J Sainsbury, one of Britain's largest supermarket chains, has become the first in the country to offer a visit to a family doctor in one of its stores. At Sainsbury, a team of government-financed doctors will see patients. To start, they will work in the evenings and on Saturdays in a fully equipped consultation room in one store. If the pilot project succeeds, it is expected to be introduced in other Sainsbury stores.
While Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama fight over who has the better health plan for the uninsured, they say little about a more immediate challenge: how to tame the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid. Experts say both are unsustainable in their current form, because they are growing much faster than the economy or the revenues used to finance them. The Medicare program is especially endangered, because its hospital insurance trust fund is expected to run out of money in 11 years.
Private audit companies are set to begin scouring mountains of medical records to determine if healthcare providers erred when billing Medicare and require them to return any overpayments to the federal government. In just three years since the program started, the contractors have returned more than $300 million to the federal government. Critics of the program say that contractors have too much incentive to question as many claims as possible because they get to keep about 20 percent of the overpayments.
Pennsylvania is among a handful of states trying to counter the pharmaceutical industry's multibillion-dollar marketing and cut costs for prescription-aid programs for senior citizens. State officials say they are trying to ensure that patients get the most effective treatment, but driving the outreach is an effort to hold down expenses. In some cases the states try to keep costs down by steering doctors to generics, in others by showing how lifestyle changes can sometimes be preferable to medication.
According to online interviews conducted by American University graduate journalism students, healthcare ranks as the third most pressing concern among young voters aged 18-to-29. Respondents had varying opinions about healthcare affordability: Two-thirds of respondents said they think they will be able to afford insurance in the next five years, while one-third said no or "not sure."
The federal government has approved the Louisiana Children's Health Insurance Program, the state's plan for expanding the availability of healthcare coverage for children from low-income families. Authorities expect an additional 6,500 Louisiana children to get coverage through the program, in addition to the 115,271 already enrolled.
A plan for getting almost all Iowa children health insurance has moved a step closer to reality. Under the plan, about 36,000 children would qualify for free or subsidized health insurance, and the parents of another 12,000 would have to pay for the insurance on their own. Lawmakers removed a proposed requirement that all Iowa adults have health insurance as well.
North Carolina regulators have approved Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast's plan for a $17.2 million, 24-hour emergency department in Kannapolis. The center will house 10 treatment bays, two observation beds, imaging equipment such as X-ray and ultrasound machines, a lab and pharmacy operations. CMC rival Novant is also seeking approval from the state Certificate of Need Section to build a $107 million, 50-bed hospital in the town.
Greg Scandlen, one of the country's leading advocates for "consumer-directed" insurance plans, says such plans would provide better, cheaper performance and are growing faster than expected. Critics say the plans might work well for the healthy and wealthy but would shift more cost to patients, which would possibly make some patients avoid needed treatments because of the out-of-pocket costs.
Michael Freed, chief financial officer for Spectrum Health based in Grand Rapids, MI, talks about the strategy behind Spectrum's initiative to list not only its prices for healthcare services but also what the hospital is paid by a variety of payers for those services.
