An effort by Senator Max Baucus of Montana to develop compromise healthcare legislation has come under assault by fellow Democrats who have urged him to abandon a plan to help pay for the bill by taxing some employer-provided health benefits. A tax on employer-provided health plans is favored by Republicans and several centrist Democrats, but opinion polls show the idea to be generally unpopular and several senators up for re-election in 2010 have said they oppose it.
Lawmakers are trying to keep the price of a health overhaul near $1 trillion over a decade, and they also want the plan to result in near-universal coverage so that more than 95% of Americans have health insurance. Reaching both of those numbers at the same time is turning into one of hardest tasks for Congress and the White House: The Congressional Budget Office has found that several initial efforts either sailed beyond the targeted price tag or left many people without insurance.
The Jefferson Parish Council has created a 10-member board to oversee joint cost-saving efforts between the Louisisana parish's two publicly owned hospitals, which have lost a combined $170 million since 2005.
The council unanimously approved a parish-wide hospital service district to increase collaboration between West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero and East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie.
Parish officials said the board will use the hospitals' combined bargaining power to negotiate higher reimbursement rates from insurance companies and lower prices on everything from pharmaceuticals to cleaning supplies.
A Medicare analysis found that Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas has the lowest heart failure readmission rate of any hospital in the country, 15.9%. Nationally, one of every four heart failure patients must be readmitted within 30 days of discharge. The effort not only spares patients the need to return to the hospital, it also saves Baylor money.
Too many people die needlessly at U.S. hospitals, according to a Medicare analysis showing wide variation in death rates between the best hospitals and the worst. The analysis examined death rates for heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia at more than 4,600 hospitals. At 5.9% of hospitals, patients with pneumonia died at rates significantly higher than the national average. With heart failure, 3.4% of hospitals had death rates higher than the average, and 1.2% of hospitals were higher when it came to heart attack.
A South Florida hospital is being sued for allegedly deporting a Guatemalan patient back to his native country for not paying his bills.
Relatives of Luis Alberto Jimenez accuse Martin Memorial Medical Center of sending him back to Guatemala without telling them after he racked up more than $2 million in medical costs. The 37-year-old lacked insurance and wasn't eligible for Medicaid because he was in the U.S. illegally.
With metro Atlanta's unemployment rate at 9.6% and still climbing, the hiring continues in healthcare. In the past year, the private sector in metro Atlanta has bled 137,700 jobs—including 16,800 in retail, 28,700 in administrative support and more than 30,000 in construction. Yet healthcare added 5,000 jobs. Ambulatory care was up 2,300 jobs and hospital payrolls expanded by 1,500.
Hartford, CT-based St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center restarted its non-emergency cardiac surgery program after receiving approval from the state Department of Public Health. The hospital suspended its elective cardiac surgery program July 2 at the recommendation of state health officials. The health department is still investigating the hospital but has reviewed St. Francis' cardiac surgery program and is confident that it can operate safely, Connecticut health department spokeswoman Diana Lejardi said.
Two bills to reform health care in Connecticut drew vetoes from Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who called the measures too expensive for the state right now. The bills would have provided universal healthcare and allowed municipalities, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations to join the state's insurance pool. Noting that the state faces a projected $8.85 billion deficit over the next two fiscal years, Rell said the universal SustiNet plan would cost an estimated $1 billion per year. A key problem, she said, was that the bill did not provide any explanation of how the plan would be paid for.
Bowing to the inexorable pressure of the sustainable growth rate formula, the newly proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule would cut physician payment by a 21.5% for calendar year 2010. The SGR formula, part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, has mandated increasingly painful cuts to physician payment every year since 2002—cuts that have either been avoided by administrative steps or by Congressional action, says Sg2 consultant Christa Van der Eb.
