Potential first-in-nation change gets little attention in Maine’s health insurance overhaul
By Steve Mistler, Sun Journal
AUGUSTA, Maine — Sweeping changes to the state’s health insurance laws were notable for their partisan rancor.
But both parties were silent when it came to the law’s little-known provision that sets the stage for Maine to become the first state in the nation to change how employers can provide health insurance coverage.
The new law, PL 90, includes a section allowing employers to band together and offer health insurance through so-called captives, insurance companies that are allowed to finance and leverage risk without having to buy additional insurance to cover that risk.
New Cardiac Surgery Programs Established From 1993 To 2004 Led To Little Increased Access, Substantial Duplication Of Services
Major Health Problems, Many Linked to Poverty, Plague Residents of Colonias
By EMILY RAMSHAW
PHARR — Laura knows what comfort feels like: Before leaving Reynosa, Mexico, for Texas a few years ago, she lived with her in-laws in a house with bedrooms and flushing toilets, with electricity and a leak-free roof.
Now, the 23-year-old — since deserted by her husband but still helped financially by his father — pays $187 a month to live in a dirt-floored shack that is part broken-down motor home, part splintered plywood shed. She bathes her five runny-nosed, half-clothed children, all under 10, with water siphoned from a neighbor’s garden hose. And she scrubs their diapers and school uniforms in the same sink where she rinses their dinner beans.
Hospitals in Mass. feel fiscal squeeze
16 reported losses; service cuts feared
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2011/07/10/hospitals_in_mass_feel_fiscal_squeeze/
New for Aspiring Doctors, the People Skills Test
By GARDINER HARRIS
ROANOKE, Va. — Doctors save lives, but they can sometimes be insufferable know-it-alls who bully nurses and do not listen to patients. Medical schools have traditionally done little to screen out such flawed applicants or to train them to behave better, but that is changing.
At Virginia Tech Carilion, the nation’s newest medical school, administrators decided against relying solely on grades, test scores and hourlong interviews to determine who got in. Instead, the school invited candidates to the admissions equivalent of speed-dating: nine brief interviews that forced candidates to show they had the social skills to navigate a health care system in which good communication has become critical.
Why we’re in the budgetary soup
By Robert J. Samuelson,
Just in case you hadn’t noticed, no one has elected Grover Norquist to anything. Still, he looms as a major obstacle to Congress reaching a deficit-reduction agreement needed to raise the federal debt ceiling. Norquist heads Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group that has persuaded 41 senators and 236 representatives (all but three of them Republicans) to sign its “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” opposing any tax increase. If Congress eliminates special-interest tax breaks, the pledge requires that they be “matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”
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