Cleveland's Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital is partnering with the state's other five children's hospitals to perform joint research in two areas: childhood asthma and caring for drug-addicted newborns. The collaboration comes at the urging of Gov. John Kasich who last year while visiting the children's hospital in Columbus was surprised to learn that the various children's hospitals around the state, though not affiliated, were not professionally working together on research projects.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the constitutionality of the individual mandate for two hours on Tuesday. The New York Times reports that on the second day of the landmark case, “a lawyer for the administration faced a barrage of skeptical questions from four of the court’s more conservative justices.”
On Twitter, the fate of the healthcare law appeared grim:
@AAPSonline(The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons)tweeted:[CNN legal analyst Jeffrey] Toobin outside #SCOTUS just now on CNN: "This law is in grave grave trouble."
Further analysis Politico reports that Justice Anthony Kennedy, thought to be the swing vote, "appeared skeptical Tuesday that President Obama’s healthcare mandate is constitutional."
The first day of Supreme Court oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act focused on the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA). This statute, enacted in 1867, provides that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed." It seems clear from the day's argument that the Court is not inclined to dismiss the case under the AIA. It is less clear how they will get around it.
At the opening of three days of arguments, the justices' questions suggested that they were receptive to a point on which both supporters and opponents of the law agree: that the court should decide the case now rather than waiting until the law's penalties for not having health insurance become due. On Tuesday, the court will turn to the central question in the case, the constitutionality of the law's requirement that most Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty. The argument on Monday was a sort of appetizer to Tuesday's main course, a 90-minute debate over whether the court has the authority to hear the case yet, given an 1867 law, the Anti-Injunction Act, that says taxpayers may not challenge taxes until they become due.
In 2011 alone, the Massachusetts healthcare industry, one of the largest economic sectors in the state, doled out more than $11.6 million on lobbying. And during the five years since the state passed its landmark health care overhaul, from 2007 to 2011, the total amount spent on lobbying by the industry topped $51.6 million, according to a review of state records by The Associated Press. The flood of health care lobbying comes as lawmakers debate whether to create systems designed to reward healthcare providers for keeping patients healthy rather than paying them piecemeal for treating illnesses.
Chest pain is the most common reason people visit the emergency room, yet 85 percent of the time, it is not related to a heart problem. The 2.5-year study of nearly 1,400 adults —about evenly divided between men and women—in five centers in Pennsylvania and North Carolina was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It showed that the rate of heart attack and heart-related deaths 30 days after discharge with a negative CT scan was less than 1 percent.Doing CT scans in emergency rooms saved $2,500 per patient, according to a study based on 2006-2007 data from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. It is usually used after the patient undergoes EKG, blood tests and nuclear stress tests.