Health care reform, new Wall Street regulations and outrage over large pay packages are likely to put pressure on compensation for health insurance executives. But it doesn't seem to have happened yet. The highest-paid executive at each of the "Big Five" health insurers -- UnitedHealth Group, Aetna Inc., WellPoint Inc., Humana Inc. and Cigna Corp. -- made more than $8 million each in 2012, according to filings this spring with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The CEO of EmblemHealth Inc., a nonprofit that owns ConnectiCare, also had total compensation at that level in 2011, the last year for which information is available.
Parkland Memorial Hospital is expected to sell the last installment of bonds — $42 million — this fall to finance its new $1.27 billion public hospital that will open in 2015. The hospital's board of managers gave preliminary approval to sell the bonds as government obligation, repayable by Dallas County taxpayers, rather than revenue bonds, which would rely on hospital income for repayment. The bond sale must be approved by the Dallas County Commissioners Court, which oversees Parkland's budget and annual tax rate. The new bonds are expected to add less than a half cent to the hospital district's 27.1 cent tax rate per $100 tax value.
Dr. Bill Rodman has held a monopoly on surgical services at Aspen Valley Hospital for nearly 20 years and at the time he arrived in 1993, the deal was inked so it would guarantee he'd have an income and the community would have a surgeon. Fast forward almost two decades and some community members, who say having a choice of more than one physician is a paramount to their health, are questioning why that so-called "exclusive provider contractor" still exists. The issue has arisen as fallout after Rodman last month abruptly fired the only other surgeon in Aspen, Dr. John Schultz, who worked under a separate contract with the elder physician.
Recently, the federal government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released what U.S. hospitals "charge" for 100 of the most common inpatient procedures. The release of this data caused an uproar in the media because of the vast disparity in hospital charges for pills, procedures and operations. Baptist Health fully supports the move toward improving transparency in the healthcare system and educating consumers about how to make the best choices for themselves and their families. The healthcare payment system in the United States is incredibly complex, and the information published by CMS is not meaningful or easily understandable.
Achieving Farzad Mostashari's vision for a U.S. healthcare system where "every encounter and every patient has access to all the world's knowledge" will require a balancing of standards and innovation and a combination of IT and process change. "We are so far from that today," the national coordinator for health IT told the HIMSS 2013 Government Health IT Conference. "Today, my last visit doesn't contribute to my next visit in healthcare. Most discharge summaries don't get to the primary care provider; most referral summaries don't get back to the provider who ordered them."
One couple paid for a frozen embryo transfer cycle in Bitcoins, leading to what Dr. C. Terence Lee describes as the first baby "bought with Bitcoins," CNNMoney reports. Lee, a California fertility specialist, is an early pioneer in the Bitcoin economy, and he has a sign posted on his clinic door that notifies patients he accepts the digital currency as well as Visa and MasterCard. So far, while Bitcoins have grabbed headlines, it remains a rather hard-to-grasp concept for many. You can buy Bitcoins on sites such as Mt.Gox, but you can also "mine" them online, as MSN moneyNOW's Kim Peterson wrote in April.