As the Senate Finance Committee begins reworking Sen. Max Baucus' healthcare bill, the focus will be on keeping the final price tag below $900 billion—a target considered crucial to winning over moderate Democratic votes. But the cost estimates in the proposal—like those attached to many of the 500-plus amendments lined up for committee consideration—involve budgetary sleights-of-hand designed primarily to serve political ends, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A year before Boston Medical Center reported its first loss in five years, the hospital paid Chief Executive Elaine Ullian $3.5 million in deferred compensation on top of her $1.35 million salary and benefits, according to a recent filing with the Massachusetts attorney general's office. Ullian, who announced her resignation when her contract ends in January, received the additional compensation last year, a time when the hospital reported $56 million in profitable earnings. But the hospital has said it expects to lose $38 million by the end of this fiscal year and projects it will lose an additional $175 million next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, an 18% operating loss.
A national health bill released by Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus includes a proposal from Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to "improve the community service, transparency and billing practices of nonprofit hospitals." The legislation also would require hospitals to adopt and "widely publicize" written financial assistance policies, which are now largely voluntary. Grassley has also raised questions about hospital missions, looking at tax exemptions and floating ideas about mandating levels of charity care.
A proposed amendment to the healthcare bill now before the Finance Committee would help out the Nevada Cancer Institute. The proposal would provide more favorable Medicare payment rates to just a handful of specific medical facilities. Three of them—a hospital under construction in Cleveland, a center in Detroit and, apparently, another in New Jersey—are among some 40 "comprehensive cancer centers" that have received grants with that designation from the government's National Cancer Institute.
Commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap predicts that there could be demand for at least another 10 million square feet of medical space nationwide—mostly from primary care doctors—in the first few years following changes in the country's healthcare system. The real estate firm didn't break down its forecast by state or metro area, but key to the calculations were how reforms would increase doctor visits by aging baby boomers.
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. has announced changes in the way it pays for physician-training sessions and other practices that industry critics have derided as too cozy with the medical community.
Starting next year, the company will pay only academic, medical, and professional institutions to organize continuing medical-education sessions for physicians. Glaxo is immediately ending its practice of paying event producers or other commercial providers to organize sessions.