Physicians and pharmacists will be required to participate in a new prescription drug-tracking program under legislation coming together at the State Capitol. State officials hope to announce legislative agreement on the program next week in conjunction with the first anniversary of a suicide by a prescription drug-addicted man from Buffalo. Tentative deals have been reached on key elements of a new system aimed at reducing the growing problem of doctor-shopping by people addicted to prescription drug opiates. New York officials believe that the Internet-based program will permit doctors and pharmacists to track prescriptions logged just 30 minutes behind real time.
Some of Missouri's largest insurance companies are expected to refund nearly $65 million to consumers this year because they failed to meet efficiency standards under the new health reform law, consumer and health advocates say. According to a report by Consumers Union, the insurers that will pay the largest rebates in Missouri's individual and small business markets include Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City; and United Healthcare. Insurers slated to pay smaller rebates in these markets include Coventry, Humana, and others. Under the new law, health insurers who write policies for small businesses and individuals are penalized for failing to meet a new requirement that at least 80 percent of premiums must be spent on actual medical care and activities that improve the quality of care.
Beginning July 1, medical research will be slightly less rewarding—at least financially—for faculty at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine. In a memo sent to department chairs, directors and faculty at the school this spring, the dean, Arthur S. Levine, cited economic conditions as the reason the school will reduce an incentive payment based on researchers' outside grants from 10 percent to 8 percent, while also instituting a $50,000 minimum in outside grant money for researchers to qualify for the incentives. As research funding dries up, and as med schools look for cost savings such as reducing incentive plans, physicians who split their time between doing research and seeing patients may shift more of their work to the clinical side.
Nancy Linn attended a memorial service for her husband, Arnold, last week. For months, medical and nursing students at Georgetown University had explored his body and those of 64 other donors in the anatomy lab. They learned about disease and about complexities of the human body. Now classes were over and the school was holding its yearly anatomical donor Mass, to say thank you. In a classroom auditorium, about 135 family members watched as a procession of 160 white-coated students walked down the aisles on either side of them. Each placed a glass-held candle on stage with a gentle clink, creating a seemingly endless chain of light.
A peer-reviewed study to be published today, and described by health psychologist Leeat Granek this weekend in The New York Times, shows that for doctors, expressing grief "in the medical context is considered shameful and unprofessional." Of course, physicians need some distance from the emotionally costly aspects of their jobs—I understand this. But the new research shows that suppressing grief may negatively affect doctors' professional judgment. Half the doctors surveyed reported that they sometimes choose more aggressive treatments than might be best for their patients (instead of opting for palliative care), or distanced themselves from patients who were dying.
The catch is that to make universal coverage work at the state level, you'd need some way to channel Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare funds into the system. At the moment, that's difficult if not impossible. But legislation quietly being drafted by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) would change that. It would create a mechanism for states to request federal funds after establishing their own health insurance programs. If passed into law, McDermott's State-Based Universal Healthcare Act would represent a game changer for medical coverage in the United States. It would, for the first time, create a system under which a Medicare-for-all program could be rolled out on a state-by-state basis.