Federal Auditors Will Soon Review Health Insurance Rates in 10 States
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will soon take over the review of health insurance rates in 10 states where it says state officials do not adequately regulate premiums for insurance sold to individuals or small businesses.
At least one state, Iowa, has protested the federal decision and asked administration officials to reconsider.
Several other states acknowledged that they lacked the power under state law to review health insurance rates. Several insurance commissioners tried and failed to get such authority from their state legislatures this year.
Lawsuit Says Drugs Were Wasted to Buoy Profit
By ANDREW POLLACK
One of the nation’s largest providers of kidney dialysis deliberately wasted medicine in order to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in extra payments from Medicare, a former clinic nurse and a doctor are charging in a whistle-blower lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that the company, DaVita, used larger than necessary vials of medicine knowing that Medicare would pay for the unused portion of each vial if it were deemed unavoidable waste. DaVita, which treats nearly a third of the nation’s dialysis patients, denies the accusations.
Healthcare in America: Sacred Cow or Cash Cow?
OPINION July 26, 2011 -- Envious of conservatives who control moral politics with "pro-life," "tax relief," and "family values," progressives have embraced George Lakoff's linguistic framing strategies.
President Obama won the hearts and minds of independent and progressive voters with his message of "hope" and "change." Yet the Obama administration repackaged his rhetoric with conservative ideology and pragmatism.
This is certainly true in regards to the Affordable Care Act, conceived (and now disowned) by Mitt Romney. Obama rejected single payer activists from the negotiation table. Ironically, the current snapshot of the Obama administration is framed by "socialized medicine," "death panels," and "Obamacare."
Rays of hope for single payer financing shine on Vermont, where a new law creates Green Mountain Care Board, a public board that "can wield traditional tools such as fee-for-service rate setting, controls on the acquisition of technology, and reviews of both health insurers’ rates and hospitals’ budgets."
Useless Studies, Real Harm
By CARL ELLIOTT
Minneapolis
LAST month, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a scathing reassessment of a 12-year-old research study of Neurontin, a seizure drug made by Pfizer. The study, which had included more than 2,700 subjects and was carried out by Parke-Davis (now part of Pfizer), was notable for how poorly it was conducted. The investigators were inexperienced and untrained, and the design of the study was so flawed it generated few if any useful conclusions. Even more alarming, 11 patients in the study died and 73 more experienced “serious adverse events.” Yet there have been few headlines, no demands for sanctions or apologies, no national bioethics commissions pledging to investigate. Why not?
As boomers hit old age, a new nursing home model is needed
Posted July 28, 2011, at 5:54 p.m.
There’s no denying baby boomers challenged and reinvented many of life’s conventions.
Getting a job after school? Maybe not; maybe a backpacking trip through Europe first. Climbing the career ladder into the upper-income zone? No, job satisfaction is more important.
Marrying? Maybe after living together for a time. Setting aside sports, surfing, running, hiking and dancing at 50? No way.
But there’s one phase of life boomers may not be able redefine. They will age, decline, fall ill and die, like every generation before them. Those who are younger must face the burden of caring for these 76 million Americans, the oldest of whom are now hitting their mid-60s.
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