A judge has dismissed charges against a Filipino doctor accused of defrauding the U.S. military's healthcare program by submitting $2 million worth of bogus claims, saying prosecutors waited too long to arrest him after filing charges. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that Diogenes Dionisio, MD's constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated because investigators waited four years to arrest him after his 2004 indictment.
After a Senate inquiry found evidence of deceptive marketing, the AARP has hired an outside investigator to look into sales of some of its popular health insurance products. AARP and UnitedHealth Group have voluntarily suspended sales of the policies, which pay fixed cash benefits for selected services.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered a prominent contender to become secretary of State in the Obama administration, was offered to be a senior member of the Senate team aiming to overhaul the nation's healthcare system. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who has announced plans to craft sweeping healthcare legislation, asked Clinton to head a working group focused on insurance coverage.
The potential assignment comes a decade and a half after Clinton led a controversial, and ultimately failed, effort to reshape the healthcare system as first lady during her husband's first term in the White House.
If Pennsylvania's insurance commissioner decides to approve the proposed merger between Independence Blue Cross and Highmark Inc., he should impose a raft of conditions designed to limit their market power, says the Republican-led Senate Banking and Insurance Comittee in draft resolutions scheduled to come for a committee vote. The decision on whether to approve the merger rests with Commissioner Joel Ario alone. But the committee has lots of opinions on what Ario should do, starting with a plea that he reject it.
In 2007, after news broke that the diabetes drug Avandia was linked to a high risk of heart attacks, reports that the drug's maker had tried to stifle safety questions from a prominent Duke University researcher years earlier provoked a furor. Now it turns out that the Duke researcher wasn't alone in suggesting a tie to heart problems. A doctor from a small Maryland hospital linked Avandia to congestive heart failure in 2000, but the drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, rejected her warning and tried to make her stop talking about it with other doctors and hospitals.
The uninsured, tort reform, and the nursing shortage matter, but obesity matters a lot more, according to a group of CEOs that met to hash out what they thought the president-elect's top health priorities should be. The group—which included the CEOs of Pfizer, Novartis, WellPoint and the Mayo Clinic—is part of the WSJ CEO Council, a conference the Wall Street Journal convened in Washington, DC. The looming disease burden associated with the obesity epidemic, and all the costs and suffering it will entail, apparently pushed it ahead of other, frequently discussed health-reform issues.
General Electric Co. hopes a push into medical electronic records and information with some top healthcare institutions will put it at the front of what is expected to be a rapidly growing market.
The company's healthcare unit plans to spend $200 million over the next five years to develop electronic systems for medical information and patient records. Its partners include the Mayo Clinic and Montefiore Medical Center.
When Barack Obama takes office in January, healthcare reform will join a list of priorities that include a ballooning budget deficit and an economy mired in one of the worst slowdowns since the Great Depression. But the bleak environment may paradoxically spur the kind of costly, sweeping overhaul of the nation's healthcare system that has eluded policymakers in Washington for decades, many political strategists, industry leaders, and economists say.
Beaumont Hospitals, long one of metro Detroit's most successful health systems, has announced a $60-million financial turnaround plan that includes layoffs, executive and physician pay cuts, and placing holds on many suburban construction projects. Beaumont is making the moves to offset $22 million in projected losses by year's end, on $2 billion in revenues. About $46 million of the turnaround plan involves savings from job freezes, pay cuts, postponement of capital projects, and other efficiencies.
A vast majority of physicians in Massachusetts say the fear of being sued is driving them to order unnecessary tests, procedures, referrals, and hospitalizations. The phenomenon is adding at least $1.4 billion to annual healthcare costs in the state, according to a study. The Massachusetts Medical Society reported that 83% of physicians surveyed said they have practiced so-called defensive medicine and that an average of 18%-28% of tests, procedures, referrals, and consultations, and 13% of hospitalizations, were ordered to avoid lawsuits.
