Free Republic

You should care a lot about how health reform will affect your doctor. The reason: it will also affect you. Here's what's happening: hospitals are merging and they are acquiring doctors. In the process, they are making the market less competitive, gaming third-party payment formulas and doing other things that make our health insurance premiums and our taxes higher than they otherwise would be. None of this is the result of any plan the administration ever announced, however. What did the Obama administration intend to happen? The clearest explanation of their vision of health reform comes from Harvard Medical School...

With just days to go before two of Philadelphia's most prestigious hospitals refuse to hire smokers, the ban has relit a debate about the wisdom of regulating workers' behavior away from the workplace. Both the highly rated University of Pennsylvania Health System, which includes the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, named by US News and World Report as America's top children's hospital this year, will join dozens of hospitals across the country when they implement their policy on Monday, July 1. The move has generated criticism among civil liberties activists, hospital...

Venture behind the scenes in any hospital, and you will be astounded by the amount of time taken up with paperwork. Detailed reports, for every single patient encounter (largely for defensive purposes), are input into ever more sophisticated computer systems. The latest wrinkle allows medical billing experts to view these reports as they are being entered in real time, so that they can issue helpful pop-ups suggesting how additional billing items can be added. Hospitals need the additional revenue since insurance limits reimbursements, and they are forced to treat many patients at no charge. Hospital poverty can also be used...

In writing about the ACA and our health-care problems, I started to think more and more about supply restrictions. In every other industry, costs come down when new suppliers come in and compete. Yet our health-care system is full of restrictions and protections to keep new suppliers out, and competition down. Then we wonder why hospitals won't tell you how much care will cost, and send you bills with $100 band aids on them. In that context, I was interested to learn this week about the ACA's limits on expansion of doctor-owned hospitals. The Wall Street Journal article is here,...

The federal Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare,” may provide activists and government a little-known wedge to advance their obesity agendas through regulated health-care providers — specifically America’s nearly 3,000 non-profit hospitals. One organization, The STOP Obesity Alliance, recently identified this wedge as a way to have such hospitals embrace its core convictions, including one principle which questions the role of personal responsibility as a cause and a solution to obesity.Community Health Needs Assessments. Section 9007 of the Act requires non-profit hospitals, as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status, to conduct Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs). These documents, which...

Consumers on Wednesday will finally get some answers about one of modern life’s most persistent mysteries: how much medical care actually costs. For the first time, the federal government will release the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures. Until now, these charges have been closely held by facilities that see a competitive advantage in shielding their fees from competitors. What the numbers reveal is a health-care system with tremendous, seemingly random variation in the costs of services. In the District, George Washington University’s average bill for a patient on a ventilator was $115,000, while Providence...

PHOENIX - A state legislator is moving to put Arizona's hospitals on the front line in the fight against illegal immigration. The proposal by Rep. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, would require hospitals to "reasonably confirm" those who show up at their doors are in the country legally if they do not produce proof of valid health insurance. HB 2293 lists methods hospital officials and employees can use to make that determination. The measure says if legal status cannot be verified, someone from the hospital "must immediately contact the local federal immigration office or a local law enforcement agency to report the...

Thank goodness government is getting more involved in health care so we can finally put a stop to sick and injured people using too many painkillers. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week that the city is going to sharply restrict supplies of painkillers at the city’s emergency rooms to combat a rampant addiction problem. Yours, not his. I have to clarify that point, because otherwise you may have the impression that “Nanny Michael” is addicted to power, and being a bit of a bully. … “The city hospitals we control,” he said Friday in response to critics, “so...

Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city officials unveiled a new initiative to limit supplies of prescription painkillers in the city’s emergency rooms as a way to combat what they described as a growing addiction problem in the region. Some critics, as documented by The New York Times, however, felt the move would unnecessarily hurt poor and uninsured patients who use emergency rooms as their primary care doctor. Needless to say, Mr. Bloomberg was not swayed by this line of argument. “The city hospitals we control, so … we’re going to do it and we’re urging all of the other hospitals...

Hospitals are denying patients the latest life-extending cancer drugs, a report reveals. Dozens of trusts are failing to hand out treatments for bowel, ovarian, lung and brain cancer that have been approved by the NHS watchdog NICE. Some of these drugs have been shown to boost survival rates by a quarter while others have extended the lives of terminally-ill patients by over a year.

The elderly are being denied life-saving treatment for heart attacks and surgery following breast cancer, a report warns. [Snip]This year the Government promised to end ageism in the Health Service and introduced laws that enable the elderly to sue if they are unfairly refused treatment. But a report today warns that patients in their 50s are three times more likely to be offered an emergency treatment for heart attacks than those in their 80s. And some hospitals are refusing to offer the treatment to anyone over 75 at all. The procedure--a percutaneous coronary intervention--widens blood vessels and has been credited

A lack of compromise by lawmakers in Washington could result in spending cuts that could affect local health providers within the next two months. The cuts, also known as sequestration, have been a top issue for providers – especially hospitals – that receive federal dollars. The money at stake is caught up in the package of spending cuts and tax increases that are to start taking effect Jan. 1 – unless Congress and the president act to modify the plan. Approved as part of a deal made by Democrats and Republicans last year, the package is now commonly known as...

The Cleveland Clinic is owned by doctors. But thanks to Obamacare it's illegal for doctors to own hospitals. Section 6001 of the health care law effectively bans new physician-owned hospitals (POHs) from starting up, and it keeps existing ones from expanding. It has already halted the development of 24 new physician-owned hospitals and forced an additional 47 to struggle to meet the deadline to complete construction, according to the Physician Hospitals of America (PHA). You couldn't build the Cleveland Clinic today if you wanted to.

When there is a plane crash in the U.S., even a minor one, it makes headlines. There is a thorough federal investigation, and the tragedy often yields important lessons for the aviation industry. Pilots and airlines thus learn how to do their jobs more safely. The world of American medicine is far deadlier: Medical mistakes kill enough people each week to fill four jumbo jets. But these mistakes go largely unnoticed by the world at large, and the medical community rarely learns from them. The same preventable mistakes are made over and over again, and patients are left in the...

Their faces still haunt us from our paper and cyber pages, even as the days turn into weeks since that awful night at the movies. Most of us probably do not know their names; we probably could not pick them out of a list. Even those of us who have written about them may only remember a name or two. And we only know who they were – no, who they are – from the stories told by relatives and friends. For some reason, and it may just be me, but for some reason I can tell almost by looking...

Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are placed on a “death pathway” to help end their lives every year. However, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, six doctors warn that hospitals may be using the controversial scheme to reduce strain on hospital resources. Supporters of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which allows medical staff to withhold fluid and drugs in a patient’s final days, claim it is the kindest way of letting them slip away. But the experts say in their letter that natural deaths are often freer of pain and distress. Informed consent is not

Three out of 10 specialist units will stop performing heart surgery on children following an NHS review which decided resources were spread too thinly. The Royal Brompton in Chelsea, west London, Leeds General Infirmary and Glenfield Hospital in Leicester will not stop providing surgery immediately as plans to implement the new streamlined service are still being developed. Once they stop providing surgery, probably after 2013, the units will still see patients for diagnosis, monitoring and non-surgical treatment. The consultation process by the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts (JCPCT) of England

We have found the following stocks had unusual volume spikes on Thursday, June 28, 2012. Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE:THC) had a 86.9% volume spike trading 40,717,900 shares. THC’s 30-day average volume is 5,335,410. Shares closed at $5.25 +6.71%. Tenet Healthcare Corporation is an investor-owned health care services company whose subsidiaries and affiliates mainly operate acute care hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, diagnostic imaging centers and related health care facilities. Health Management Associates (NYSE:HMA) had a 86.1% volume spike trading 24,950,900 shares. HMA’s 30-day average volume is 3,461,860. Shares closed at $7.49 +11.79%. Health Management Associates, Inc and its subsidiariesprovide health care...

Hospitals are running out of vital drugs to treat high blood pressure, asthma and Parkinson’s disease because they are being sold abroad. At least 19 NHS trusts across England have written to the Department of Health since September to warn of shortages, according to figures obtained by Labour MP Keith Vaz. There are concerns that drugs manufactured in Britain, meant for NHS patients, are being sold to EU countries by wholesalers and pharmacists. (Snip) Although the practice is not illegal, the Government has condemned it as unethical and there are concerns that patients are being put at risk.

Do They Know Who They’re Messing With? FaithMarch 16th, 2012 David Catron During a recent conversation about the HHS anti-conscience mandate, a friend who is neither Catholic nor particularly religious asked the following rhetorical question about the Obama administration:Do these people know who they’re messing with?Her point, of course, was that the Church has spent nearly two millennia crushing attempts by secular rulers to dictate the way it carries out its charitable ministries. Commanding Catholic hospitals to fund sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortifacients isn’t like twisting the arm of some roundheel congressman. It’s going to take more than the usual...