The nation's ambulance crews are pushing a virtual medical ID system to rapidly learn a patient's health history during a crisis—and which can immediately text-message loved ones that the person is headed for a hospital. The Web-based registry, invisibleBracelet.org, started in Oklahoma and got a boost this fall when the state's government made the program an optional health benefit for its own employees. Now the Invisible Bracelet attempts to go nationwide as the American Ambulance Association next month begins training its medics, who in turn will urge people in their communities to sign up.
The Senate cleared the second of three key procedural hurdles on President Obama's healthcare legislation early Tuesday with another party-line vote, continuing the effort to pass the bill before Christmas. All 60 members of the Democratic caucus supported the measure to finalize amendments to the healthcare package, while 39 Republicans opposed it. A third procedural vote is expected Wednesday, with final passage of the bill likely to come late on Christmas Eve.
This year has been an eventful one for healthcare as the nation's attention has focused on the problems with the current system and possible ways to improve quality of care, lower costs, and insure more Americans. In addition to healthcare reform, health leaders have faced a difficult economy and greater government scrutiny. All of these issues are represented in our top 10 articles of 2009.
With a healthcare overhaul inching closer to reality, Democrats looking to next year's midterm elections plan to market the bill as a way to help voters who are focused more on unemployment and the economy. The chances of passing healthcare legislation rose significantly Monday, with a Senate vote that put it on track to clear the chamber by Christmas. A sour public mood may make matters tough for Democrats, whose comfortable congressional majority will be at risk. Party leaders hope to minimize concerns that many of the health bill's provisions would not take effect until 2014. That is when, for example, a new health insurance marketplace would open, with the goal of making it easier for consumers to find policies. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are compiling lists of "immediate benefits" that would spring from passage of the bill, which still must emerge from the Senate and be reconciled with a version approved by the House.
If you listen to hospital lobbyists in Washington, the industry teeters on the brink of financial ruin, depending on how healthcare reform plays out. But the rhetoric does not match the balance sheets of some of Chicago's largest hospital operators. Many are spending unprecedented amounts on new buildings and seeing some of their best improvements in cash since the dot-com boom of a decade ago. Critics say large hospital operators that are amassing cash are doing so at the expense of patients, charging higher prices when that money could be used to lower costs or subsidize hospitals in a hole. The hospitals maintain they need to have ample cash to invest in the latest medical technology, attract top medical care providers, and maintain a reserve to cushion themselves from rocky economic conditions.
The abortion language that was added to the Senate's healthcare bill to win the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has achieved a rare feat: It is drawing contempt from both sides. That could be taken as a sign that senators finally found an elusive compromise on a thorny issue. But serious questions are already being raised about how the new language would work in practice and whether it would even be feasible to implement. The long-standing ban on federal funding for abortion has complicated congressional Democrats' healthcare legislation. Medicaid bars federal funding for abortion, but 17 states and the District of Columbia allow the procedure for female Medicaid enrollees paid out of their own funds. It is harder to reach middle ground in the bill before Congress, which would provide federal subsidies to millions of people to buy private health insurance plans on a new marketplace, or "exchange."