A Fulton County, GA, judge has cleared the way for Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital to close its outpatient dialysis clinic. Grady spokesman Matt Gove said the outpatient dialysis clinic would close in about a week, once plans are in place to find other care for its patients. The closing of the Grady clinic would essentially leave metro Atlanta without a major hospital that provides nearly free outpatient dialysis care for the poor, uninsured, and illegal immigrants.
The health-system overhaul proposed by Sen. Max Baucus would create millions of new insurance customers without subjecting health insurers to government-run competition. Insurers have argued that the individual mandate is essential to get healthy people paying premiums and balancing out the costs of adding coverage from an influx of sick people. Deliberations on the bill by the Senate Finance Committee have raised the possibility that such an individual mandate could be significantly weakened.
Doctors' offices in Tennessee have been accidentally sending patient information, including Social Security numbers and medical histories, to an Indiana businessman's fax machine for the past three years. The sensitive medical information was supposed to be sent to the Tennessee Department of Human Services, but Bill Keith, owner of SunRise Solar Inc. in Indiana, says hundreds of confidential medical faxes having been coming to him.
Many employers are considering changes, including raising co-pays on prescription drugs to increase their employees' share of costs in a bid to curb growth in medical plan costs. Such cost-cutting actions should reduce employers' growth in costs next year to just below 6% instead of nearly 9% otherwise, suggest preliminary results of consultant Mercer's annual benefits survey.
Healthcare overhaul legislation moving through the Senate Finance Committee would put crucial rule-making authority in the hands of a private association of state insurance commissioners that consumer advocates fear is too closely tied to the industry. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners currently writes model laws and regulations that individual states are free to accept or discard, reports the Los Angeles Times. Under the bill by Sen. Max Baucus, it would craft a model rule governing "health insurance rating, issuance and marketing requirements" that would become "the new federal minimum standard without any further congressional action."
Emory University Hospital dropped its lawsuit to block Gwinnett Medical Center's plan to perform open-heart surgery, ending a nearly two-year fight over the program. Emory and Piedmont Hospital had battled the Gwinnett proposal since 2008, saying that it would flood the metro Atlanta market and dilute the quality of open-heart care. Piedmont dropped its lawsuit earlier in September.
The cost of medical benefits is projected to increase again in 2010 with premiums and out-of-pocket expenses rising 10%, a study released ahead of open-enrollment season for medical benefits predicts. In 2010, the combined average premium and out-of-pocket costs for healthcare coverage for a worker are projected to climb to $4,023 a year, a 10% increase from this year, according to the annual study by Hewitt Associates.
Public support for Massachusetts' health insurance overhaul has slipped over the past year, a new poll indicates, but residents still support the 2006 law by a 2-to-1 ratio. Amid a severe recession, 59% of those surveyed said they favored the state's multimillion-dollar insurance initiative, down from 69% a year ago. The poll also found that opposition to the law stands at 28%, up slightly from 22% in a June 2008 survey.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that House Democrats are weighing a proposal to tax generous health-insurance plans, a step that risks conflict with unions but would help pay for the House's version of health-overhaul legislation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The proposed tax on "Cadillac" health plans offering generous benefits is a central feature of legislation pending in the Senate. The House bill, on the other hand, is financed in part by a surtax on the wealthy that would raise more than $500 billion over 10 years.
Federally funded health centers, originally created to serve the poor, are seeing a surge of patients as more Americans struggle financially. The centers are on track to handle more than 20 million patients this year, up by more than two million from last year and twice the figure of a decade ago, according to surveys by the National Association of Community Health Centers.
