Hospital lobbyists said that the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Senate Finance Committee's health legislation indicated that the committee had not yet delivered on a deal they made with the panel's chairman and the White House for their support. Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, said that as a condition of the industry's political support the White House and Max Baucus had promised earlier this year to extend health coverage to at least 94% of the country's residents, or at least 97% of American citizens. But according to the budget office, the finance committee's proposal would mandate coverage of only 91% of residents and 94% of citizens. Hospitals are counting on the extension of insurance to reduce their current costs for emergency treatment of the uninsured, the New York Times reports.
Congressional budget analysts announced that a Senate panel's healthcare $829 billion overhaul would dramatically shrink the ranks of the uninsured and keep President Obama's pledge that doing so would not add to federal budget deficits. According to the CBO, the Finance Committee measure would expand coverage to an additional 29 million Americans by 2019 by expanding Medicaid coverage for the poor and by subsidizing private insurance for low- and middle-income Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office has released its findings for the Senate Finance Committee's healthcare bill, and the CBO estimates that the bill will shave more than $80 billion off of the federal deficit over a 10-year period. Here, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog provides five key numbers from the CBO analysis.
Boston Medical Center will look at tightening enforcement of its conflict of interest policy, after determining that one physician violated the rules by earning thousands of dollars as a speaker this year for Eli Lilly & Co. BMC officials have reconvened the committee that oversees doctors' relationships with the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. The group will review "speakers bureau participation and control of presentation content and methods to monitor physician activities," according to a statement from the hospital.
Orthopedists failed to disclose over 20% of the payments they receive from makers of hip and knee replacements when presenting research related to the companies' products, a new study found. In the study, researchers measured the accuracy of disclosures by orthopedic surgeons who presented research at the March 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, by comparing the doctors' disclosures against a similar list published by five makers of hip and knee implants.
Healthcare in Texas ranks among the worst in the nation, dragged down by large numbers of uninsured and by the nation's most porous safety net, according to a scorecard and analysis released by the Commonwealth Fund. Texas was ranked last in access to healthcare, and in equity—a measure of how minorities and low-income patients fared in the state's medical system. Texas also has some of the nation's strictest eligibilily requirements for Medicaid insurance.
Older Independence Blue Cross policyholders in three Philadelphia-area counties are receiving letters telling them that their Personal Choice PPO 65 Medicare Advantage plans will end at the close of the year. The decision affects 7,300 policyholders in Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester Counties in Pennsylvania.
An inquiry by the nation's top securities regulator into whether Hospital Corporation of America tampered with payroll records to bill for phantom nursing shifts in London could influence when the hospital chain's private equity owners take the company public again, one stock analyst said. Legal observers, however, said HCA could still go forward with plans for a potential sale of stock to the public while it's being investigated. But the company would have to make required disclosures about the probe in any initial securities filing related to an offering.
As Democratic leaders prepare to bring healthcare legislation before the full House and Senate for votes, they soon must decide who will be taxed to pay for expanding coverage. Legislation emerging from the House would slap a surtax on upper-income people. But many Democrats fear the political fallout over voting to raise anyone's income taxes. The most prominent Senate bill would impose a tax on insurance companies that provide expensive policies, sometimes called "Cadillac" plans. But labor unions oppose the idea, saying the tax would be passed on to workers in the form of higher premiums or shrunken benefits.
To meet patient demands for comfort and to keep them happy in an increasingly competitive market, Boston-area medical institutions, including Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham, have recently completed renovations that add more private inpatient rooms. Joe Kirkpatrick, senior vice president for healthcare finance and managed care at the Massachusetts Hospital Association, told the Boston Globe that many healthcare centers in the state have begun reinvesting in their infrastructure in recent years after a long dry spell between 1995 and 2005.
