Senior citizens are emerging as an obstacle to President Obama's healthcare reform plans, as discontent in the voting bloc has risen to such a level that the administration is scrambling to devise a strategy to woo the elderly. Proposals to squeeze more than $500 billion out of the growth of Medicare over the next decade have fueled fears that President Obama's effort to expand coverage to millions of younger, uninsured Americans will damage elder care.
As supporters and opponents of overhauling the healthcare system try to shape public opinion, public opinion on the issue is complex. Analysis of a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll finds views on what priority to emphasize, how fast to act and what's important to protect vary and sometimes conflict depending on a person's age and region of the country, whether he or she has insurance, and is healthy or ailing.
Experts estimate that a staggering 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year. In addition, a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study concluded that 99,000 patients a year succumb to hospital-acquired infections. Almost all of those deaths, experts say, also are preventable. All of the available research indicates that the death toll from preventable medical injuries approaches 200,000 per year in the United States.
The abrupt shutdown of two aging nuclear reactors that produce a radioisotope widely used in medical imaging has forced physicians in the U.S. and abroad into a crisis. The closings requiring them to postpone or cancel necessary scans for heart disease and cancer, or turn to alternative tests that are not as accurate, take longer, and expose patients to higher doses of radiation. Because of limits on testing produced by the shortage, some patients will undergo heart or cancer surgeries that could have been prevented by imaging, and others will miss needed surgeries because of the lack of testing, experts say.
Eli Lilly has created an online registry detailing payments to 3,400 healthcare providers, including more than two dozen in South Florida in the first three months of 2009. Top on the South Florida list was internist Manuel Suarez-Barcelo, who told the Miami Herald that he earned $65,000 by traveling through 11 states, making 41 presentations about the advantages of the Lilly drug Forteo, used to treat osteoporosis. Seven others in South Florida pulled in more than $10,000 each.
Thousands of patients at Atlanta-based St. Joseph's Hospital won't have to seek hospital care elsewhere or pay higher bills because the facility has reached a last-minute contract agreement with insurer United Healthcare. The two-year agreement keeps the patients of the hospital in the insurer's network and prevents what could have been an interruption in their insurance coverage had the deal fell through.