Daily Health Care News - 1/26/09
Posted on January 26th, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum in News Clips
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NEWS
In or Out of Network? - Miami Herald
Patients Get Nasty Surprises on Medical Bills: Patients Are Getting Hammered By Huge Unexpected Charges on Medical Bills, Particularly in the Tricky Area of What's in and Out of Network. Experts Say Consumers Need to Watch Their Bills Carefully and Fight When They See Something Wrong.
Obama backs health care reform - USA Today
President Barack Obama vowed during his campaign to expand access to health insurance and reform health care. Early indications suggest that, despite an ailing economy — or perhaps because of it — he intends to keep his promise.
Unlike most industries, health care still adding jobs - Dallas Morning News
Rosemary Hill used to earn more than $200,000 a year as an executive for an information systems company. Rosemary Hill, a nurse in the bone marrow transfer unit at Baylor Medical Center, checks the vital signs of Dan Thornburg. Hill left a career as a highly paid information systems executive to become a nurse making not even a fourth of her previous salary.
Dodd Hears Anger, Frustration At Meeting On Health Care - The Hartford Courant
On the first day of a listening tour on health care, an issue pivotal to the new Congress and his own re-election, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd got an earful Friday.
Priced out of health care - CM Life
For college students, having no health insurance can magnify other stresses in life.
Jobless Can't Afford to Extend Health Coverage - Wall Street Journal
Fewer than one in 10 jobless workers extends their former employer's medical coverage, a new study has found.
Rangel Will Overhaul Tax Code ‘Immediately’ After Health Care - Bloomberg
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said he will pursue tax reform only after overhauling the health-care system and said “there’s no question” both can be completed by the end of 2010.
BBC documentary takes on Obama's plans for American health care system - Raw Story
A January 19 episode of BBC One's Panorama, the world's longest running television documentary show, tackles the dismal state of health care in the United States, the lengths to which its estimated 45 million uninsured citizens will go to in pursuit of care, the pharmaceutical industry's rigged pricing against the American patient, and the insurance industry's efforts to deny care whenever possible.
OPINION
The Siren Song of Public Programs - The Health Care Blog
Although details of their 2008 health care reform plans vary, there is significant consensus among the new Washington heavyweights—Obama, Daschle, Baucus, and Clinton. Their common proposal: we should expand Medicaid and offer an under-65 version of Medicare to compete with private insurance.
TOWARDS A BETTER MEDICAID. - Ezra Klein
Like a lot of social programs that rely, at least in part, on state funding, Medicaid is somewhat oddly designed. It's easy to fund when the economy is good and state tax revenues are high. But that's when it's least needed. It's very hard to fund, however, when the economy is bad and state tax revenues drop. But that's when enrollment spikes. So when Medicaid is most needed, it is most expensive, and states are least able to afford it. And, as The New York Times reports, that's the situation we're in right now.