Changing News Archive - June, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's drive to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system may be back on track thanks to Senate efforts to cut the price tag to $1 trillion, but a bipartisan deal on the sweeping proposal still is far from certain.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday.

The poll came amid mounting opposition to plans by the Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic-controlled Congress to push through the most sweeping restructuring of the U.S. healthcare system since the end of World War Two.

Two GOP senators—Howard Baker and Robert Dole—along with Democrat Thomas Daschle (with an earlier assist from George Mitchell) released their bipartisan proposal Wednesday that addresses delivery, cost, quality, coverage, and financing issues facing the healthcare system.

Dom Nicastro, for HealthLeaders Media, June 15, 2009

Major regulations surrounding breach notifications on PHRs by the Federal Trade Commission and unsecure PHI by the Department of Health and Human Services are due in August.

However, now is the time to start thinking about a few things when it comes to HIPAA and the new laws in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.

By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Congress working to flesh out controversial elements of his healthcare reform plan, U.S. President Barack Obama will make his case to the nation's doctors on Monday for a new public insurance program, seeking to overcome their resistance.

In a move that could appeal to doctors and Republican skeptics of his healthcare overhaul ideas, Obama privately has been making the case for taking action to help protect doctors from malpractice lawsuits, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The American Medical Association wants it to be known: they support a government-sponsored health insurance plan, except when they oppose one.

In testimony to the Senate Finance Committee last month, the physician lobby went on at length detailing its discomfort with a so-called public plan, predicting it would "restrict patient choice," force private insurers out of the market and "would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers."

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization was poised on Thursday to declare that the new H1N1 virus has caused the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years, health sources said on Thursday.

The move will trigger heightened health measures in the WHO's 193 member states as authorities brace for the worldwide spread of the virus that has so far caused mainly mild illness.

WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan was to hold a news conference on the outbreak at 1600 GMT.

WASHINGTON -- Employers would be required to offer health care to employees or pay a penalty - and all Americans would be guaranteed health insurance - under a draft bill circulated Friday by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's health committee.

The bill would provide subsidies to help poor people pay for care, guarantee patients the right to select any doctor they want and require everyone to purchase insurance, with exceptions for those who can't afford to.

In the midst of dealing with countless challenges, both foreign and domestic, and a deep ideological divide in Congress, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies have nevertheless made important strides in their aggressive pursuit of health care reform legislation. In what President Barack Obama characterized as "a historic day, a watershed event in the long and elusive quest for health care reform," major organizations representing the nation's physicians, hospitals, health plans, and medical suppliers pledged to do their part to achieve the administration's goal of reducing by 1.5% annually the growth of health care spending over the next decade — saving an estimated $2 trillion.

CVS's Minute Clinic, Target's Clinic, The Clinic at Walmart, Walgreens' Take Care Health Clinic—what do they have in common? They are part of a growing breed of retail clinics that provide fast, low-cost, convenient care for customers. They are also located in more affluent communities, according to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Most retail clinics, also called convenient care clinics, tend to be located in areas of higher incomes with higher percentages of Caucasian residents, according to a new study, "The Geographic Accessibility of Retail Clinics for Underserved Populations," published in The Archives of Internal Medicine in May.

Despite many waves of debate and piecemeal reforms, the U.S. health care system remains largely the same as it was decades ago. We have seen no convincing approach to changing the unsustainable trajectory of the system, much less to offsetting the rising costs of an aging population and new medical advances.

Today there is a new openness to changing a system that all agree is broken. What we need now is a clear national strategy that sets forth a comprehensive vision for the kind of health care system we want to achieve and a path for getting there. The central focus must be on increasing value for patients — the health outcomes achieved per dollar spent.1 Good outcomes that are achieved efficiently are the goal, not the false "savings" from cost shifting and restricted services. Indeed, the only way to truly contain costs in health care is to improve outcomes: in a value-based system, achieving and maintaining good health is inherently less costly than dealing with poor health.

OK, so there's been a lot of buzz—and a lot of articles—about hospitals that are using the micro-blogging site Twitter to describe surgeries in real time. There's also been a lot of debate over whether or not this is a good idea.

After meeting at the White House three weeks ago, members of the six healthcare organizations that promised to find ways to save $2 trillion over the next decade—by decreasing by 1.5% the annual healthcare spending growth rate—yesterday sent their game plan "to bend the cost curve" in the form of a 28-page letter to the White House.

After convening seven all-day meetings and multiple conference calls, the group came up with the following projected savings:

Utilization of care ($150 to $180 billion)
Chronic care ($350 to $850 billion)
Administrative simplification and the cost of doing business ($500 to $700 billion)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of middle-aged and older Americans who eat right, exercise and keep their weight down has declined substantially in the past two decades, a new study finds.

Using data from a large government health survey, researchers found that in 2006, only 26 percent of Americans ages 40 to 74 said they ate five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day -- down from 42 percent in 1988.