The Minnesota Senate and House approved multi-billion-dollar health and human service bills, as DFLers continued their march toward a showdown with Gov. Tim Pawlenty over a major area of the state budget. The two bills, which have some notable differences, include what DFL leaders said are painful but necessary reductions in light of the state's $4.6 billion budget deficit. But the reductions fall short of what the governor said is necessary to slow down rising costs. The House and Senate DFL majorities both tried to convince Minnesotans that Pawlenty is going too far in pushing people off state-subsidized healthcare and in cutting funds for hospital and nursing home facilities.
This blog posting from the Los Angeles Times outlines Wellpoint's pilot with Serigraph Inc., a specialty graphics company with operations in Wisconsin, Mexico and Asia, that gives U.S. employees the option to travel to India to have surgery on a non-emergency basis. Wellpoint's Paul McBride, vice president of healthcare management and services, spoke on the topic during a panel on healthcare economics at the Milken Institute's Global Conference today in Beverly Hills.
A conservative group will begin a $1 million television advertising campaign warning Congress not to enact a government-run healthcare plan similar to those in other countries. The ads feature British and Canadian doctors saying the healthcare plans in their countries reduce choices and asserting that patients have died while awaiting care.
The ads are funded by Conservatives for Patients' Rights Action Fund.
Nashville-based HCA Inc.'s first-quarter net income surged 92% even as the hospital operator sharply boosted spending on charity care and discounts to the uninsured. The nation's largest owner of acute healthcare facilities said earlier this month that it expected higher revenue amid analyst and investor concern about weakening results.
The number of confirmed cases of a deadly new strain of the flu continued to rise Monday, as the World Health Organization moved one step closer to declaring a pandemic. The United Nations public-health agency raised its global alert to phase 4 from phase 3. The change recognizes that the new A/H1N1 virus spreads from person to person, and signals that governments should prepare for outbreaks. Phase 6 is a pandemic.
At the White House press briefing on the administration's efforts to combat and control a potential swine flu outbreak, press secretary Robert Gibbs was joined by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, deputy national security adviser John Brennan, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acting director Dr. Richard Besser. But absent on stage was a fully confirmed federal healthcare official: There was no health and human services secretary, notes this blog posting from the Washington Post.