washing their hands of all things Medicare.
The billions of dollars in tax breaks granted to the nation's nonprofit hospitals are being challenged by regulators and politicians as cities still reeling from the recession watch cash-rich medical centers expand. Hospitals, among the largest landowners in many communities, are often designated as nonprofits, allowing them to benefit from state and federal tax breaks for providing "charity care and community benefit." The exemptions collectively amount to more than $12 billion annually, health economists say. Now, provisions of the Affordable Care Act, along with Internal Revenue Service reporting requirements imposed in recent years, are revealing how much medical centers give back to the communities they serve.
The nation's state and federal healthcare insurance exchanges are gradually overcoming a variety of technical growing pains but continue to face an uphill battle on one essential measure of success: closing the sale. In the weeks since repairs began on the federal government's online health insurance marketplace, HealthCare.gov has made big strides in improving the purchasing experience for visitors. The tech problems that dogged the site when it launched Oct. 1 -- long page-loading delays, mysterious error messages, and site crashes from too much volume -- have mostly been vanquished.