The pro-consumer Families USA have released a report that says 8.3% of Tennessee's children lack health insurance coverage, based on U.S. Census data from 2005-07. Nine-tenths of them come from families in which at least one parent works, and three-fifths are in low-income families.
Officials have approved a merger between Indianapolis-based Clarian Health and the medical group that owns Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, IN, and Blackford Community Hospital in Hartford City, IN. Officials have said both hospitals will keep their names and their current services, with Ball Memorial remaining a full-service acute care hospital. The merger will take effect Jan. 1.
Tom Daschle, the former Senator who will be Barack Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, shares a lot of his new boss's views but in his recent book on health reform he goes beyond Obama's agenda, according to the Wall Street Journal health blog. In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, Daschle argues that all Americans should be required to buy health insurance—a key difference from Obama, who argues that only children should be required to have health insurance. Daschle also calls for the creation a Federal Health Board. The board wouldn’t regulate the private insurance market, but it would have power over federal healthcare programs.
The effort to overhaul the nation's health system will begin in 2009 with one clear advantage over previous attempts: A wide variety of interest groups are rooting for it to succeed. That is a stark contrast to the last big healthcare initiative in the early 1990s, when many of the same groups helped block any major change. In addition, Barack Obama's choice of Tom Daschle, a former Senate Majority Leader, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, puts a skilled navigator of Capitol Hill in charge of the president-elect's bid to establish universal healthcare.
Thomas A. Daschle, a former Senate majority leader, will be nominated as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and will take on a broader role as the administration's health policy chief, said several sources close to the transition process. The selection of Daschle is recognition of the central role he played in Obama's political ascendancy and a signal that the incoming president wants an experienced Washington insider to shepherd comprehensive health legislation through Congress.
Leaders of some large academic medical centers and community hospitals called for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to examine how Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital, and a few other institutions are able to obtain higher payments from health insurers even though there is often no demonstrated difference in the quality of the care delivered by those hospitals. Hospital executives and state officials say the practice of insurers paying substantially higher fees to a handful of Boston medical centers is imperiling some rival hospitals and distorting the greater Boston healthcare market.