Walgreen's announcement that it will send its workers to a private health insurance exchange to buy their own plans is a sign of the times that isn't going away. And that may be good news for consumers, though it's too soon to tell, experts say. These private exchanges, which have only existed for about a year, are run by outside benefits companies and typically offer more insurance choices than those offered by employers. Employers contribute a set amount and employees choose which plan best suits their needs.
It can take years for the kind of cutting-edge medical treatment performed in clinical trials to become routine practice at hospitals across the country, but Hartford HealthCare officials say a partnership with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center means that many patients in the state will get that treatment much sooner. The partnership, called the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Alliance, was announced Tuesday by officials from Hartford HealthCare, a network that includes Hartford Hospital, and Sloan-Kettering, a leading cancer center based in New York City. It will establish clinical trials in Connecticut and share Sloan-Kettering's resources with the health network's physicians.
Paul Beach may not feel the weight of it, but he's a linchpin in making the federal health care overhaul work. He's 28, fully employed and uninsured. "I want insurance," he said. "But it's a tossup between eating food or buying health insurance. I'd need a second job just to pay the insurance." As Minnesota and other states get ready to launch new insurance exchanges on Oct. 1, one of the big challenges is persuading people like Beach to buy coverage. Minnesota's MNsure exchange is firing up an all-out marketing blitz, with young adults one of the key audiences.
Dallas County commissioners plan to sell $42 million in government bonds to help pay construction costs for the new Parkland Memorial Hospital. At Tuesday's weekly meeting, Commissioner John Wiley Price said he was concerned that the general obligation bonds would be repaid by taxpayers rather than by hospital revenue as originally proposed in 2008. "When we dealt with the voters, we talked about revenue bonds," he said. "There don't appear to be any revenue bonds" for the new hospital. The 2008 bond election allowed the county to issue $747 million in bonds to build the $1.27 billion public hospital.
Hospitals tend to be among the largest employers in their communities -- which means that any individual decision to lay off staff can have an outsized local impact. And taken together, a dozen recent announcements seem to paint an especially dire picture for hospitals (and their communities) around the nation. For example, NorthShore in Illinois says it will lay off 1% of its workforce. The staffing cuts "ensure NorthShore remains well positioned to deal with the unprecedented changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act," according to a memo from the health system's chief human resources executive. And California's John Muir Health is offering staff voluntary buyouts ahead of ACA implementation.
At a Boston synagogue Tuesday night, hundreds of people gathered to press health care executives on their efforts to control health care costs. A year into a new Massachusetts law aiming to rein in costs, it's still unclear whether the state will be successful. But the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, or GBIO, a self-appointed health care cost watchdog group, met Tuesday at what amounted to something of a "people's hearing" and pledged to hold leaders accountable. The topic: health care spending. The place: a basement meeting room at Temple Israel in Boston.