Citing costs, Steward cuts hospital guards
Jobs outsourced to New Jersey company; former workers trained replacements
Steward Health Care System eliminated the security staff at four of its Massachusetts hospitals earlier this month, outsourcing about 50 jobs to a New Jersey-based contractor with connections to Steward’s parent company. The hospital guards, several of whom had been on staff for more than 20 years, trained some of the workers who replaced them under the new company.
Most of the Steward guards at Quincy Medical Center, Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill, Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, and Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River were told they could reapply for a job with the new contractor, APG Security. Many declined to do so because it meant taking a pay cut of as much as $10 an hour, according to several former guards.
Steward said the action was taken to cut costs at a time when insurers are reducing payments to doctors and hospitals, forcing the health care provider “to do more with less.”
“Steward is a health care company, not a security company,” Steward Hospitals president Joshua Putter wrote in a letter to the for-profit chain’s executives. Outsourcing security jobs “allows us to continue to invest in clinical staff, clinical technology, and facilities so our patients continue to receive world class health care in their community,” he said.
Steward guards said they found out they were being replaced, effective immediately, the morning of Jan. 7. Sheena Duval, 23, a Quincy Medical guard who earned $16.30 an hour, said she was on her way to work when she received a voice message on her phone telling her that she had been let go. Duval, who was not technically full time but worked about 40 hours a week, said she was not offered a job with APG. Even if she had been, Duval said, she could not afford to accept the $12-an-hour rate her colleagues were told to expect.
Maker Aware of 40% Failure in Hip Implant
By BARRY MEIER
An internal analysis conducted by Johnson & Johnson in 2011 not long after it recalled a troubled hip implant estimated that the all-metal device would fail within five years in nearly 40 percent of patients who received it, newly disclosed court records show.
Johnson & Johnson never released those projections for the device, the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R., which the company recalled in mid-2010. But at the same time that the medical products giant was performing that analysis, it was publicly playing down similar findings from a British implant registry about the device’s early failure rate.
The company’s analysis also suggests that the implant is likely to fail prematurely over the next few years in thousands more patients in addition to those who have already had painful and costly procedures to replace it.
The internal Johnson & Johnson analysis is among hundreds of internal company documents expected to become public as the first of over 10,000 lawsuits by patients who got an A.S.R. prepares to go to trial this week. The episode represents one of the biggest medical device failures in recent decades and the forthcoming trial is expected to shed light on what officials of Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopaedics division knew about the device’s problem before its recall and the actions they took or did not take.
The trial, which is expected to begin Friday in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, may also provide a guide to the consequences of the A.S.R. episode to Johnson & Johnson, both for the company’s finances and its reputation. Last year, the company took a $3 billion special charge, much of it related to medical and legal costs associated with the device. DePuy has offered to pay patient costs for replacement procedures.
The A.S.R. belonged to a once-popular class of hip implants in which a device’s cup and ball component were both made of metal. While the A.S.R. was the most failure-prone of those implants, surgeons have largely abandoned using such devices in standard hip replacement because their components can grind together, releasing metallic debris that damages a patient’s tissue and bone.
Many Medicaid Patients Could Face Higher Fees Under a Proposed Federal Policy
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — Millions of low-income people could be required to pay more for health care under a proposed federal policy that would give states more freedom to impose co-payments and other charges on Medicaid patients.
Hoping to persuade states to expand Medicaid, the Obama administration said state Medicaid officials could charge higher co-payments and premiums for doctors’ services, prescription drugs and certain types of hospital care, including the “nonemergency use” of emergency rooms. State officials have long asked for more leeway to impose such charges.
The 2010 health care law extended Medicaid to many childless adults and others who were previously ineligible. The Supreme Court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states, not a requirement as Congress had intended. The administration has been trying to persuade states to take the option, emphasizing that they can reconfigure Medicaid to hold down their costs and “promote the most effective use of services.”
In the proposed rule published Tuesday in the Federal Register, the administration said it was simplifying a complex, confusing array of standards that limit states’ ability to charge Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the proposal, a family of three with annual income of $30,000 could be required to pay $1,500 in premiums and co-payments.
As if to emphasize the latitude given to states, the administration used this heading for part of the new rule: “Higher Cost Sharing Permitted for Individuals With Incomes Above 100 Percent of the Federal Poverty Level” (that is, $19,090 for a family of three).
Barbara K. Tomar, director of federal affairs at the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the administration had not adequately defined the “nonemergency services” for which low-income people could be required to pay. In many cases, she said, patients legitimately believe they need emergency care, but the final diagnosis does not bear that out.
“This is just a way to reduce payments to physicians and hospitals” from the government, Ms. Tomar said.
Labor Campaign Pushes Healthcare as a Human Right, Not a Business
Micah Uetricht | January 22, 2013
As most American progressives know, nearly every industrialized country in the world has a government-funded health care program—except the US. Not as many of us know, however, that in nearly all of those countries, organized labor was a central player in fighting for and defending those systems.
The unionists gathered over the weekend at the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference in Chicago argue that if universal health care is ever to be achieved in the US, labor must play a key role in pushing for it—which many have plans to do, particularly on the state level, in the near future.
The LCSP was founded in 2009 by a broad group of union activists, including Mark Dudzic, a former union local president, and longtime labor organizer and rabble-rouser Jerry Tucker. Tucker, who died late last year [1] and was commemorated Friday by the campaign, was a stalwart organizer at the rank-and-file level, having little interest in the shifts of power in labor’s upper echelons. That spirit clearly still animates the campaign; attendees seemed to see the hopes for single-payer to come not from on high, but through organizing at labor’s grassroots.
Campaign activists, like many on the left, acknowledged the Affordable Care Act’s positive outcomes like some expanded coverage and the expansion of Medicaid while arguing it does not go nearly far enough in its reforms. Dudzic, the national coordinator of the campaign, says that labor and the progressive movement face a pivotal choice after the ACA has been cemented as the law of the land.
“We’re in a new strategic position,” Dudzic says. “We can either circle the wagons around what’s already been accomplished—which anybody who’s been around for the last 30 years would know is a strategy destined for failure—or we can continue to move forward to real health care justice.
“We want to challenge labor to keep moving.”
Many activists are looking to Vermont as an example to follow. The Green Mountain State saw a successful campaign for single-payer [2] that began in 2008. The fight was led by labor—not by a traditional union, but by the Vermont Workers Center [3], a community-based worker rights organization, who assembled a broad coalition including many unions that successfully pushed single-payer legislation around a “health care is a human right” framework.
Leslie Matthews, a member of the VWC, says that while full implementation of single-payer is several years away in the state, the laws have already had significant impact. When the University of Vermont’s Fletcher Allen hospital decided their dialysis services were no longer profitable, they looked to a $26 million bid to a for-profit company to privatize them. Alongside the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the VWC mobilized against this move, saying it was incompatible with the state’s single-payer legislation like H. 202 [4] and Act 48 [5] and demanded the state’s Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration reject the offer. They did.
“Our activists pointed to the law and said, ‘Health care is a public good. Privatizing these services is in conflict with this concept,’” Matthews says. “That was influential in convincing them to disallow the sale.”
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/172353/labor-campaign-pushes-healthcare-human-right-not-business
The unionists gathered over the weekend at the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference in Chicago argue that if universal health care is ever to be achieved in the US, labor must play a key role in pushing for it—which many have plans to do, particularly on the state level, in the near future.
The LCSP was founded in 2009 by a broad group of union activists, including Mark Dudzic, a former union local president, and longtime labor organizer and rabble-rouser Jerry Tucker. Tucker, who died late last year [1] and was commemorated Friday by the campaign, was a stalwart organizer at the rank-and-file level, having little interest in the shifts of power in labor’s upper echelons. That spirit clearly still animates the campaign; attendees seemed to see the hopes for single-payer to come not from on high, but through organizing at labor’s grassroots.
Campaign activists, like many on the left, acknowledged the Affordable Care Act’s positive outcomes like some expanded coverage and the expansion of Medicaid while arguing it does not go nearly far enough in its reforms. Dudzic, the national coordinator of the campaign, says that labor and the progressive movement face a pivotal choice after the ACA has been cemented as the law of the land.
“We’re in a new strategic position,” Dudzic says. “We can either circle the wagons around what’s already been accomplished—which anybody who’s been around for the last 30 years would know is a strategy destined for failure—or we can continue to move forward to real health care justice.
“We want to challenge labor to keep moving.”
Many activists are looking to Vermont as an example to follow. The Green Mountain State saw a successful campaign for single-payer [2] that began in 2008. The fight was led by labor—not by a traditional union, but by the Vermont Workers Center [3], a community-based worker rights organization, who assembled a broad coalition including many unions that successfully pushed single-payer legislation around a “health care is a human right” framework.
Leslie Matthews, a member of the VWC, says that while full implementation of single-payer is several years away in the state, the laws have already had significant impact. When the University of Vermont’s Fletcher Allen hospital decided their dialysis services were no longer profitable, they looked to a $26 million bid to a for-profit company to privatize them. Alongside the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the VWC mobilized against this move, saying it was incompatible with the state’s single-payer legislation like H. 202 [4] and Act 48 [5] and demanded the state’s Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration reject the offer. They did.
“Our activists pointed to the law and said, ‘Health care is a public good. Privatizing these services is in conflict with this concept,’” Matthews says. “That was influential in convincing them to disallow the sale.”
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/172353/labor-campaign-pushes-healthcare-human-right-not-business
Details still uncertain about Maine health exchange
State seeks information on costs, consumer protection and state oversight for next year.
By Kelley Bouchard kbouchard@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
AUGUSTA – Maine legislators still have questions about the state's planned involvement in a new federal health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act.
The Legislature's Insurance and Financial Services Committee is seeking information on costs, consumer protection issues and state oversight as Maine prepares to use the online federal exchange starting in January 2014.
The committee also heard new information Tuesday about the possibility of establishing a federal-state partnership exchange, which would allow the state to manage health insurance plans and provide consumer assistance.
The Obama administration gave states the option of establishing a federal-state partnership exchange in July 2011, but the insurance committee never considered it, said Rep. Sharon Treat, D-Hallowell, co-chairwoman and longtime committee member.
Still, Treat said she wouldn't support switching to a partnership or state exchange without gathering much more information, rallying bipartisan support and ensuring that Mainers would benefit.
Could a conversion on Obamacare in Arizona spread to Maine?
Arizona Gov. Jane Brewer has stuck her finger in President Barack Obama’s face during a brief airport encounter.
She’s dared the federal government to intervene by passing a nasty anti-immigrant state law.
She’s a tea party favorite. A radical Republican. She seems to enjoy picking a fight, particularly with the president.
And, she plans to voluntarily adopt one of the key provisions of Obamacare. Arizona, according to numerous press reports, will expand Medicaid to cover more people who are uninsured.
Knock me over with a feather.
In her State of the State Address, here’s what Brewer said, maintaining a hint of derisiveness but making the case for Obamacare:
“Try as we might, the law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The president was re-elected, and his party controls the U.S. Senate.
“In short, the Affordable Care Act isn’t going anywhere – at least not for the time being,” Brewer said.
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