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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Health Care Reform Articles - September 30, 2011

Gingrich proposes "pro-market" health care

Anne Telnaes

Some Common Ground for Legal Adversaries on Health Care


WASHINGTON — The 2010 health care overhaul law has provoked an unprecedented clash between the federal government and 26 states, dividing them on fundamental questions about the very structure of the federal system. But the two sides share a surprising amount of common ground, too, starting with their agreement in briefs, filed on Wednesday, that the Supreme Court should resolve the clash in its current term.
Until just days ago, it was hardly clear that the Obama administration would agree with the states on the need for prompt review, as there were good political reasons for moving slowly. The court’s decision is now most likely to come just months before the 2012 presidential election.
Their briefs also reflect agreement on matters of substance. The two sides, along with the judges in the majority in the appeals court decision most likely to be reviewed by the justices, all said the dispute is about means rather than ends. There are other ways, they said, for Congress to achieve near-universal health coverage, some of them more expansive than what was enacted

Costs Of Employer Insurance Plans Surge in 2011

SEP 27, 2011
Employers' spending on health coverage for workers spiked abruptly this year, with the average cost of a family plan rising by 9 percent, triple the growth seen in 2010.
Family plan premiums hit $15,073 on average, while coverage for single employees grew 8 percent to $5,429, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust. (KHN is an editorially-independent program of the foundation.)



Health Insurers Push Premiums Sharply Higher




Major health insurance companies have been charging sharply higher premiums this year, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and creating more uncertainty for the Obama administration and employers who are struggling to drive down an unrelenting rise in medical costs.

A Jump in Health Care Premiums

After years of fairly small increases in health care premiums, average costs rose sharply this year.



Decoding the God Complex




WASHINGTON
Medical schools are starting to train doctors to be less intimidating to patients. And patients are starting to train themselves to be less intimidated by doctors.
We haven’t completely gotten away from the syndrome so perfectly described by Alec Baldwin’s arrogant surgeon in the movie “Malice”: “When someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn’t miscarry or that their daughter doesn’t bleed to death or that their mother doesn’t suffer acute neural trauma from postoperative shock, who do you think they’re praying to? ... You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”


Supreme Court Is Asked to Rule on Health Care



WASHINGTON — The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear a case concerning the 2010 health care overhaul law. The development, which came unexpectedly fast, makes it all but certain that the court will soon agree to hear one or more cases involving challenges to the law, with arguments by the spring and a decision by June, in time to land in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Americans get too much healthcare, their docs say
Frederik Joelving, Reuters Health, Sep 26, 2011
Here is a diagnosis of what's wrong with health
care in America, straight from the horse's mouth: There's too much.
In a new poll of primary care physicians, nearly
half of them said their patients received too
much medical care and more than a quarter said
they were practicing more aggressively than they'd like to.
http://groups.google.com/group/equal-list/browse_thread/thread/c9d0bd6ff8a8a33


Hospitals push age hike for Medicare

Seek to avoid cuts in federal payments


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