Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor's office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past. Get ready to enroll in a program to manage your diabetes. Or prepare for a health screening to determine your odds of developing a costly health condition. Expect to have your blood pressure checked or a prescription filled at a clinic at your office, rather than by your private doctor. Then blame — or credit — the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees.
WASHINGTON — When he talks to Republicans in Congress, Scott DeFife, a restaurant industry lobbyist, speaks their language: President Obama's health care law is a train wreck well down the track. There will be collateral damage if changes are not made. Friends of the industry cannot sit back and let that happen. Speaking to Democrats, he puts on his empathy hat: The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. Its goal of universal insurance coverage is laudable, but its unintended consequences will hurt the cause.
A nationally known critic of electronic health records has harshly criticized managers at Marin General Hospital for their response to a plea by nurses to hold off on a new computer system to prevent potentially dangerous errors. "The executives at the hospital should be taking out extra insurance policies because they're setting themselves up for a massive corporate negligence lawsuit," said Dr. Scot Silverstein, an adjunct professor of health care informatics at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Silverstein, who contacted the Independent Journal after reading about the Marin General situation, doesn't dispute the potential of digital records; but he believes implementation has been rushed.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Consumer and small business advocates in New Hampshire are disappointed but not surprised that only one company plans to sell insurance through the new online marketplaces required under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Companies have until June 1 to submit applications to the state, but an official with Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Hampshire said last week that it is the only insurer that has applied to sell either individual or small group plans through the new markets. The insurance department confirmed that is the case.
Dr. Michael Ciampi took over his father's practice, located in the home on Stevens Avenue in Portland where he and his five siblings were raised, in 1999. Back then, he was one of many independent doctors in Maine. That changed a decade ago when Ciampi moved his practice to a facility run by an offshoot of Mercy Health System of Maine, parent to Mercy Hospital. Ciampi's father recommended the move as a way to relieve Ciampi of the burdens of running a practice, from billing paperwork to nonexistent paid time off.
In 2007, I published a story in my local paper in which I confessed to having made a medical error years earlier. I'd mistakenly prescribed an antibiotic for a patient whose chart indicated an allergy to the drug. Thankfully, the story had a happy ending. My patient recovered and took no legal action after I explained to her what had happened. I ended my article vowing to take greater care to prevent errors and urging doctors to take responsibility for their mistakes, even when a patient hasn't been harmed.