Government subsidies to help Americans buy insurance under the health care overhaul may be vulnerable to fraud, a Treasury Department watchdog warned on Tuesday in the latest indication that troubles are far from over for President Barack Obama's signature legislation. The rollout of the law has been hurt by canceled policies and problems with the federal website used by people to enroll in health plans, causing political headaches for the White House and for Democrats in Congress. The new problems concern subsidies that are available to low- and medium-income people who buy insurance through state-based exchanges that opened in October.
The Food and Drug Administration hopes hospitals and clinics will vote with their pocketbooks, buying supplies from pharmacies regulated under new powers just given to the agency. Congress passed a law last month giving the FDA authority to regulate some so-called compounding pharmacies. The aim is to have some oversight over operations that are far bigger than the small pharmacies that make medicines to order. FDA demanded the changes after a fungal meningitis outbreak last year that killed 64 people and sickened more than 750 others across the country. The outbreak was traced to contaminated drugs sold by a single pharmacy – the New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts.
Oregon has spent more than $40 million to build its own online health care exchange. It gave that money to a Silicon Valley titan, Oracle, but the result has been a disaster of missed deadlines, a nonworking website and a state forced to process thousands of insurance applications on paper. Some Oregon officials were sounding alarms about the tech company's work on the state's online health care exchange as early as last spring. Oracle was behind schedule and, worse, didn't seem able to offer an estimate of what it would take to get the state's online exchange up and running.
With the enrollment deadline for 2014 Medicare plans only days away, a federal judge is about to rule on a temporary injunction that would keep UnitedHealthcare from cutting its Medicare Advantage network by an estimated 2,200 doctors. A decision awaits affidavits requested by the judge, who could rule as soon as Wednesday. The enrollment deadline is Saturday. Meanwhile, some of UnitedHealthcare's estimated 58,000 customers in Connecticut are left wondering if their doctors will be in or out of network. If they're out, customers would have to pay much more to be treated by them.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what goes on in an emergency department, intensive care unit or pediatric wing. But what about a hospital's observation services? Few Americans understand them or even know they exist. Which is why -- as health care costs continue to climb by the year -- it might come as a shock that these are the very services that could end up saving hospitals billions each year. Put simply, observation services are designed to determine which patients can be safely discharged from the hospital and which should remain for a longer stay.
Federal health regulators are warning the public that certain cardiac defibrillators recalled by Philips Healthcare may fail to deliver a needed shock in an emergency. Defibrillators are used by emergency responders and others to restore normal heart function in people suffering a heart attack. The FDA says an electrical problem with recalled Philips' HeartStart devices could cause them to fail to deliver a life-saving shock. Philips recalled three models of its HeartStart devices in September 2012 due to an internal electrical malfunction. The recall affects about 700,000 defibrillators sold between 2005 and 2012.