As the nation faces a political showdown over health insurance reform, insurers worried that an overhaul could hurt their bottom line are funneling a wave of cash to members of Congress. Health and accident insurers and HMOs have spent more than $40 million on current members of Congress over the past 10 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzed Federal Election Commission data.
Atlanta-based St. Joseph's Hospital recently notified patients that it may end its relationship with medical insurance giant United Healthcare, effective Aug. 7, unless a new contract is reached. United Healthcare, which insures more than 1.5 million Georgians, sent a similar letter to its customers. The contract has reached its expiration before but the two parties agreed to extend it.
While town officials say Winchester (MA) Hospital's proposed expansion has been subject to extraordinary governmental scrutiny, opponents say few residents still fully understand the plan. Despite many government meetings, serious problems with the project have either gone ignored or unresolved, according to opponents.
State officials have announced that Massachusetts will receive $500,000 in grant money to support the transformation of 14 community health centers into patient-centered medical homes. Among the centers selected for the program are the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center and the Cambridge Health Alliance's Revere Family Health Center.
As federal health agencies seek to hand out stimulus funds to research the effectiveness of various medical treatments, they will include projects that look in part at the cost of drugs and other treatments. Obama administration officials have said they want to use stimulus funds to help doctors and patients choose more-effective treatments and ultimately, help rein in rising healthcare costs. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which has $300 million to spend on comparative research, said it would increase funding to projects that focus on arthritis, cancer, and 12 other conditions that are often costly to treat.
Eli Lilly has released a new "faculty registry," a list of payments to all the doctors who served as consultants in the first quarter of this year. The list is part of the company's efforts to increase transparency, according to Lilly representatives.