Democrats and Republicans disagree about a lot when it comes to President Obama's signature health-care law. But on one point, there is consensus: Obamacare is about much more than HealthCare.gov. That's precisely why improving the Web site, as the Obama administration announced Sunday it had done by its self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline, won't spare it a prolonged political battle that promises to spill over into 2014. Both sides have begun to look beyond the technical glitches that plagued the rollout of HealthCare.gov, the site designed for Americans to shop for coverage in the newly installed federal exchange.
A traveling medical technician who stole painkillers and infected dozens of patients in multiple states with hepatitis C through tainted syringes was sentenced Monday to 39 years in prison. "I don't blame the families for hating me," David Kwiatkowski said after hearing about 20 statements from people he infected and their relatives. "I hate myself." Kwiatkowski, 34, was a cardiac technologist in 18 hospitals in seven states before being hired at New Hampshire's Exeter Hospital in 2011. He had moved from job to job despite being fired at least four times over allegations of drug use and theft. Since his arrest last year, 46 people have been diagnosed with the same strain of hepatitis C he carries.
When it comes to health care, all anyone can talk about these days is Obamacare. And, while that may be understandable, the political furor over the program has obscured a quieter but arguably more consequential development: health-care costs in this country may finally be coming under control. As a new report from the Council of Economic Advisers details, after half a century in which medical spending has well outpaced G.D.P. growth, something has changed. From 2007 to 2010, per-capita health-care spending rose just 1.8 per cent annually. Since then, the annual increase has been a paltry 1.3 per cent.
Lily Bush spends dozens of hours a week learning how to dispense medications, draw blood, dress wounds, become an expert in anatomy, deal with family members and the hundreds of other skills a registered nurse is supposed to master. There's always something more to learn and another chapter to study. For years, the demands of a nursing education also brought a reward. It was a recession-proof career, a lure for generations of students. "I knew going into school I was choosing a safe major, because all you heard is how badly hospitals needed nurses," said Bush, a junior at Indiana University School of Nursing.
The impact of patient portal use on health outcomes is unclear, according to a systematic review of studies. Moreover, the researchers said, the evidence to date shows that portals are unlikely to have substantial effects on efficiency and utilization of services, at least in the short term. Physicians' use of patient portals is growing rapidly, because Meaningful Use Stage 2 requires providers to share records electronically with patients. It's widely believed that these portals can help increase patient engagement in healthcare, so the evidence about the actual effects of patient portals is important.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a broad new legal challenge to President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law. The court rejected a petition filed by Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia, which had raised various objections to the law, including to the key provision that requires individuals to obtain health insurance. The justices upheld the constitutionality of a the individual mandate in a 5-4 ruling in June 2012. Last week, the court agreed to hear two new cases in which employers have made religious objections to regulations implemented under Obamacare that require employers to provide health insurance that includes contraception for women.