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WASHINGTON (AP) — If you or an elderly relative have been hospitalized recently and noticed extra attention when the time came to be discharged, there's more to it than good customer service. As of Monday, Medicare will start fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. The penalties are part of a broader push under President Barack Obama's health care law to improve quality while also trying to save taxpayers money. About two-thirds of the hospitals serving Medicare patients, or some 2,200 facilities, will be hit with penalties averaging around $125,000 per...

The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government’s role in health care programs is “socialized” medicine. Rudy Giuliani has used the “s-word” to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children’s health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton’s health plan. Mitt Romney has added a xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan “European-style socialized medicine,” while ignoring its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Other conservative critics have wielded the “s-word” to deplore efforts to expand government health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets....

ATLANTA, Aug. 30 — In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage. The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped, and of recent research linking a lack of insurance to delays in detecting malignancies. Though the advertisements are nonpartisan and pointedly avoid specific prescriptions, they are intended to intensify the political focus on an issue that is already receiving considerable attention...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — The Senate defied President Bush on Thursday and passed a bipartisan bill that would provide health insurance for millions of children in low-income families. The vote was 68 to 31. The majority was more than enough to overcome the veto repeatedly threatened by Mr. Bush. The White House said the bill “goes too far in federalizing health care.” But Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chief sponsor of the bill, said, “Millions of American children have hope for a healthier future tonight.” The bill would increase spending on the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program by...

In 1994, New Jersey decided to stop setting aside money in a fund to pay for health care for its retired public workers. The savings paved the way for a big tax cut. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of public workers were being told that as long as they worked 25 years, the system would provide virtually free health care for them when they retired, often when they were as young as 55. No one added up the cost — until now. It turns out that New Jersey will need about $58 billion, in today’s dollars, to provide all the care...

IT’S a seemingly simple solution to a nationwide problem: if people do not have health insurance, just require that they buy it. The idea of making coverage compulsory to help reduce the number of uninsured Americans — currently 45 million — is gaining momentum. With a law passed last year, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate coverage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has supported the idea, proposing that his state do the same. In Illinois, mandatory health insurance has become part of a broader discussion of health reform. Requiring people who can afford health insurance to buy it —...

WASHINGTON, March 18 — It’s Kennedy versus Kennedy as two members of Congress from the same family face off over competing versions of legislation that would require many health insurance companies and employers to provide more generous benefits to people with mental illness. Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island and chief sponsor of the House bill, has criticized as inadequate the Senate bill introduced by his father, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. Representative Kennedy is trying to mobilize mental health advocates to lobby for what he describes as “the stronger of the two bills, the House...

Patrick Fontana twisted his left knee last spring while hitting a drive down the fairway on a golf course in Columbus, Ohio. But what really pained him was the $900 bill for diagnostic imaging ordered by his doctor. Mr. Fontana, a 42-year-old salesman, has a high-deductible health plan coupled to a health savings account. Since he was nowhere near meeting his deductible, he was on the hook for the entire bill.So he did something that insurance companies routinely do: he forwarded the bill to a claims adjuster, in this case My Medical Control, a Web-based company that reviews doctor and...

THESE are balmy days on the American left — genuine, uncharacteristic sunniness unpolluted by some fluky political climate change. There is even talk of a — stutter, clear-throat, perish-thought — liberal resurgence. Or, treading gingerly, a “liberal moment.” “Hell, ya, this is a liberal moment,” exults Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” — and yes, he even calls himself a “liberal” writer, eschewing the sleeker “progressive” stage name that many lefties are preferring these days. He declares this “liberal moment” loud and proud. Until the inevitable qualifier comes. “A potentially liberal moment,” Mr. Frank says, “assuming that...

Op-Ed Contributor Naples, Fla. A PRIMARY care doctor I’ve known since we were residents 30 years ago recently described for me his typical day as foisted on him by current economic realities. He rises at 4 a.m. to make a dent in his avalanche of paperwork before dashing off to make rounds at the hospital and arrive at his office before 8. For the next 10 to 11 hours, he races through a series of patients so long, he cannot talk to any one of them as much as he believes he should, and he constantly worries he’ll miss something....

As Patients, Doctors Feel Pinch, Insurer's CEO Makes a Billion By GEORGE ANDERS April 18, 2006 MINNETONKA, Minn. -- When William McGuire switched careers in 1986, he was so restless that a pay cut of more than 30% didn't faze him. Health maintenance organizations were booming, and Dr. McGuire wanted to help run one. So he jettisoned a six-figure income as a pulmonologist in favor of an HMO management job that paid about $70,000 a year. Savvy move. Today, the 58-year-old Dr. McGuire is chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group Inc., one of the nation's largest health-care companies. He draws...

Critics say Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to move over a half-million patients into managed care won't save money. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's complex deal with the federal government over Medi-Cal funding includes a move the state Legislature rejected once before -- moving more than a half-million aged, blind and disabled people into managed care. The administration sees putting those people into HMOs as a crucial piece of an overhaul aimed at curbing soaring costs of the program, known as Medicaid in other states. The groups to be moved account for a quarter of Medi-Cal beneficiaries but 53 percent of expenditures. Critics, however,...

A momentous article, "Medical Science Under Dictatorship," by Dr. Leo Alexander, the Chief U.S. Medical Consultant at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, first printed in the July 14, 1949 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, has been reprinted as a monograph, and it could not have been reprinted at a more opportune moment. Today, the concept of managed care, cost containment, and rationing threatens to eradicate the ethics of Hippocrates in medical practice, with the physician less beholden to his individual patient than to the managed care entity which employs him or pays his salary. In fact, many...

...Basic problems remain the same, however. And so do many of the proposed solutions. In Washington, Democrats continue to push statist prescriptions to America's health care ills; at the state level, legislatures experiment with them. It would be easy, thus, to assume that while Hillary Clinton lost the battle, she is winning the war.... Tomorrow, President Bush shouldn't just emphasize HSAs (which Sen. Kerry, incidentally, opposes). He can map out further reforms that will make health insurance more affordable: • Tax fairness. While employer contributions to health insurance are non-taxable, individuals must pay in after-tax dollars. Leveling the tax field...