The parent of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago will purchase Lake Forest Hospital for an undisclosed sum. The expected transaction had been in discussions for several months. Lake Forest will become a subsidiary of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, a joint statement said. The boards of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare and Lake Forest Hospital approved the affiliation agreement.
Health overhaul advocates turned out across the country at rallies targeted against insurance companies and promoting a public insurance alternative as part of health legislation. MoveOn.org, Health Care for America Now, and labor unions said they organized about 150 gatherings. Protesters took aim at the insurance industry for standing in the way of healthcare reform.
Newark, NJ, has enrolled 400 uninsured and underinsured residents in a pilot program that enables them to obtain routine medical care from family doctors. The goal is to prevent people with chronic illnesses from seeking more costly treatment at hospital emergency rooms as a last resort. The yearlong program is expected to save Newark-area hospitals more than $2 million.
Sen. Chuck Grassley is continuing to raise questions about research done by orthopedic surgeon David W. Polly Jr., a Medtronic Inc. consultant and chief of the spine service at the University of Minnesota. Grassley wrote to the university's president raising issues of possible conflict of interest on Polly's part in research on a Medtronic bone-growth product called Infuse. Grassley has been raising questions about doctors who also serve as consultants to drug companies and medical-device makers, and raised the issue of whether Polly might not have alternatively chosen to do his research on another bone-growth product made by a competitor.
George Halvorson, the chief executive of Kaiser Permanente, says he is optimistic about U.S. health reform. Kaiser Permanente, a HMO-style not-for-profit health plan in California, is often held up as a model for a system that provides high-quality patient care, at reasonable cost. Despite this focus, Halvorson told the New York Times he was not concerned about the current emphasis in Washington to expand insurance coverage rather than improve patient care. Congress needs to tackle both issues, he said, but lawmakers need to expand coverage first.
France has long been proud of its national health insurance, but the fast-rising cost of drugs and medical care, particularly for the elderly, has raised the question of how long the country can afford healthcare. Seeking to beat back rising deficits, the government has reduced the reimbursement rate for many medicines and routine medical services, opening a growing market for private insurance policies to cover the steadily increasing co-payments.