CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Patients at a New Hampshire hospital who were infected with hepatitis C by a traveling medical technician with a drug problem are pleased with his guilty plea but are still pushing to hold others accountable. David Kwiatkowski, 34, pleaded guilty last week to 16 federal drug charges under an agreement that calls for him to spend 30 to 40 years in prison. He admitted stealing painkiller syringes from hospitals where he worked and replacing them with saline-filled syringes tainted with his blood. Before he was hired at Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire in 2011, Kwiatkowski worked as a cardiac technologist in 18 hospitals in seven states, moving from job to job despite being fired at least four times over allegations of drug use and theft.
Five years ago, Julio Perez's mother didn't understand what the doctors and nurses were saying. Her 4-year-old son, Perez's younger brother, was on a ventilator, his health worsening as bacteria in his blood began infecting his vital organs. But Perez said his mother didn't know what doctors were trying to tell her when they woke her up in the hospital, sometimes at 3 in the morning, with news about her young son. She speaks limited English, Perez said, and the hospital didn't have an interpreter available. So Perez, 19 at the time, did the interpreting for her and the doctors.
TAMPA — The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday awarded $67 million in grants to 105 navigators, or groups of people who will help uninsured Americans sign up for health insurance beginning in October. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the announcement at the University of South Florida, which received a $4 million grant. Eight groups in Florida will receive a total of $7.8 million. Florida is one of the three states where federal officials hope to add millions of young, uninsured and healthy adults to the pool of people who will buy health insurance through the state exchanges created by the 2010 health care law. California and Texas are the other two states.
Conservatives have tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so now they're pushing to disable it by cutting off funding. Politically, it's not likely that they'll be able to gin up enough votes to pull it off. But if they did, the effect of defunding the ACA wouldn't be as simple as it sounds. What does it mean to defund Obamacare? Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, 29 other senators and more than 100 House Republicans back legislation that would prohibit federal funds from being made available to "carry out any provisions" of the ACA.
As a Sept. 30 budget deadline approaches, many in the Republican Party are pushing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The law's most radical opponents are even threatening to shut down the government by refusing to pass a continuing resolution, which would fund existing government programs at current or slightly adjusted levels. The political flaws of this strategy have been debated endlessly inside the GOP. But there is another important consideration: This doesn't have to be Republicans' "last stand." Obamacare doesn't have to be rolled back from without; it can be replaced from within. And Medicare, perhaps surprisingly, shows the way.
A crucial change in the health-care conversation over the last few years has been the shift in focus from "costs" to "prices." Everyone knows American health care costs too much. But after the release of the International Federation of Health Plans' data and Steven Brill's epic Time article and the New York Times' massive price series, it's also becoming common knowledge that a major cause of those high overall costs is sky-high prices for every individual service, drug, and treatment. Identifying the problem is easy. Doing anything about it is hard. But there's one thing states can do that isn't particularly hard: Allow more nurse practitioners — who charge much less than doctors — to treat patients directly, without a physician's oversight.