Approximately 439,000 people here have gained insurance since Massachusetts embarked two years ago on a path to near-universal coverage. More than half of them are paying toward it; the rest, get it free. How close Massachusetts can come to its goal, and what obstacles it encounters, is significant, because its strategies resemble much of the approach to healthcare that Obama has said he would pursue if elected president.
How well nonprofit corporations can serve insurance castaways is a test of Sen. John McCain's road map for the nation's healthcare system. High-risk pools such as these are a linchpin of the Republican presidential nominee's thinking about how to make health insurance more plentiful and less expensive.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress are girding for a major battle over Medicare in 2009 that could result in substantial changes, including cuts in payments to private insurers that offer Medicare coverage and a new right for the federal government to negotiate drug prices. Pressure to act on Medicare is rising as the program grabs a growing share of the federal budget. Medicare spending hit $431.5 billion in 2007, nearly doubling in just seven years, according to the trustees of the Medicare trust funds.
Texas Health Resources has laid off 49 people at facilities in Tarrant, Dallas, Collin, and Erath counties because fewer people are seeking services as a result of the economic downturn, a company spokesman said. Texas Health Resources so far this year has cared for the same number of people at its hospitals as in 2007, but the nonprofit company is not seeing the growth it had expected, the spokesman said.
At least 19 Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital employees will be fired and 45 others disciplined after a breakdown in vetting allowed scores of people with criminal records to remain on staff even after background checks indicated their past crimes, Los Angeles County officials said. The move to rid the staff of the most serious criminal offenders came as the interim director of the Department of Health Services acknowledged for the first time that failures by the human resources bureau overseeing the county's 17,000 health service workers may extend well beyond King-Harbor.
The Public Health Trust announced two interim executives to lead the Jackson Health System starting Jan. 1 after Marvin O'Quinn leaves the chief executive position for a job in a Catholic hospital group in California. Gene Bassett, chief operating officer, will become interim CEO. Eneida O. Roldan will become interim president and chief operating officer.