Villages Without Doctors - NYTimes.com
Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about an idea that can make people healthier while bringing down health care costs, both in poor countries and in the United States.
The strategy is to move beyond doctors — to take the work of health care and shift down from doctors and nurses to lay people, peers and family. In the United States and other wealthy countries, lay people can fill in the gaps in left by doctors’ care. In poor countries, people with no or little formal medical training are successfully substituting for doctors and nurses.
Insurers Seeking Smaller Rate Hikes
One year after the state’s biggest health insurers requested premium increases averaging 12 to 25 percent for small businesses and individuals, touching off a five-month battle with Governor Deval Patrick, the companies are limiting their proposed base rate hikes to under 10 percent for the year starting April 1.
Patrick administration officials, who last year rejected the double-digit rate increases, hailed the more modest requests as a victory in their campaign to contain soaring health costs. The proposals come as Patrick prepares to unveil legislation that will seek to further restrain spending by changing how doctors and hospitals are paid.
Obama Proposes Health Agency Cut But Spares Medicare Fees
WASHINGTON — Spending by the Department of Health and Human Serviceswould decline in 2012 for the first time in the agency’s 30-year history underPresident Obama’s budget request.
The proposed 2 percent cut, to $892 billion, is striking because the department’s two biggest programs, Medicare and Medicaid, have been growing more than 8 percent a year, and the department has myriad duties under the new health care law.
Justice Ginsburg Expects Health Care Cases (And Retirement) To Be A Ways Off
Contributor
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has made it clear that she does not plan to retire any time soon, nor does she expect challenges to health care legislation to arrive quickly for the high court's review.
In an interview with NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg at George Washington University last week, the 77-year-old cancer survivor also talked about her career as a justice and how she gets along with her colleagues.
Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton and began serving in 1993.
Public Option Is Alive In CT, But Insurers' BFFs Are Out To Kill It
by Wendell Potter
As I noted Friday, health insurers in Connecticut will call on some of their longtime allies to help turn the public and state lawmakers against the idea of creating a state-run public option.
Legislators in Hartford are taking up the idea of doing just that today, as three legislative committees hold a joint public hearing on SustiNet, which they actually created in theory but didn't fund in 2009. If implemented, SustiNet would provide a health care benefits package starting in 2014 for a prospective pool of recipients including state workers, Medicaid recipients, individuals and small businesses.
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