Protests organized by a loose-knit coalition of conservative voters and advocacy groups started what is expected to be weeks of political and ideological clashes over the healthcare overhaul President Obama is trying to push through Congress. Conservative groups are harnessing social networking Web sites to organize their supporters. Democrats said they expected supporters of the healthcare overhaul to mobilize against Republican events later in the month.
Senate Democrats won't hesitate to forgo bipartisanship to pass a health overhaul bill if negotiations fail in the next month, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. Schumer indicated that Democratic leaders are actively exploring options to pass the health bill that wouldn't require Republican votes. He pointed specifically to budget reconciliation, a parliamentary tactic that would allow passage of a bill with a simple majority.
A union representing about 1,400 health and clerical workers at the University of Chicago Medical Center said that it rejected a three-year contract offer by management. The union contends that the hospital was asking for too steep of increases in medical-care coverage, among other issues. Teamsters Local 743, which represents clerical, service, and maintenance workers, said U. of C. management is asking workers to take on "healthcare increases up to 10% each year of the contract."
When patients understand their choices and share in the decision making process with their doctors, they tend to choose less invasive and less expensive treatments than they would have otherwise received, according to the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. Now around the country, lawmakers are looking at expanding shared-decision making programs, both as a possible cost-cutting measure and as a way to ensure that patients get their legal right to informed consent before medical procedures.
While the rest of the country is suffering from a shortage of primary care physicians, Miami is awash with Cuban doctors who have defected in recent years. By some estimates, 6,000 medical professionals have left Cuba in the last six years. Cuban doctors have been fleeing to South Florida since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, but the pace intensified after 2006. That was when the Department of Homeland Security began a program that allowed Cuban medical personnel "who study or work in a third country under the direction of the Cuban government" to travel to the United States legally.
For 20 years, staff, visitors and the occasional patient at Dallas-based Parkland Memorial Hospital could go to the McDonald's restaraunt on the ground floor of the hospital. But later this year, Parkland will replace McDonald's with a 10-year-old chain that says its fare is healthier.