Charges Against Health Care Executive Raise Broader Issues
By JIM DWYER
We learned this week from a federal bribery case, of all places, that the going rate in 2008 to park a dying person in a hospital bed in Brooklyn was $772.80. That fee was enough to cover hospice care and, if the charges are true, a payoff to a state senator from Brooklyn.
History tells us that quite a few politicians got rich by awarding contracts for the epic public works of the 19th century, and that graft gave New York City the parks, bridges and reservoirs that have defined it for the ages.
Now, we have State Senator Carl Kruger, who, it is charged, was effectively getting rich on nasogastric tubes. Mr. Kruger has pleaded not guilty, and so has David F. Rosen, the hospital executive accused of being involved in the scheme.
Medicaid and the N.Y. Budget: A Bad Deal on Malpractice
When Governor Cuomo and his aides started looking for ways to reduce Medicaid costs, capping malpractice payments was not on their radar. Hospital leaders on the Medicaid Redesign Team pushed the idea hard, justifying it with data supplied by the hospital industry.
The governor has decided to go along, either because he suddenly believes in it or, as we suspect, it’s a price he is willing to pay to get an agreement on Medicaid spending. Whatever the reason, it is the wrong way to go. It will unfairly punish patients badly injured by medical negligence.
The Happynomics of Life
By ROGER COHEN
London
The Brits don’t go in much for happiness. Stiff upper lip is more the thing, and a good laugh if warranted. Trying to be happy just seems like piffle to a practical people. Undeterred, Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to create a national happiness index providing quarterly measures of how folks feel.
His foray into “happynomics” has prompted a deluge of criticism — “woolly-headed distraction” was a mild commentary — at a time when Brits face a year of cuts in everything from public-sector jobs to child benefits. The consensus seems to be that Cameron is going touchy-feely because in reality he’s wielding an ax.
Waivers at center of health debate | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Exceptions may become the rule as the Affordable Care Act heads into its second year. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have approved no fewer than 1,040 requests for so-called mini-med waivers, which would allow companies to cap their annual payouts at a lower level than dictated by the law. And over the next year, many states will seek a reprieve from two of the law’s most wide-reaching provisions: the medical loss ratio, which limits profits and administrative costs by requiring insurers to spend at least 80 percent of subscriber premiums on medical costs; and the maintenance-of-effort provision barring states from dropping Medicaid eligibility before the program’s expansion in 2014. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B1264CF7-EFC9-C409-4E837949652B0CB9
|
