A year after he chopped a record $459 million from the state budget, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said that he wouldn't try to do it again because legislators already trimmed billions in state money and deeper cuts could be harmful to the state. Crist said the hundreds of millions for state projects are safe, as is Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital. Officials and legislators feared he would cut $20 million in reimbursement-rate money if the hospital didn't embrace a new healthcare initiative.
Patients with advanced cancer often don't know how long they have to live or how chemotherapy will affect their lives, according to a study. In many cases doctors don't give patients such information, and other times patients misunderstand their doctors and perhaps hear what they want to hear, the study found. As a result, patients may ask for aggressive, painful therapies that have no hope of helping them.
Republican Pennsylvania senators are promoting a healthcare plan they say will help more people for less money than a proposed expansion of government-subsidized insurance championed by Gov. Ed Rendell. More than half a million uninsured, low-income Pennsylvanians would obtain access to healthcare under the "HealthNet PA" plan, said Sen. Edwin B. Erickson, chairman of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee. The package of more than a dozen bills calls for an expansion of health insurance coverage that is more limited than the plan envisioned by the Rendell, coupled with measures intended to broaden the network of free health clinics for the poor and provide insurance coverage for people who cannot get it because of pre-existing health conditions.
Although reform is needed to fix the uninsured crisis, it requires a joint effort of government and the private sector and should preserve the nation's employer-based health insurance system, Aetna Chief Executive Ronald A. Williams told a congressional panel. Changes in the $2.2 trillion U.S. healthcare system to help the 47 million uninsured must deal with the interrelated issues of cost, quality and access to care, he added. More than three years ago, Aetna became the first national insurer to publicly endorse a requirement that all people have at least basic health insurance. Williams described other points in Aetna's plan for reform during testimony given to the Senate Committee on Finance.
The Bristol (CT) City Council has passed a resolution encouraging the General Assembly to enact legislation to make comprehensive healthcare available to all state residents. The move came after several residents held an occasionally emotional rally for universal healthcare that served as a precursor to a city council meeting. The rally was held by Healthcare4every1, and a handful of Bristol residents spoke about their own struggles to obtain healthcare.
As criminals capitalize on the growing use of the Internet by consumers searching for inexpensive drugs, counterfeit medicines are on the rise worldwide. Seizures of bogus prescription medicines jumped 24% in 2007, and illicit versions of 403 different prescription drugs were confiscated in 99 countries, according to the Pharmaceutical Security Institute.
Police have arrested 13 doctors from a clinic in Milan, Italy, who are suspected of performing needless and sometimes fatal operations to make more money. The doctors from Santa Rita Clinic face charges ranging from fraud to homicide. Three of the doctors were arrested on suspicion of murder for allegedly having performed on several patients "abnormal or invasive surgeries, without taking into consideration the fragility of the patients because of age or their medical condition," according to a police statement.
Gene Lindsey, MD, has been named the permanent chief executive of Newton, MA-based Atrius Health, the collection of physician practices that includes Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. His selection had been widely expected in Boston's medical community—he has been with Harvard Vanguard and its predecessor organizations for 33 years and since 1986 has served in various leadership positions. Harvard Vanguard is one of the largest physician practices in the United States that is not tied to a hospital, and has alliances with Dedham Medical Associates, Southboro Medical Group, South Shore Medical Center, South Shore Medical Group, and Granite Medical.
Anxious over being caught uninsured or paying sky-high premiums, some people are going to great lengths to get or keep job-based health coverage. The concerns are affecting a host of major life decisions, including the age of retirement and the state where people choose to live, insurance-industry watchers and financial advisers say. For those with existing medical conditions, conversations increasingly center on how to get or stay on a group policy or segue into the individual market in a way that prevents insurers from denying coverage or excluding the pre-existing conditions.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has named 12 communities that will participate in a national Medicare demonstration project that provides incentive payments to physicians for using certified electronic health records. The communities selected to work with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on the EHR demonstration project range from county- and state- level to multi-state collaborations. The communities were selected because they demonstrated active collaboration among stakeholders; existing or planned private sector initiatives related to health information technology and quality reporting; and adequate size to recruit a sufficient number of primary care physician practices, according to an HHS release.
