The sting in paying for healthcare costs amid the ailing economy is most acute among young adults, according to a new survey from Medco Health Solutions Inc. Nearly 70% of adults aged 25-34 claim the economic downturn of the last 12 months has made it somewhat or significantly more difficult to pay for healthcare expenses, the survey by New Jersey-based Medco reported.
Three men who say they have adequate health coverage and enough money to pay for their healthcare needs want to opt out of hospital coverage under Medicare. Federal rules say they cannot collect Social Security benefits if they do that. Their goal is to save taxpayer money by voluntarily forgoing Medicare, and their challenge to that policy is coming in a lawsuit expected to be filed in federal court.
A contract dispute between Blue Cross and the Care New England hospital group has raised worries about whether Blue Cross subscribers will be able get care at Rhode Island-based Butler, Women & Infants and Kent hospitals after Dec. 31. But the chief executives of both companies say they expect to resolve their differences. Negotiators are meeting regularly and still have three months before the current contract expires. Care New England recently drew attention to the problem by sending letters to doctors and employees, telling them that after Dec. 31, Care New England might be dropped from the provider network of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.
For years, healthcare unions have been trying to eliminate, or at least limit, mandatory overtime for nurses and other workers in Pennsylvania hospitals and nursing homes. And now under a bill approved unanimously by the Pennsylvania Senate, they made some significant progress. House Bill 834, introduced by Rep. Dan Surra, D-Elk, prohibits a healthcare facility from requiring nurses and other healthcare employees "to work in excess of agreed to, predetermined and regularly scheduled daily work shifts."
Up to 1,600 residents in the Louisville, KY, neighborhood known as Rubbertown at risk of cardiovascular disease could get free screenings and preventive counseling from University of Louisville medical teams through a grant from the Anthem Foundation. The $600,000 grant also will pay for research into possible links between environmental pollutants and heart disease. The screenings will be a follow-up to 2007's free screening program in western and southwestern Louisville.
The Carolinas are losing employer-based health insurance at a faster rate than nearly any other state in the country, according to a study released by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. In North Carolina, about 59% of residents under age 65 had health insurance in 2007, compared to 67% in 2000. In South Carolina, 61% of residents were covered in 2007, compared to 69% in 2000. Nationally, the health insurance that covers most Americans has declined for seven years in a row, the study found.
Baycare Health System has received Pasco County, FL's blessing for a building and a helipad. The county's top planners gave Baycare preliminary approval for the helipad as well as permission for a seven- story building that's 118 feet tall, as opposed to the 60 feet allowed by county zoning rules. Baycare owns 35 acres in the Seven Oaks area, where it proposed to build a teaching hospital. But the state Agency for Health Care Administration instead gave the nod in June to a joint proposal by University Community Hospital and Adventist Health System.
An estimated 113 million Americans will receive better insurance coverage for their mental health and substance abuse problems because of legislation that for the first time requires mental and physical illnesses to be treated equally. The law is a culmination of a decade of lobbying and negotiating among advocates for the mentally ill, the insurance industry, the business community, and doctors' groups. The change, which was included in the economic rescue package signed by President Bush last week, will take effect Jan. 1, 2010, for most plans.
The nation's top epidemiological societies have joined with the American Hospital Association and the Joint Commission to issue a compendium of guidelines for preventing six lethal conditions. The recommended practices do not vary in significant ways from the encyclopedic guidelines issued and revised over the last two decades by a government advisory panel. But their authors said they had been written more clearly and concisely, with advice not only on what hospitals should do, but also on what they should not, and on secondary approaches to try if first-line measures do not lower infection rates.
The Pennsylvania Senate has adjourned for the year without reauthorizing the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, an independent state agency that helped pioneer public reporting of hospital quality and costs. The agency has been operating under an executive order since July, when its reauthorization bill was entangled in an unrelated political fight between Gov. Ed Rendell and Senate Republicans over the governor's proposal to offer health insurance to many of the state's 800,000 uninsured adults. This summer, Rendell rejected a bill to reauthorize the agency that included an extension of subsidies to doctors for their medical malpractice coverage.
