Kathleen Sebelius quietly charmed one governor's business-executive dinner guests in Colorado and publicly berated another for his Medicaid stance in Pennsylvania. She surprised a Republican governor in Utah with her flexibility and disappointed a Democratic one in West Virginia with her lack of timely answers. Sebelius, the 65-year-old Health and Human Services secretary, has had to get creative with the task of selling President Barack Obama's health-care law to an often skeptical - - sometimes hostile -- group of governors.
They have rented offices and zero customers. All their capital is borrowed. They're trying to sign the kind of expensive, chronically ill individuals that insurers have avoided for decades. In three weeks they face mighty competitors with a hundred times the resources. But the 24 insurance-company startups created by the Affordable Care Act say they're ready to battle the establishment, stay in business and change health care. "What we're doing is a big part of the ACA story," said John Morrison, president of the National Alliance of State Health CO-OPs. "We bring a completely different paradigm to health care finance. We're not interested in making as much money as we can. What we are interested in is making consumer patients healthy and saving money."
Theresa Pugh stopped at a store near Lord & Taylor after eating at the restaurant a few doors down. She picked herself up a supplemental Medicare plan from the Horizon Connect store. "There's so much going on with health care in our country right now, I needed to go with someone that I trusted," says Pugh, of Mount Laurel, N.J. "I just felt like I wasn't being sold a bill of goods." Call it the retailization of health insurance. Shopping center owners may not be courting them as they would Apple or trendy fashion brands, but health insurers are increasingly opening stores alongside far sexier retail tenants.
MIAMI (AP) — Dear seniors, your Medicare benefits aren't changing under the Affordable Care Act. That's the message federal health officials are trying to get out to elderly consumers confused by overlapping enrollment periods for Medicare and so-called "Obamacare." Medicare beneficiaries don't have to do anything differently and will continue to go to Medicare.gov to sign up for plans. But advocates say many have been confused by a massive media blitz directing consumers to new online insurance exchanges set up as part of the federal health law. Many of the same insurance companies are offering coverage for Medicare and the exchanges.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana's largest hospital system said Thursday it will cut about 800 jobs and realign some services as part of a nationwide trend by large-scale providers to cut expenses and adapt to changing trends in health care. The cutbacks at Indiana University Health officials will go into effect by Dec. 1, company officials said at a news conference. Cuts will be felt at seven hospitals, including the system's Indianapolis-area hospitals and those in Muncie and Tipton. "This is going to affect every part of the organization. We don't know who exactly is going to be affected by this," said James Terwilliger, president of IU Health Methodist Hospital and IU Health University Hospital in downtown Indianapolis.
Kern County supervisors fired Kern Medical Center CEO Paul Hensler Monday evening after a meeting in which they learned more troubling information about the public hospital's tangled finances. "The Board has lost confidence in Paul Hensler's ability to continue managing Kern Medical Center," Board of Supervisors Chairman Mike Maggard said in an email statement. "Accordingly, the Board has terminated Mr. Hensler's contract immediately and he is dismissed immediately." County Administrative Officer John Nilon said the most troublesome revelation at the board?s more than four-hour-long meeting was that the hospital has over-budgeted by about $1.6 million a month for the current fiscal year.