Members of Congress, including Democrats, have urged the Obama administration to search for another Medicare chief after concluding that the Senate is unlikely to confirm President Obama's temporary appointee, Donald M. Berwick, MD. Berwick's principal deputy, Marilyn B. Tavenner, has emerged as a candidate to succeed him. Lawmakers of both parties said Monday that Tavenner, a former Virginia secretary of health and human resources with extensive management experience, could probably be confirmed. In a letter to the White House last week, 42 Republican senators urged Mr. Obama to withdraw the nomination of Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs insurance programs for more than 100 million people. If those senators stick together, they could block confirmation.
To bring down Medicaid's annul $22 billion cost, Florida's Legislature is planning to dramatically revamp the way the state delivers healthcare to those on Medicaid. State Sen. Joe Negron has put together a plan that changes the state's relationship with Medicaid recipients and Medicaid health care providers. "We want to get out of the check-writing business and into the contract-compliance business," he says. Negron wants to scrap the old fee-for-service model and replace it with managed care. He proposes negotiating contracts with healthcare providers, which would agree to deliver care to the state's 3 million Medicaid recipients for a predetermined fee. Negron says it would give the Legislature a way to effectively cap what it spends each year on Medicaid. From a budgeting standpoint, it's an attractive idea. It passes off the responsibility for controlling costs, and the risk of busting the healthcare budget, to private contractors. But it also means that Medicaid recipients may start seeing fewer benefits.
It took fast-acting doctors at a Colorado hospital to flag problems with tainted alcohol wipes now tied to a massive recall and growing reports of potentially deadly infections, including the case of a 10-year-old boy already battling leukemia. Medical experts at The Children's Hospital in Aurora said they became alarmed last fall when a few youngsters developed bloodstream infections caused by the rare bacteria Bacillus cereus. "It just didn't make sense," said Christine Nyquist, MD, the hospital's medical director of infection prevention. "Based on the kind of patients they were, the organism, the bacteria, didn't make sense." Federal Food and Drug Administration officials credit the hospital with sparking an investigation that led to Triad's voluntary recall of hundreds of millions of alcohol swabs, wipes and pads widely used in hospitals, clinics and homes.
Tagged by the attorney general and insurers as one of the state's most expensive hospitals, Children's Hospital Boston is moving aggressively to cut healthcare costs while seeking to sustain its elite reputation for pediatric care. Children's has reduced its fees to private insurers and to Medicaid-managed care programs by $90 million over the last year and a half, hospital executives said, by focusing on charges for lab tests, doctors' appointments, imaging, surgery, and hospital admissions. Children's also recently slashed imaging and outpatient surgery prices by 20% at the hospital's three suburban sites. Hospital president Sandra Fenwick said Children's is responding to pressure to reduce costs "coming from everywhere" ---government, insurers, employers, and patients.
The Tennessee House approved and sent to Gov. Bill Haslam on Monday a bill declaring that Tennesseans can ignore a federal law's requirement that they buy health insurance. The Tennessee Health Care Freedom Act - SB79 - was approved 70-27 with all no votes coming from Democrats. It was approved by the Senate on a similar party-line vote, 21-10, on Feb. 23. Haslam said during last year's campaign that he would sign legislation carrying the same concept. Similar legislation failed last year, passed by both the House and Senate but in different forms. This year's bill does not include one controversial provision in last year's version that called on the state attorney general to file a lawsuit against the federal Affordable Health Care Act. House debate on the measure stretched over about an hour as Democrats sought to add amendments and gave speeches criticizing the bill. Republicans tried unsuccessfully to shut off debate five times before finally succeeding.
Ohio's prolonged economic recession has continued to erode health coverage for families across the state, according to a government-funded report. The 2010 Ohio Family Health Survey, which state agencies depend on to design budgets, reveals increases in the number of uninsured at all ages, and rising enrollment in Medicaid, the government health insurance for the poor. The findings set the stage for a heated debate over how much the state will continue to spend on Medicaid. Gov. John Kasich's executive budget proposal is due on March 15 and Medicaid is the single most expensive and frustrating item in the state's ailing budget, which faces an $8 billion deficit. More than 2 million Ohioans are now enrolled in Medicaid, and the ranks are growing. Overall state enrollment in Medicaid increased more than 17% since 2004, adding 227,161 adults and 209,115 children to the roster, and 55% of that increase occurred in the past two years.