Los Algodones, Mexico, population 4,000, is home to about 350 dentists geared to foreign patients. Their treatment comes at a huge discount—70% or more—from what Americans pay at home, a reality that many patients call an indictment of U.S. healthcare. But U.S. medical authorities warn that Los Algodones is a medical Wild West, an unregulated environment where substandard providers can do not have the same oversight that exists in the United States.
The six medical schools in Sweden have had several problems in admitting and dismissing students with serious criminal offenses in just the past two years. The cases resonate far beyond Sweden, raising fundamental questions about who is fit to become a doctor. In contrast with the United States, Swedish laws and customs are sympathetic to released offenders, saying that once they have served their time they should be treated like ordinary citizens. But the cases raise questions about protecting the rights of patients and fellow medical students and healthcare workers.
American workers are getting squeezed like no other group by private health insurance premiums that are rising much faster than their wages, according to a study. While just about all retirees are covered, and nearly 90% of children have health insurance, workers now are at significantly higher risk of being uninsured than in the 1990s, the last time lawmakers attempted a healthcare overhaul, according to the study for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The study also found that nearly 1 in 5 workers is uninsured, a significant increase from fewer than 1 in 7 during the mid-1990s.
The nation's economic crisis merely adds to the urgency of reforming the healthcare system, a key White House official said while arguing that the administration has learned from past mistakes and will succeed in this effort. Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office on Health Reform, told hundreds of people at a forum in Des Moines, IA, that the nation is ready for changes.
The effort by a new labor union to represent 14,000 Catholic Healthcare West workers in California has been dismissed by a National Labor Relations Board regional director who ruled that the contract between the employees' longtime union, Service Employees International Union, and the hospital chain bars such overtures. The ruling would seem to be a setback for the National Union of Healthcare Workers, launched this year by officials who were dismissed by the Service Employees International Union. Sal Rosselli, president of the new union, rejected that idea, saying many thousands of workers are saying they want to be rid of SEIU.
The number of individual health insurance policies that do not include maternity coverage has risen dramatically in recent years, prompting concern among consumers and a legislative effort to require California insurers to include the benefit. About 805,000 Californians have insurance policies that specifically exclude maternity coverage—a number that has more than quadrupled from 192,000 in 2004, according to the California Health Benefits Review Program.