Free Republic

Across corporate America, relations between companies and their labor unions range from chilly to ice-cold. Not at Kaiser Permanente – the California-based healthcare giant. Kaiser has long been seen as having the nation’s best labor-management partnership. Now the partnership finds itself in crisis as 34,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers prepare to strike on Monday, in what would be the largest walkout in this fall’s strike wave. It certainly caused a strong reaction in Semanu Mawugbe, a Kaiser nurse in Los Angeles. “It’s a slap in the face,” he said, noting that the 1%-a-year offer was well below this year’s 5%-plus...

Health Reform: Americans unlucky enough to have to buy insurance through an Obama-Care exchange are increasingly finding their choices limited to highly restrictive and unpopular HMO plans. This isn't by accident.

On October 20, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan lost in the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices dismissed their case without review. The charges of fraud, as well as the court-ordered $6 million penalty, are now a matter of record. Blue Cross is guilty of "self-dealing," or looking after its own self-interests. Blue Cross stole money for years. Since 1993, it inflated hospital bills and charged hidden administrative fees to Michigan-based Hi-Lex Controls Inc. Hi-Lex is not the only one. At least 50 other lawsuits have been filed. Hi-Lex Controls is a self-insured auto parts dealer. Thus, it uses its...

One of the nation's largest HMOs is laying off 530 employees in Southern California this weekend, including some in San Diego County, a company official confirmed Saturday. Kaiser Permanente said the layoffs -- constituting about eight-tenths of one percent of it employees -- would be spread across its 65,700 employees and doctors working in offices and hospitals from Kern County to the Mexican border. Under its union contracts, the laid-off employees who are in unions will get income and benefits for a year. many may also be rehired next year, when Kaiser Permanente expects "significant membership growth" next year. "Health...

PORTLAND, Ore. - The city of Portland wants to expand its medical coverage for employees who want to get a sex change, a move that will cost $108,000 a year. According to Mayor Sam Adam’s spokesman, Roy Kaufmann, the city would pay 95 percent of the cost for the procedure and leave the remaining five percent for employees to pay out of pocket. He said it would cover a lifetime benefit of $75,000 for each employee who gets gender reassignment surgery. Employees covered under the city’s core plan would pay about $20 a year more in premiums. It’s an effort...

RIVERSIDE (CBS) ― Kaiser Permanente is laying off 650 workers in Southern California. Another 1,200 jobs are being cut in Northern California. The cutbacks will reportedly involve temporary, on-call or short-hour employees, but no doctors or nurses. The company's vice president cited uncertainty over Medicare and health care reform. Kaiser is offering a severance package to employees and trying to place them in other jobs.

Policy Makers say the only way to achieve social justice is to deliver an equal and adequate amount of health care, directed by a well motivated government central plan. No more crude private system, flawed, uneven, and unfair. I have a day job as a physician. A great job, a wonderful job, better because I do it in the emergency department at a very big army base, so I can thank soldiers and retired soldiers for their service. I also get to teach, and emergency medicine is a great niche for a physician suited to it. I did my internship...

One sick flick Peter Foster, Financial Post Published: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 "There's no doubt that a documentary by someone of Michael Moore's stature will help the world see the deeply humane principles of Cuban society." -- Jose Ramon Balaguer, Cuban Health Minister Michael Moore has said he wants to make movies from which people emerge saying, "I don't believe what I just saw." He has certainly hit the mark with Sicko. His latest attack on the American way of life is, literally, incredible -- a typical combination of bent facts and leftist grandstanding. It's not that health-care policy...

Americans in Canada prefer U.S. health care Joanne Laucius, CanWest News Service Published: Thursday, June 21, 2007 OTTAWA -- Americans living in Canada prefer the U.S. health-care system for speed, quality and diagnostic technology, says a new study. But they also applaud the equity and cost-effectiveness of Canada's system. And in the final analysis, 40 per cent prefer the Canadian system. The study, released yesterday in the online medical journal Open Medicine, was based on the responses of 310 Americans living in Canada between two and five years, mostly in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. There have been many studies...

LOS ANGELES - More than a year after an elderly hospital patient was found wandering a crime-ridden area in a hospital gown and slippers, the nation's largest HMO agreed in a settlement with the city to changes aimed at ending the dumping of homeless patients on streets. Kaiser Permanente will create new protocols for discharging homeless patients in its chain of hospitals, train staff and allow a retired U.S. district judge to monitor its progress, officials said Tuesday. Carol Ann Reyes, 64, was discharged from Kaiser's Bellflower hospital in March 2006 and dropped off by a taxi outside the Union...

Thousands of Canadian-trained doctors ply their trade in the U.S., study finds Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press via Canada.com, Monday, April 09, 2007 TORONTO -- One in nine trained-in-Canada doctors is practising medicine in the United States, says a study published in Tuesday’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. If Canadian-educated doctors who were born in the U.S. are excluded, the number is one in 12 - and the study suggests that luring back some of these Canadian physicians would go a long way towards solving the country’s doctor shortage. While they admit the exodus has abated a...

A task force established by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to draft a plan for dealing with skyrocketing health costs in California is considering calling for repeal of some treatment mandates on health maintenance organizations. Administration aides said the proposal -- which would require approval by the Legislature -- is one of many under consideration as part of the long-awaited plan the Republican governor says he will unveil in his State of the State speech in January. "Right now, the administration is combing through hundreds of ideas and concepts," said Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's communications director. "No idea is in, no idea...

1. A man comes into the ER and yells, "My wife's going to have her baby in the cab!" I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady's dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs - and I was in the wrong one. Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Antonio, TX. 2. At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient's anterior chest wall. "Big breaths," I instructed. "Yes, they used to be," replied the patient. Submitted by Dr....

It is widely conceded by pundits of varying ideological stripes that America faces a health care crisis. Both liberals and conservatives tout the problem; sadly, few quality solutions are proposed. The greatest problem within this crisis, also admitted widely, is the high cost of health care and health insurance. Liberals set about to “solve” this problem by proposing universal, government-provided health insurance. This, of course, only compounds the problem and does nothing to lower real costs. Presumably liberals feel high costs are a problem when they are borne by citizens as health care consumers, but somehow acceptable when they are...

President Bush's proposed expansion of Health Savings Accounts depends on a premise that research shows is questionable: that Americans want more financial choices in their lives.

California HMOs Send Some Enrollees to Mexico By Sonya Geis Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A03 TIJUANA, Mexico -- There are world-class hospitals in San Diego, not far from where Luis Gonzales lives. But when he or a member of his family needs a doctor, they drive 50 miles south to a clinic in Tijuana. The Gonzaleses are members of a Blue Shield of California HMO that provides all of the family's nonemergency care in Mexico. They are among 20,000 California workers and their dependents in health plans that cost 40 to 50 percent less than...

When President George W. Bush, in his second inaugural address, described his vision of an "ownership society," he specified not only the ownership of homes, businesses, and retirement savings, but also that of health insurance. Today, the most visible embodiment of this goal in the health care sector is the health savings account (HSA), which reflects a philosophical shift in emphasis from collective to individual responsibility for the management and financing of care. HSAs form the core of the emerging "consumer-directed" insurance plans, imposing greater cost sharing on enrollees but permitting broader choices than the health maintenance organization (HMO) plans...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) - Michael Moore said his next documentary already has HMOs quaking in their boots. Moore has not yet begun shooting the film Sicko but his planned critique of the U.S. health care system, he said, is making "freaked-out" HMOs warn employees what to do if approached by the filmmaker. At this point, we haven't shot anything yet and they're totally discombobulated," Moore said at the inaugural Traverse City Film Festival. Moore, who lives near Traverse City, founded the film festival with local movie buffs to showcase excellent films. Moore described good movies as a bridge across...

"The Schiavo case will probably be the turning point, in our ability to make our case to Americans about the incredible invasiveness of Republicans, when it comes to (citizens) making personal and private decisions," he said. By contrast, the Democrats should be viewed as "the party of individual freedom ... individual and personal responsibility," he said. One problem, however, is that while Dean may speak officially for the Democratic party, he's only one of many players. Sunday, he struggled to explain why so many Senate Democrats barely raised a whimper when the Schiavo intervention bill was sailing through the chamber....

When liberals ask me why they should oppose physician-assisted suicide (PAS), I always reply, "I can summarize a big reason in just three letters: HMO." That always raises an eyebrow. Liberals hate HMOs. Then I ask, "Do you know how much it costs for the drugs used in an assisted suicide?" They usually shake their heads, no. Answering my own question, I say, "About forty bucks," adding, "Since HMOs make money by cutting costs, and it could cost $40,000 (or more) to provide suicidal patients with proper care so that they don't want assisted suicide, the economic force of gravity...