Health Care Reform Articles - September 13, 2011

Feds may step in as states lag on health reform

By N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post

Across the country, states are lagging in preparations to erect the health insurance marketplaces at the heart of the 2010 health-care overhaul, bogged down by a combination of partisan hostility and practical hurdles.
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/10/health/feds-may-step-in-as-states-lag-on-health-reform/print/

Medical testing gone astray?

Sounds like a deal, right?A flyer comes in the mail from Tufts Medical Center advertising life-saving stroke prevention: three tests in 30 minutes, at the discount rate of $119. The tests are not covered by insurance, but bring a friend to a screening site at the local church, and you both get $10 off.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2011/09/11/behind-screen/QCWLL7dS9FNrBLwfLN5VfO/story.xml

Republican health care law already causing price spikes, fear

By Walter Kumiega, Special to the BDN

Posted Sept. 12, 2011, at 3:28 p.m.

With the summer coming to an end, many of the laws passed by the Maine Legislature will be going into effect this month. One of those laws is the majorhealth insurance overhaul Republicans pushed through a few months ago.

We are already seeing the negative effects of this health insurance overhaul. The Ellsworth America

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/12/opinion/republican-health-care-law-already-causing-price-spikes-fear/print/

Obama Looks for Big Health Cuts, Worrying Democrats

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — As Congress opens a politically charged exploration of ways to pare the deficit, President Obama is expected to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in Medicare and Medicaid, delighting Republicans and dismaying many Democrats who fear that his proposals will become a starting point for bigger cuts in the popular health programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/politics/obamas-expected-plan-for-entitlement-savings-worries-democrats.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Number of uninsured climbs to highest figure since passage of Medicare, Medicaid

Created Tuesday, September 13, 2011

50 million uninsured shows urgency of enacting single-payer Medicare for all: national doctors group

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 13, 2011
Contact:
Garrett Adams, M.D., M.P.H.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org
Local physicians in 43 states available for comment (See historical table of uninsured by state below).
Official estimates by the Census Bureau showing an increase of about 1 million in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2010 – to a 35-year high of 49.9 million persons, or 16.3 percent of the population, under the bureau’s revised calculation method – underscore the urgency of going beyond the Obama administration’s federal health law and swiftly implementing a single-payer, improved Medicare-for-all program, spokespersons for Physicians for a National Health Program said today.
Employment-based coverage continued to decline. The bureau said 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.
In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is widely viewed as the model for the federal health law, 370,000 people remained uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2011/september/number-of-uninsured-climbs-to-highest-figure-since-passage-of-medicare-medicaid