Health care reform is on many minds as employers are paying higher premiums and employees are paying higher deductibles. Some would argue for market-based reforms with no government intervention such that weaker, inefficient and consumer-despised plans will fail and only cost-effective, consumer-friendly plans will prevail. Others will push for some sort of government-mandated reform, either [...]
Here’s what’s not in dispute: The United States spends 16 percent of its national income on health care, more than any other country in the world. In return, we get lower life expectancy than most other Western countries, uneven care, and enormous anxiety about how to pay for it.
Who’s to blame? Not the hospitals and [...]
TRENTON, N.J. - Insurance companies are taking a harder look at advanced medical scans like CT scans, citing spiraling costs and safety concerns. And some doctors agree there’s emerging evidence that these scans are being over-prescribed.
“Costs are soaring in this area, quality concerns are mounting and safety concerns are mounting,” said Karen Ignagni, chief executive [...]
Health insurers have begun “taking a harder look at advanced medical scans, like CT scans,” because of cost and safety concerns, and some physicians “agree there’s emerging evidence that these scans are being over-prescribed,” the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to the AP/Chronicle, health insurers have begun to require more preauthorizations for such medical scans [...]
“We have rather modest sales expectations for Simcor … just $70 million this year and $275 million in 2009,” said Phil Nalbone, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, in a report issued last week following Simcor’s approval by the FDA. Although [...]
Because the acupuncture patients were compared with a control group who received no therapy, rather than a sham, or fake, version of the treatment, the placebo effect could have played a role, Dr Claudia M Witt of Charite University Medical Centre in Berlin and her colleagues acknowledge.
Nevertheless, our study showed that acupuncture was beneficial for [...]
TRENTON, N.J. - The country’s biggest program to pay doctors extra for top-notch, comprehensive care, part of a growing national movement to hold down medical spending by preventing mistakes and complications, is expanding , geographically and in what it tackles.
Bridges to Excellence, a nonprofit group, gives doctors annual payments , $50 to $200 per participating [...]
While Pennsylvania no longer will reimburse hospitals for medical costs related to some preventable errors, it appears the new rule will initially apply to one-third of the more than 40,000 Bucks County residents receiving medical-assistance benefits.
As part of Gov. Ed Rendell’s �Prescription of Pennsylvania� health reform package, the new policy is designed to improve patient [...]
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration’s health agenda this year will consist largely of fending off Democratic lawmakers until a new president and Congress take charge.
In a preview of what is ahead, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt says the administration will work to limit the government’s role in the delivery of health care. That [...]
TRENTON, N.J. - Heart patients can hardly miss the barrage of “food and family” TV ads claiming the drug Vytorin lowers cholesterol from two sources, what you eat and what your body produces due to your genes.
So many patients were stunned when Vytorin’s makers, Merck %26amp; Co. and Schering-Plough Corp., on Monday finally released results [...]
