Los Angeles County supervisors unanimously approved an agreement to partner with the UC Board of Regents to reopen Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital by 2013. Regents voted Nov. 19 to approve the agreement and provide 14 to 20 full-time physicians in addition to medical oversight for the proposed inpatient hospital. The hospital will be overseen by a new nonprofit agency governed by a seven-member board of directors—two appointed by the UC president, two by L.A. County officials, and three jointly. The directors, whom officials hope to name within a year, must have at least 10 years of experience in healthcare. The nonprofit will retain all hiring powers, the Los Angeles Times reports.
More than 100 legal immigrants who were supposed to start receiving care Dec. 1 under a new Massachusetts health insurance plan will have to wait because the contractor hired to run the program has been unable to reach agreement with providers in Western Massachusetts. The immigrants, 123 in Pittsfield and 16 in Adams, are among roughly 5,000 in western and central Massachusetts who became eligible for coverage under the CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts. But CeltiCare has been unable to negotiate contracts with hospitals in those two cities, said a state spokesman.
North Carolina is breaking the Medicaid budget lawmakers approved this summer because more people need health insurance coverage after losing their jobs and are getting treated for swine flu, an agency official told the Associated Press. State spending for the government health insurance program for low-income families, senior citizens, and the disabled is $160 million over budget so far this fiscal year as expenditures have surged nearly 9% compared to a year ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler said.
A California law which went into effect in 2006 requires hospitals to provide, upon request, a written estimate of charges that an uninsured patient would be billed based on the service and length of stay. But researchers from Rand Corp. found that only 28% of California's 353 acute-care hospitals responded to letters from a fictional uninsured patient seeking pricing information for a common elective procedure. California's law also requires hospitals also to give uninsured patients information about financial assistance and charity care policies.
Connecticut Sen. Edith Prague and the leader of the Connecticut League for Nursing on Tuesday criticized Gov. M. Jodi Rell's plan to suspend a nurse training program, saying the program not only creates jobs, but addresses a nursing shortage. Faced with a budget deficit, Rell has decided to suspend the state's adult education program for licensed practical nurses, which trains about 350 LPNs every 16 months. Prague said nurses are critically needed at hospitals and nursing homes, particularly as the population ages.
As state funds run dry, Tennessee has cut off enrollment for two health insurance programs for low-income people. Tennessee became the only state in the nation to have frozen enrollment for a children's health insurance program funded largely with federal money, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC. The state stopped accepting new CoverKids applicants on Nov. 30, and at the same time stopped enrolling adults in CoverTN, an insurance program designed for the self-employed and working poor.
Fear and frustration are mounting among patients who had received dialysis at Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital, and who have only a month left of care paid for by the hospital. Grady closed its outpatient dialysis unit in early October, citing expenses. The hospital has paid a separate dialysis clinic to provide three months of additional care for those patients with no health insurance, no government assistance, and no place else to go. That extended care expires Jan. 3, and the approximately 30 patients receiving this care worry that their health will spiral downward after that, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
A prominent Los Angeles-area sports medicine clinic has agreed to pay $3 million to the federal government to settle allegations that it received illegal kickbacks for referring patients to another healthcare provider. The Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic received kickbacks from HealthSouth Corp. in the form of stock-option grants, donations to the Kerlan-Jobe Foundation, loan forgiveness on an equipment lease, and a high ownership interest in an ambulatory surgery center owned by the two healthcare firms. In exchange, Kerlan-Jobe referred patients to HealthSouth facilities for medical care, federal prosecutors said.
The healthcare overhaul now being debated in Congress appears poised to bring the most significant improvements to the American Indian health system in decades, the New York Times reports. Provisions under consideration could, over time, direct streams of money to the American Indian healthcare system and give American Indians more treatment options. But some proposals, like exempting Indians from penalties for not obtaining insurance, may meet resistance from lawmakers opposed to expanding benefits for American Indians, many of whom receive free medical care.
A grass-roots conservative group is launching a $1 million ad campaign to persuade key senators to oppose the reform measure. Keeping Small Business Healthy, a project run by the advocacy group Institute for Liberty, will begin airing ads targeting five Senate Democrats in four relatively conservative states. Each ad features small-business owners from the specified state warning of the dire consequences if Democrats' health-reform proposals become law. Groups on all sides of the debate have combined to spend more than $170 million, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.
