A shift in the business plan of a major Southwest Florida health-care provider still seems to bode well for our area. Pelican Bay-based Health Management Associates plans to expand its Physicians Regional Medical Center at the Vineyards in North Naples after pulling out of a potential showdown with Lee Memorial Health System over rights to build a new hospital in southern Lee County. Given an impressive display of public support for Lee Memorial — via more than 2,000 residents' letters to state health care regulators and more than 50 backers at a local public hearing the other day — HMA's choice to consider other opportunities to the south seems well reasoned.
The Obamacare war is on in Congress. A top aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent an email to Democratic offices Thursday afternoon, warning that "Republican trackers" are on Independence Avenue asking lawmakers about the effort to rework which health care insurance members of Congress must use. One Democratic leadership aide said trackers were asking lawmakers if they thought "it's OK for members of Congress to be exempt from Obamacare?" POLITICO reported Wednesday that top congressional leaders were discussing revisions to the law, to clarify how lawmakers and staff enter exchanges and how much they would have to pay.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was in the thick of events following this month's Boston Marathon bombing. BIDMC clinicians treated people injured in the bombing, and they treated the bombing suspects after police shootouts in the days following. All that activity has BIDMC CIO John Halamka thinking -- and blogging to share his thoughts on what the hospital might need to do differently. Read his blog post "Reflection on the Tragedy in Boston." What Halamka's doing shows what it really means to be a "social CIO." He's taking a risk by putting ideas out for reaction before they've been filtered through planning committees, and raising problems that aren't yet solved.
WASHINGTON — Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly. President Obama's new chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, fielded questions on the issue for more than an hour at a lunch with Democratic senators.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is criticizing the federal Health Department for allowing Massachusetts to take three years to comply with certain requirements under ObamaCare without granting similar flexibility to other states. Hatch, the Senate Finance Committee's top Republican, questioned the special transition period "to eliminate the use of certain rating factors currently used and allowed under [Massachusetts] law." "State regulators throughout the country have expressed to you their concerns about the impact of rating reforms on the operations of their markets," Hatch wrote to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "It seems only reasonable that the department has the same authority to offer flexibility to all states."
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Cary Pigman, a Republican lawmaker in the state House of Representatives, sees uninsured patients every shift as an emergency room doctor in a rural part of central Florida, where nearly 30 percent of residents lack coverage. With a week remaining in Florida's legislative session, Dr. Pigman might be expected to be sympathetic to hospitals and other groups urging the Republican-dominated legislature to accept $50 billion in federal money over a decade to extend coverage to 1 million poor Floridians. But that's not the case.