Oklahoma's lawsuit contending a key part of President Barack Obama?s 2010 health-care reform legislation is blocked by the state's constitution should be thrown out, lawyers for the U.S. said in a court filing. "Oklahoma lacks standing to sue the federal government to deprive its residents of the benefits of federal law," U.S. Justice Department attorneys argued in papers filed yesterday in federal court in Muskogee, Oklahoma. State Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a Republican, filed the lawsuit in January 2011, about 10 months after the president signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that made the acquisition of basic health insurance mandatory for almost all Americans. That part of the law takes effect in 2014.
Two years and $8.4 billion into the government's effort to get doctors to take their practices digital, some unintended consequences are starting to emerge. One is a lot of unhappy doctors. In a big survey by Medscape this summer 38 percent of the doctors polled said they were unhappy with their electronic medical records system.
A new report from UnitedHealth Group Inc. takes aim at the way U.S. doctors get paid, saying the nation could save up to $1 trillion over the next decade in health care costs if it were possible to "unleash the potential of payment reform initiatives." The report, which comes out Wednesday, analyzes the savings as well as likely pitfalls to adopting a number of different methods to move away from the current "fee-for-service" approach, which pays doctors based on the number of services they provide.
A top official of Anne Arundel Medical Center told state lawmakers in Annapolis that medical center considered cancelling all surgeries last weekend, because of a medication shortage. Dr. Barry Meisenberg, who chairs quality improvement for the medical center, talked about the decision during a state legislative hearing in Annapolis today. He said the hospital had a shortage of drugs that are used to revive patients after surgery.
Less than a quarter of new doctors finishing an internal medicine training program planned to become a primary care physician instead of a specialist, in a new study. That suggests fewer generalists will be entering the workforce, researchers said—possibly exacerbating the primary care doctor shortage in parts of the United States. "I think this was a much needed, long overdue paper, and really kind of eye-opening," said economist and health policy researcher Amitabh Chandra from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
More than three-quarters of U.S. medical students continue to shun primary care for higher-paying specialties, setting the stage for a shortage of doctors as the population ages and health care expands, a study found. Among medical residents who aren't planning a career in surgery or pediatrics, 22 percent said they expect to go into internal medicine or primary care with the rest planning on fields like cardiology or dermatology, a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association found. About 20 to 25 percent of students have chosen primary care in the past 10 years, down from about 50 percent in the early 1990s, said Colin West, co-author of the study.