Sick: AZ Man Makes $12 Too Much to Get Coverage for Heart Surgery
By Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress
Posted on June 28, 2011, Printed on June 30, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151460/sick%3A_az_man_makes_%2412_too_much_to_get_coverage_for_heart_surgery
Since last year, low-income Arizonans have been feeling the impact of a series of brutal Medicaid cuts that officials predict will kick at least135,000 people off the state’s health care rolls by next year. Now, thanks to these cuts, a Yuma man may be unable to afford a heart surgery he needs to survive.
Round 1 in Appeals of Health Care Overhaul Goes to Obama
By KEVIN SACK
The Obama administration prevailed Wednesday in the first appellate review of the 2010 health care law as a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that it was constitutional for Congress to require that Americans buy health insurance.
The ruling by the Cincinnati court is the first of three opinions to be delivered by separate courts of appeal that heard arguments in the health care litigation in May and June. Opinions are
Medicare Will Continue to Cover 2 Expensive Cancer Drugs
By ANDREW POLLACK
Medicare confirmed on Thursday that it would continue to pay for two expensive cancer drugs that had been at the center of debate — Avastin from Genentech for breast cancer and Provenge from Dendreon forprostate cancer.
A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the agency would continue to pay for Avastin for breast cancer, even if the Food and Drug Administration revoked the drug’s approval as a treatment for that disease.
Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work
By VALERIE GRIBBEN
Birmingham, Ala.
TODAY, after four arduous years of examinations, graduating medical doctors will report to their residency programs. Armed with stethoscopes and scalpels, they’re preparing to lead the charge against disease in its ravaging, chimerical forms. They carry with them the classic tomes: Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine and Gray’s Anatomy. But I have an unlikely addition for their mental rucksacks: “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”
Forty-five years ago today, Medicare began operation and senior citizens started to use their brand new Medicare cards to obtain medical care. As President Lyndon B. Johnson stated, older Americans began to receive guaranteed access to care "not as an act of charity, but as the insured right of a senior citizen. July 1, 1966 marks a new day of freedom for our people."
Posted: 06/20/11 07:13 PM ET
Gutting Maine’s health care system
By: J. Lester Feder
June 20, 2011 10:22 PM EDT
Weaning lawmakers off the device, however, is challenging not only because putting an end to it gets more expensive with every passing year but because it has failed at achieving the goal it was actually designed for: slowing cost growth. A permanent fix to the problem, experts say, requires not just being honest about what it will cost to pay doctors but also crafting a new payment structure that will succeed where the current formula failed.