(Reuters) - The White House, seeking to show early success for President Barack Obama's health reforms, said more than 120 insurers have applied to sell plans on federally-run online marketplaces that begin offering subsidized coverage in just over four months. Based on a memo released by senior administration officials, about 5 million consumers could be able to choose from a variety of plans from at least five insurance companies with coverage that meets new quality standards set down by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Each insurance company applicant would offer 15 separate plans on average.
Is health care America's economic savior or scourge? The answer, strangely, might be both. In the short term, growth within the health-care sector provides a boost to a weak economy. But the same rise will eventually be more trouble than help. Over the last decade, the health-care industry has added 2.7 million to payrolls. Not only is that more than any single other sector, but the rise of health care explains half of all net job growth over the last decade. Health care has gone from 6.4 percent of the labor force in 1990 to 9.4 percent this month. Had the sector not expanded over that period, the unemployment rate would stand at 10.4 percent today, all else equal.
(Reuters) - Sound Shore Health System Inc of suburban New York City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, blaming government spending cuts, and plans to sell its business to Montefiore Medical Center for $54 million. The company provides healthcare services through its Sound Shore Medical Center of Westchester, Mount Vernon Hospital Inc and a nursing home and extended care facility. Sound Shore said it was struggling due to cuts in government spending. "As is true with many community hospitals serving a working-class constituency, the Medical Centers have been beset by the financial pressures caused by cuts in Medicare and Medicaid funding," the company said in documents filed in Manhattan's U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Wednesday.
SAN FRANCISCO — Several members of the California Supreme Court appeared wary Wednesday of requiring public schools to provide licensed nurses to administer insulin injections and other medications to schoolchildren. The powerful California Nurses Assn. has argued that state law requires licensed nurses to provide insulin injections and other medicines, and two lower courts have agreed. The American Diabetes Assn. appealed. During a hearing, some justices on the state high court appeared skeptical of the nurses' arguments. Justice Ming W. Chin, noting that few schools have full-time nurses, questioned why districts should have to call in a licensed practitioner to administer a shot that a child's parents and physician have agreed could be given by an unlicensed but trained employee.
Is there a doctor on board? Surprisingly often, there is, in half of in-flight medical emergencies , and sick airline passengers almost always survive, a new study finds. The research is the largest look yet at what happens to people who develop a medical problem on a commercial flight , about 44,000 of the 2.75 billion passengers worldwide each year, researchers estimate. Most cases don't require diverting a plane as the study's leader, Dr. Christian Martin-Gill, advised a pilot to do two years. He works for MD-STAT, a service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that advises about 20 major airlines on how to handle in-flight emergencies. Another large service is based in Phoenix.
When it comes to reining in health care spending, it still seems like each hospital administrator thinks the guy at the other hospital should do it. Hospitals are still racing to offer expensive new technology — even when it hasn't been proved to work better than cheaper approaches. Case in point: , a high-tech radiation treatment for cancer. The local government in Washington, D.C., is on the verge of approving two proton beam facilities at a total cost of $153 million. The centers would be owned by the two dominant hospital systems in the area: Johns Hopkins Medicine and MedStar Health.