Chink in the dam
Published: February 14, 2012
Like a chink in a dam, Gov. Peter Shumlin’s concessions to the business community on participation in a new health benefits exchange threaten to open a chasm that could blow the dam wide open.Shumlin announced last week that he was broadening the category of businesses that would not be required to purchase insurance from the exchange that state officials are now constructing to serve as a marketplace for health care policies. Creation of the exchange follows the requirements of the federal health care reform law and is meant to create a steppingstone to a new single-payer system for Vermont.
http://www.timesargus.com/article/20120214/OPINION01/702149967/1021/OPINION0
Conservatives Sowed Idea of Health Care Mandate, Only to Spurn It Later
It can be difficult to remember now, given the ferocity with which many Republicans assail it as an attack on freedom, but the provision in President Obama’s health care law requiring all Americans to buy health insurance has its roots in conservative thinking.
The concept that people should be required to buy health coverage was fleshed out more than two decades ago by a number of conservative economists, embraced by scholars at conservative research groups, including the Heritage Foundationand the American Enterprise Institute, and championed, for a time, by Republicans in the Senate.
Hip Implants U.S. Rejected Sold Overseas
The health care products giant Johnson & Johnson continued to market an artificial hip in Europe and elsewhere overseas after the Food and Drug Administration rejected its sale in the United States based on a review of company safety studies.
During that period, the company also continued to sell in this country a related model, which earlier went on the market using a regulatory loophole that did not require a similar safety review.
Birth-control flap shows the need to abort employer-based healthcare
David Lazarus
February 14, 2012
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It wasn't a retreat. Nor was it a compromise. It was an "accommodation."
That's how the White House spun President Obama's attempt last week to tamp down the political brush fire that had erupted over requiring all health insurance plans — including those offered by Roman Catholic universities and hospitals — to include free birth control for women.
ICD-10 To Be Delayed Indefinitely--Never Mind!
After years of telling us they are serious this time and everyone in the health care system had better be ready on time to implement the new disease coding system, CMS said today the whole project is going to be delayed indefinitely.
The new ICD-10 system requires payers and providers to convert from the old system of 13,000 codes to the new system of 68,000 codes.
The new ICD-10 system requires payers and providers to convert from the old system of 13,000 codes to the new system of 68,000 codes.
Toward an unhealthy Maine
Posted Feb. 13, 2012, at 10:29 p.m.
Depending on how the current struggles and compromises over the Maine budget come out, one of the big losers can be the Fund for a Healthy Maine, which receives the state’s annual share of a 1998 multibillion-dollar lawsuit settlement with the four largest cigarette companies.
Maine gets about $50 million a year “in perpetuity” from the tobacco settlement as reimbursement for past tobacco-related health costs. The settlement allowed the states to use the payments for any purpose. Some have used the payments chiefly to balance their state budgets.
Maine has been a leader in restricting its use to health-related programs. In a 1999 law, Maine created the Fund for a Healthy Maine to receive the tobacco payments and specifies that “allocations are limited to the following health-related purposes.” It then lists eight programs starting with smoking prevention and winding up with school health and nutrition programs.
Autoworkers’ Health Claims Offer Clues To Regional Spending Variations
Why does health care cost more in some areas of the country than others? It’s a question researchers have struggled with for decades, because the potential answers — unnecessary surgeries, generally bad health of patients or high prices charged by providers — each carry different prescriptions for how to hold down medical costs.Now a new study from the Center for Studying Health System Change takes a novel approach by comparing claims among 218,000 autoworkers in 19 metropolitan areas. Because the autoworkers had the same private health plan through their union, the study didn’t have to worry about how different insurance benefits influenced health spending.
http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org/index.php/2012/02/autoworkers-health-claims-offer-clues-to-regional-spending-variations/
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