Thousands of registered nurses will walk off the job Christmas Eve at nine San Francisco Bay Area hospitals, where administrators and a nurses union are locked in a lingering dispute, a union official said Saturday. Nurses and X-ray technicians represented by the California Nurses Association will begin a one-day strike on the morning of Dec. 24 at seven hospitals operated by Sutter Health and at two San Jose hospitals affiliated with the Hospital Corporation of America, said union spokesman Chuck Idelson. Union officials say the strike?the eighth by the association since September 2011?was not called over a salary dispute, but comes as the union and the hospitals remain at odds over staffing levels, health benefits and sick days.
In its efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration excluded immigrants who were not "lawfully present" in the country from the insurance mandate, avoiding the bear trap of an immigration debate sinking its teeth into health care reform. Even with those assurances, some lawmakers in 2009 sounded the alarm that the act would lead to misuse of taxpayer money. "Taxpaying families, already weighed down by bailouts and massive spending bills, cannot afford to pay for health insurance for millions of illegal aliens," Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said in 2009.
The LSU Board of Supervisors agreed Friday to privatize the operations of its public hospitals in New Orleans, Houma and Lafayette that provide safety net care for the uninsured and help train medical students. Management of the hospitals and their outpatient clinics will be turned over to nonprofit corporations that run private hospitals in the regions, under plans pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration.
While he appeared a grandfatherly academic, Dr. Sidney Gilman, 80, was living a parallel life, one in which he regularly advised a wide network of Wall Street traders through a professional matchmaking system. Those relationships afforded him payments of $100,000 or more a year—on top of his $258,000 pay from the University of Michigan.
The founder of Domino's Pizza is suing the federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law. Tom Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn't health care but a "gravely immoral" practice. He filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court. It also lists as a plaintiff Domino's Farms, a Michigan office park complex that Monaghan owns.
There is already a shortage of doctors in many parts of the United States. The expansion of health care coverage to millions of uninsured Americans under the Affordable Care Act will make that shortage even worse. Expanding medical schools and residency programs could help in the long run. But a sensible solution to this crisis—particularly to address the short supply of primary care doctors—is to rely much more on nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, community members and even the patients themselves to do many of the routine tasks traditionally reserved for doctors.