The Obama administration pressed its healthcare reform campaign in Los Angeles on April 6 with a forum co-hosted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A wide array of forum participants, including hospital and insurance company executives and the mother of a teenager who died from a preventable hospital-acquired infection, gave voice to the growing desire for change. But the presentation was light on details. Universal coverage was widely touted, but there was no discussion of how to achieve that goal.
Health Net of the Northeast is paying $1.3 million in fines to the state and restitution to Connecticut consumers for improperly denying or underpaying claims and other violations of state law, Insurance Commissioner Thomas R. Sullivan said. Sullivan ordered Health Net to pay fines totaling $496,000 and the company has paid $750,066 in restitution to people whose claims were handled incorrectly. Health Net failed to conduct a "reasonable investigation" before ruling on claims, paid claims late and without required interest, and didn't correctly reimburse healthcare providers for out-of-network claims, the department's order says.
Gender-based pricing for health insurance isn't going away soon in Connecticut, as efforts by activists who oppose it have stalled in the legislature and at Aetna. Aetna Inc. has quashed a shareholder proposal that questioned gender-based premiums. NorthStar Asset Management Inc., a Boston-based firm that does socially responsible investing, had wanted Aetna to publish a report addressing public concerns about the rating practice.
The American Medical Association is laying off about 100 workers, or 8% of its staff, to "offset declining revenues amid the ongoing economic downturn." The staff cuts at the doctor group will trim "open and existing staff positions" at both its Chicago headquarters and Washington offices effective May 4, the AMA said. The AMA has about 1,200 staffers.
Federal investigators have subpoenaed financial records related to Scott S. Reuben, a Massachusetts doctor accused of faking data used in at least 21 anesthesiology studies. The Springfield-based Baystate Medical Center, where Reuben was the head of the acute-pain unit, said it received a subpoena from the Boston U.S. attorney's office for financial records related to the anesthesiologist's work. A spokeswoman said Baystate Medical isn't a target of the investigation, and that the hospital is "fully cooperating."
In 2007 Medtronic stopped selling the Sprint Fidelis, a heart defibrillator cable, after five patients who had the cables died.
But only now is the full scope of the public health problem becoming clear for the Sprint Fidelis, which is still used by 150,000 people in this country. In the next few years, thousands of those patients may face risky surgical procedures to remove and replace the electrical cable. Medtronic estimates that the cable has failed in a little more than 5% of patients after 45 months of being implanted. But as a preventive measure, some patients with working cables are having them removed. Already, four patients have died during extractions.