Proponents promised lower rates for all Maine residents, with increased competition among insurers. But six months after the state's rules took effect, no new insurers have entered the state—and health insurance premiums have gone up for the vast majority of small businesses. The results have been mixed for individuals: Everyone under 40 saw rate cuts, while most people over 55 received increases, some as high as 18 percent, according to an analysis of state data released Tuesday by advocacy group Consumers for Affordable Health Care, which opposed the law changes. Overall, a little more than half of individuals saw their rates rise, albeit by a relatively low 1.7 percent average.
Seventeen states offer tax incentives to people who donate a kidney, a portion of their liver or bone marrow for transplantation. Researchers looked at what happened in the years before and after these tax incentives were passed and found no increase in organ donation rates. A recent NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll found that 60 percent of Americans support some kind of financial incentive to organ donors that could be applied to healthcare needs. But the new report raises a caution about how much to expect from financial incentives. But there may be other reasons why the tax breaks aren't working, they say. For one thing, they may just be too small.
An effort by three healthcare organizations that saved the California Public Employees' Retirement System $37 million in the last two years is gaining national attention as Medicare and employers search for ways to control rising medical costs. Blue Shield of California teamed up with the Dignity Health hospital chain, previously known as Catholic Healthcare West, and Hill Physicians Medical Group to coordinate care for 41,000 CalPERS members in the Sacramento area, starting in 2010.
Mostly because of money. Under a fee-for-service system, seeing patients more quickly means more revenue. But not much of that extra money makes its way to physicians—especially primary care doctors; adjusted for inflation, physician incomes have actually gone down in the past 15 years. Instead, it goes toward a bloated, inefficient system that often does not make us healthier. With payments tightening from private insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid, doctors are pressured to cram more and more patients into a day’s schedule to keep practices afloat. The result: You have a situation in which most primary care doctors I know feel like Lucy and Ethel working at that ever speedier candy-making conveyor belt.
Previous research has shown doctors and nurses are much more likely to wash up when video systems monitor their compliance and send them feedback (see Reuters Health story of November 30, 2011.) Just under one-third of the health care workers said they didn't like the idea of being reminded to wash their hands by patients, because they thought it could be upsetting or humiliating. And 37 percent said they wouldn't consent to wearing a badge encouraging patients to ask them about hand hygiene. Still, most of the doctors and nurses agreed that patients can play a role in preventing infections transmitted in the hospital, the researchers reported Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Beth Israel Medical Center milked reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark for more than $13 million in fees, donations and even a priceless painting during her 20-year stay as a patient—and greedy executives angled for $125 million more, her relatives allege in shocking new court filings over Clark's estate. The alleged shakedown was illuminated in an e-mail in which hospital board member and former CEO Dr. Robert Newman referred to Clark as "the biggest bucks contributing potential we've ever had," according to court papers. He told a colleague her "potential has been overwhelming[ly] unrealized."