Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG has stopped delivering its drugs for cancer and other diseases to some state-funded hospitals in Greece that haven't paid their bills, and may take similar steps elsewhere, a stark example of how the European debt crisis that has jolted global financial markets is having a direct effect on consumers. In Greece, Roche is boosting deliveries to pharmacies, which have paid their bills more reliably, Chief Executive Severin Schwan said in an interview on Friday. Patients at some hospitals now must take their prescriptions to a local pharmacy, and, in the case of intravenous or injected cancer drugs, bring them back to the hospital to be administered, he said. Schwan said patients haven't been deprived of their medication as a result of the new measures, which he said Roche may need to adopt in Spain, as well.
A release of Lifespan's executives' salary, bonuses and supplemental retirement contributions has been met with great consternation by the Rhode Island Hospital union. The forms - the U.S. Internal Revenue Service 990 forms for non-profit organizations - show that Lifespan's nine highest-paid executives received $9.4 million in total compensation in the last reported year, including $1.8 million in bonuses and $2.6 million in supplemental retirement contributions. Lifespan President/CEO George A. Vecchione received a total of $2.9 million in salary and benefits ? including $853,024 in base salary, $522,051 in bonuses, and $1,485,197 in retirement or deferred compensation. Timothy J. Babineau, MD, president/CEO of Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital, received $1.1 million in salary and benefits ? including $573,675, in base salary, $379,376 in bonuses and $92,035 in retirement or deferred compensation. "We are angry, we feel disrespected," said Helene Macedo, president of the United Nurses & Allied Professionals which represents 2,200 employees at Rhode Island Hospital. "It's not justified, when we see the sacrifice that those of us who are working at the bedside are being asked to make," she told Providence Business News.
In the next two months, Cooley Dickinson Hospital's courtship of larger healthcare institutions will get specific. It's pre-nup time. After 125 years of independence, the Northampton hospital will decide which of three big players will be its partner in a changing healthcare economy. It's expected that Cooley Dickinson's board will review a proposal for a merger or sale in late November or early December. A year from now, after regulatory reviews, the hospital could ultimately be governed from Springfield, Boston or Nashville, TN. Last spring, after first considering a less far-reaching affiliation with a bigger hospital group, the hospital's leaders switched to an outright merger or sale. The finalists for that are Baystate Health Systems of Springfield, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Vanguard Health Systems of Nashville. Now, CEO Craig Melin says it's time to see which one is the right fit, in a new round of talks that he said are "getting increasingly more candid ... and putting the real questions on the table."
Two years ago, drugmaker Eli Lilly pleaded guilty to illegally marketing its blockbuster antipsychotic Zyprexa for elderly patients. Lilly paid $1.4 billion in criminal penalties and settlements in four civil lawsuits. But a doctor named as a co-defendant in one suit—for allegedly taking kickbacks to prescribe the drug extensively at nursing homes—never was pursued. Last year, Alpharma paid $42.5 million to settle federal allegations that it paid kickbacks to doctors to prescribe its painkiller Kadian. "Healthcare decisions must be based solely upon what is best for the individual patient and not on which pharmaceutical company is paying the doctor the biggest kickback," Rod J. Rosenstein, U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, said in a statement announcing the settlement. But the doctors, accused of trading prescriptions for paid speaking gigs, faced no consequences. At least 15 drug and medical-device companies have paid $6.5 billion since 2008 to settle accusations of marketing fraud or kickbacks. However, none of the more than 75 doctors named as participants were sanctioned, despite allegations of fraud or of conduct that put patients at risk, a review by ProPublica found.
Giving a boost to the new healthcare law, a coalition of hospitals, insurers, drug makers and consumer advocates is joining a multimillion-dollar campaign to get Americans signed up for health insurance starting in 2014. The new nonprofit group, called Enroll America, plans a state-by-state effort to publicize the expanded availability of health coverage and to help state leaders put in place procedures to simplify enrollment. The law signed by President Obama last year requires most Americans to get insurance starting in 2014. At the same time, the law bans insurers from denying coverage to those who are sick and provides hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans purchase insurance. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that an additional 32 million Americans will get insurance by 2019. But getting people to sign up in 21/2 years remains one of the major challenges confronting those working to implement the law.
WBUR's All Things Considered host Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with Ralph de la Torre, CEO of Steward Health Care, about the lower-cost health insurance plan for small businesses that Steward rolled out Friday. Steward, which runs the former Caritas Christi hospital network, says its plan will offer coverage that's 15% to 30% cheaper than Blue Cross Blue Shield or Harvard Pilgrim. The catch is that, for routine care, patients will have to go to Steward doctors and hospitals, which have been trying to shake off a reputation as second-tier. But they can go to Mass General or Brigham & Women's for more complicated care. The plan will be offered through Tufts Health Plan, and Steward says it can save money for small businesses and their employees.