A Shift From Nursing Homes to Managed Care at Home
By JOSEPH BERGER
Faced with soaring health care costs and shrinking Medicare and Medicaid financing, nursing home operators are closing some facilities and embracing an emerging model of care that allows many elderly patients to remain in their homes and still receive the medical and social services available in institutions.
The rapid expansion of this new type of care comes at a time when health care experts argue that for many aged patients, the nursing home model is no longer financially viable or medically justified.
In the newer model, a team of doctors, social workers, physical and occupational therapists and other specialists provides managed care for individual patients at home, at adult day-care centers and in visits to specialists. Studies suggest that it can be less expensive than traditional nursing homes while providing better medical outcomes.
The number of such programs has expanded rapidly, growing from 42 programs in 22 states in 2007 to 84 in 29 states today. In New York City, a program run by a division of CenterLight Health System, formerly known as the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services, has over 2,500 participants at 12 sites in the metropolitan area.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/nyregion/managed-care-keeps-the-frail-out-of-nursing-homes.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
State to Close Program on Federal Health Law
By THANH TAN
A program created to help insurance-seekers in Texas cut through the complexities of federal health care reforms is shutting down in April, just 15 months after it opened its call center and years before the law goes into full effect.
Officials with the Texas Department of Insurance say they plan to help fill the gap, but it is unclear whether they can handle what some health experts call a beast of a policy change: millions of new patients will be required to acquire health insurance, and those first-time policy holders will need help understanding their rights and benefits.
When President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, a consumer education program was also created. That September, the federal government awarded the Texas Department of Insurance a $2.8 million grant to start the Consumer Health Assistance Program.
As of January, the department reported, the program had answered 8,900 calls and resolved nearly 5,600 cases statewide. A staff of nine employees had dispersed multilingual public service announcements, given field presentations, begun a Web site and staffed a hot line.
Austerity in Europe Puts Pressure on Drug Companies
By STEPHANIE NOVAK
PARIS —Profits at pharmaceutical companies have been declining or showing little growth for the last year as austerity measures across Europe lead to cuts in health care spending. Some analysts say this trend could continue until at least 2014.
Budget cuts mean that many European governments are not willing to pay as much for pills. But new laws in some countries are also putting pressure on companies to prove their drugs are effective or risk having them dropped from the coverage list, or covered at a lower rate.
And price reductions in Europe can have a ripple effect. Profits from sales in emerging markets may also fall, because governments in emerging markets refer to the prices set in Europe to determine their own.
That would particularly hurt European pharmaceutical companies, which have been quite successful in emerging markets in the last five years. American companies, by contrast, do not rely as much on overseas revenue because of their large domestic market.
A Cartoon That Cuts Through the Health Care Brambles
By CORNELIA DEAN
If you have been following the so-called debate over the Affordable Care Act of 2010 — often referred to by critics as Obamacare — you may be confused about what has changed so far and what it may mean in the future. You may even occasionally wish someone would draw you a diagram.
Now someone has done that, offering an easy-to-understand cartoon walk through the health care policy landscape. In “Health Care Reform,” readers see patients, workers, employers and others confront some of the legislation’s knotty issues, especially the mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance, the chief issue the Supreme Court will take up in March when justices hear challenges to the bill.
Prominent among the book’s comic characters is its author, Jonathan Gruber. Dr. Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consulted with the Obama administration and Congress as the legislation was drafted, and he was one of the architects of the plan on which it is based, the Massachusetts health care law that Mitt Romney pushed through when he was governor but seems ready to forget in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.
For critics of either law, Dr. Gruber’s résumé offers reason enough to consign the book to the dustbin. But that would be a mistake.
Or so the founders of a Santa Monica start-up called GoodRx are hoping.
"There's no other site like it that we know of," said Scott Marlette, a former Facebook employee who's hoping to hit it big again with his new company. "We wanted to create a product where people can find the best pharmacy to go to."
Emergency budget for DHHS approved
Posted:TodayUpdated: 8:16 AM
AUGUSTA — A pared-down budget for the Department of Health and Human Services won final approval Thursday as four Democratic senators went from opposing the plan to supporting it, based on assurances that efforts will be made to help veterans maintain health insurance.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Maine-Senate-passes-DHHS-budget.html
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