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Reolubin is one of the country’s 186,000 medical coders who work in the back offices of hospitals. It’s her job to translate doctors’ scribbles into diagnosis codes. Those are sent to insurance companies, which use them to determine how much to pay hospitals for care. With 14,000 codes, ICD-9 seems puny by comparison. The new manual explodes that code set to 68,000 much more granular and detailed terms to define — very exactly and specifically — what ails us. There are different numbers for getting struck or bitten by a turkey (W61.42 or W61.43). There are codes for injuries caused...

Unable to guarantee adequate medical care for its citizens, the Quebec Government is turning to euthanasia. The law would allow 14 year olds to refuse treatment without the consent of their parents. Also in the French version, other witnesses including Luc describe the potential abuses by politicians, hospital administrators, the medical profession and families in a money driven society where certain lives would be deemed less worthy to live because of financial pressures.

Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted. "I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen." "There are a lot of economic incentives for health insurers to narrow their networks, but if they go too far, people won't have...

Thousands of Anthem Blue Cross individual customers with older insurance policies untouched by Obamacare are getting some jarring news: Their premiums are going up as much as 25%. These increases, 16% on average, are slated to go into effect April 1 for up to 306,000 people — unless California regulators persuade the state's largest for-profit health insurer to back down. Amid the fury last fall over canceled health policies, consumer advocates and state officials warned people that holding onto grandfathered policies purchased before the federal healthcare law was enacted in 2010 wouldn't shield them from significant rate hikes.

U.S. veterans are dying because of delays in diagnosis and treatment at VA hospitals. At least 19 veterans have died because of delays in simple medical screenings like colonoscopies or endoscopies, at various VA hospitals or clinics, CNN has learned. The new document obtained by CNN shows a worse problem than has previously been made public by the VA. As CNN has previously reported, as many as 7,000 veterans were on a backlog list -- waiting too long for colonscopies or endoscopies -- at VA facilities in Columbia, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it is working with the three manufacturers of intravenous saline solutions commonly used to hydrate hospital patients to address a shortage caused by a spike in demand. To cope with the shortage, healthcare providers are using substitute products such as oral hydration fluids or smaller IV saline bags with slower drip rates when appropriate, said Bona Benjamin, director of medication use quality improvement for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. "We have heard from our members all over the country that the shortage is serious," Benjamin said. "People are able...

The federal overhaul has had a bumpy start, but with insurance payments they can handle, many have stopped gambling on their future Lost amid all the fury, however, have been the success stories.

Wait times for cataract surgery in London jumped 50% last year, a disturbing trend officials expect will worsen unless Ontario’s health ministry restores funding. At the start of 2013, 90% of patients had surgery within 153 days. By November, that wait grew to 230 days. “It’s hurting patients,” said ophthalmologist Tim Hillson, chairperson of the Eye Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Patients forced to wait are at greater risk for falls, car crashes and depression, preventable calamities that cost our health-care system more in the long run, Hillson said, so making them wait longer is short-sighted.

The health reform law is trying to force $15 an hour workers and their employers to buy more than a million dollars of coverage when they don't have anything like a million dollars in assets to protect. Further, some of these families are being forced to give up "mini-med" plans that paid the first $2,000 or $3,000 of medical bills and enroll in plans with deductibles of $10,000 or more. Why do we need to force a family at this income level need to pay the first $10,000 of medical costs? We don't. I can think of only two reasons...

AMAZING USE OF OUR TECHNOLOGY. STAR TREK MEDICINE IS COMING.

Kim Little had not thought much about the tiny white spot on the side of her cheek until a physician’s assistant at her dermatologist’s office warned that it might be cancerous. He took a biopsy, returning 15 minutes later to confirm the diagnosis and schedule her for an outpatient procedure at the Arkansas Skin Cancer Center in Little Rock, 30 miles away. That was the prelude to a daylong medical odyssey several weeks later, through different private offices on the manicured campus at the Baptist Health Medical Center that involved a dermatologist, an anesthesiologist and an ophthalmologist who practices plastic...

Many folks who signed up for coverage through the state and federal exchanges are running into roadblocks now that they are trying to use their new benefits. And though exchange officials and insurers have urged consumers to call their insurers if they encounter problems, many say they either wait endlessly on hold or get the runaround. Patterson's journey started New Year's Day, when she landed in the emergency room for a stomach ailment. The Independence policy number she received didn't work and the hospital required her to sign a form saying she would pay for care herself, though it agreed...

Those signing up for private health care coverage on the ObamaCare exchanges may be in for an unpleasant surprise -- they'll have insurance, but they might have trouble getting the doctor to see them. Just as with Medicaid, analysts warn that if payments get too low, many doctors might start refusing to see patients. That will leave more and more patients jockeying to see fewer and fewer doctors. They emphasize, then, that having health insurance won't necessarily translate into access to health care.

Sometimes, surprise findings can be life-saving, for example in the case of an athlete whose brain is scanned after a concussion, and radiologists spot a tumor, Hauser said. Other times, nothing can be done. That same brain scan might show early signs of an incurable condition, Hauser said, and "this young person now needs to live with the knowledge that she may someday develop this neurologic disease." Follow-up testing may do harm. Doctors, researchers and direct-to-consumer companies alike should inform potential patients about the possibility of incidental findings before they undergo a medical test. They should clearly explain what will...

Americans who are buying insurance plans over online exchanges, under what is known as Obamacare, will have limited access to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, including two world-renowned cancer centres. Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country. Experts say the...

More cancelled health plans. Millions and perhaps tens of millions more Americans will lose their coverage, despite the White House's one-year suspension of the mandates that force insurers to liquidate their old products. The problem is backloaded. The exchanges don't offer what most people expect from normal commercial insurance and instead feature tighter administrative oversight of smaller groups of physicians akin to Medicaid. Clinton-era HMO-style plans are coming back, and doctor-patient relationships will be the next political casualty. In the 1990s Americans rebelled against cost containment pressure, such as the "drive through" rules that told women to leave hospitals a...

Forty-four employees of Taos Health Systems and its subsidiary, Holy Cross Hospital, will be laid off in a move administrators claim is necessary amid changing trends in the health care sector, though staff warn the cuts could imperil patients. ... Union organizers suggested the cuts could precede a change in status for Holy Cross from an acute-care hospital to a critical access hospital.

Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center said Monday it is eliminating 58 positions and laying off 36 employees as part of a restructuring to meet the challenges of the federal Affordable Care Act. Hospital administrators said the layoffs will stretch across all departments, including 15 management positions. Christus St. Vincent President and CEO Bruce Tassin said the reductions will trim $4 million from the Santa Fe hospital’s payroll.

You would think that when your party is burying a hole that is getting harder and harder to get out of, you wouldn't want to that hole get deeper faster.  But here is Kathleen Murphy, Democrat running for the House of Delegates against Barbara Comstock, telling a forum in Great Falls that she believes it should law to force doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients.  Forced by government decree, mind you.  A birdie sent me this: FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid...

New research from the Manhattan Institute estimates that insurance rates for young men will rise by 99 percent. Rates for younger women will rise between 55 percent to 62 percent, according to the right-leaning New York think tank. The precise impact of the new health law is likely to vary markedly from state-to-state, however. These differences mean men will get hammered in North Carolina with an average 305 percent rate hike, while women will suffer in Nebraska, paying an average of 237 percent more. For most people, subsidies in the law will not counteract the rate shock, says co-author of...