A top spine surgeon at the University of Minnesota who has reaped more than $1 million consulting for Medtronic Inc. is facing questions from a U.S. senator investigating financial conflicts in medicine. In a July 24 letter, Sen. Charles Grassley also asks the university questions about how it monitors potential conflicts of interest involving medical school doctors who receive consulting payments from medical device companies.
Senate Democrats debating how to overhaul America's healthcare system are moving toward a showdown over whether to create a government-run insurance program or set up a system of cooperatives instead. A bipartisan group of centrists on the Senate Finance Committee is leaning toward cooperatives, saying that alternative could offer customers more choice without enlarging the government's role in the healthcare market.
The Chicago doctor who treated President Barack Obama for more than two decades is entering the debate over healthcare reform, leveraging the connection to Obama to act as a spokesman for advocates of a British- or Canadian- style single-payer healthcare system. David Scheiner, MD, will speak on behalf of a single-payer healthcare system at a rally on the National Mall in Washington.
A lawyer for Josef E. Fischer, a Boston doctor accused of sex discrimination, criticized a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that will allow a lawsuit filed against his client to go to trial rather than be resolved through arbitration. The suit, filed by Carol Warfield, former head of anesthesiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, accused Fischer of abusive and demeaning treatment. A few months after it was filed, Fischer was asked to resign as chief of surgery because of what the Boston hospital termed an inappropriate management style.
During a forum, President Barack Obama sought to reassure senior citizens that squeezing billions of dollars from Medicare spending won't hurt their benefits. He also defended a proposal aimed at encouraging Americans to make plans in advance for end-of-life medical care. AARP sponsored the forum in which President Obama took questions from a small audience of seniors, as well as by phone and Internet.
Congress' ideas to pay for covering the uninsured do not raise revenue as quickly as health costs rise, according to this article in the New York Times. A plan to impose a surtax on top earners, for instance, pays a decent chunk of the bill but the revenue from the tax roughly rises only as fast as the United States economy grows. Health costs, on the other hand, are growing much more quickly than the economy, according to the article.