U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is exploring ways to elicit testimony from medical equipment companies that did not send representatives to her hearing last week on the industry and its marketing tactics last week. McCaskill is currently reviewing the information presented at the hearing to try and find ways to prevent waste and fraud within the medical equipment industry, according to a statement Monday from her office. A letter from Dr. Charlotte Kennedy of Internal Medicine Associates in Chesterfield helped spur McCaskill's hearing, held April 24 in Washington, D.C., to examine what she's called "aggressive" marketing tactics by companies in the medical equipment industry.
The Commonwealth Fund survey found 80 million people didn't go to the doctor or access other medical services last year because of the cost. That's five million more than two years ago and 17 million more than in 2003. The survey also found nearly half of all working-age U.S. adults, 84 million people, went without health insurance for a time last year or had out-of-pocket costs that were so high relative to their income they were considered underinsured. Those who were uninsured or had inadequate health insurance were most likely to have trouble affording care.
Sometime around 1780-70 B.C., the Babylonian King Hammurabi promulgated the now famous Code of Hammurabi, covering both civil and criminal law. The code is said to have informed both Jewish and Islamic law. Remarkably, it has echoes also in modern health policy in the United States. Not all of these laws have survived the millennia. Relative to Hammurabi's draconian medical malpractice code, for example, modern medical malpractice penalties represent mere slaps on the wrist. On the other hand, our modern, differentiated payment system for health care does resemble the Code of Hammurabi in some respects.
Consider the tax-exempt hospital. Traditionally, these hospitals have offered free or subsidized medical treatment for poor patients. Over the past half-century, however, as the federal government has taken to paying for health care -- via Medicare, Medicaid and, now, the Affordable Care Act -- policy makers have tried to steer the nation?s 2,900 tax-exempt hospitals away from charity medical treatment for individuals and toward the kinds of preventive public-health services that are believed to lower health-care costs generally: community blood-pressure and mammography screening, clinics for weight loss and smoking cessation, and so on.
AUSTIN — A battle at the Capitol over whether Texas should expand Medicaid is coming down to two competing philosophies. One, the likely winner, is pushed by Brenham Republican Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, chairwoman of the House Public Health Committee. She says the state should wait to gauge the effect of the other major provision that the Affordable Care Act uses to expand health coverage, a new insurance exchange. Kolkhorst argues that the exchange, a sort of Travelocity for health insurance, will solve much of the state's problem of lack of insurance coverage. Expanding Medicaid, she complains, would be wastefully expensive, even though the federal government would foot the entire bill, at least initially.
Republicans introduced a bill Friday in response to allegations that top congressional officials are seeking to exempt Capitol Hill from ObamaCare's health insurance exchanges. The measure from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) would require that all federal employees — including the president, vice president and Cabinet members — purchase coverage through the marketplaces. "If the ObamaCare exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for the president, vice president, Congress, and federal employees," Camp spokeswoman Sarah Swinehart said in a statement.