The medical device industry is scrabbling to derail a proposal by Sen. Max Baucus to levy a $4 billion a year “reform contribution” on device makers as part of the healthcare reform initiative, according to news reports.
Healthcare Reform
Obama pitches Congress on healthcare reform
One hundred years after Theodore Roosevelt first proposed reforms to the healthcare system, President Barack Obama offered up a few more details on his $900 billion initiative in a speech before Congress last night, but despite a few concessions offered to conservative opponents met with stiff partisan opposition.
In fact, in one case, a Republican Congressman called him an out-an-out liar.
House Energy & Commerce Committee approves healthcare reform bill
A key Congressional committee sent a healthcare reform bill to the floor of the House of Representatives, just in time for its monthlong summer break, which would create a public health insurance plan to compete with private providers and ensure that about 95 percent of all Americans get health insurance, according to news reports
Unhealthy alliance?
An unlikely pairing between organized labor and one of its most ardent foes is emerging in Washington, as players from all sides of the issue jockey for seats around the healthcare reform debate table.
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, is joining forces with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in the oddest coupling since Oscar and Felix shared an apartment, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription).
Industry to Congress: Healthcare reform should be bi-partisan
Healthcare industry tells Congress members to leave their ideologies at home
According to the “Healthcare Leadership Conference” — a consortium of insurance companies, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and medical device firms — fixing the U.S. healthcare system will require a bi-partisan agreement that avoids ideological bugbears and has broad appeal to the American people.
Well, duh.
In a letter to Congressional leaders, the group wrote, “Action that affects the well-being of every American and one-sixth of the nation’s economy should involve vigorous debate and deliberation, ultimately leading to a measure that has broad, bipartisan support.”
That means, natch, ditching proposals for the single-payer option favored by some of the more liberal among us:
Two reasons the Mayo Clinic is a model for healthcare reform
By Leonard Berry and Kent Seltman
According to President Barack Obama, the Mayo and Cleveland clinics represent models for meeting the three main goals of the ongoing healthcare reform debate:
- Insurance for the uninsured;
- Improved quality;
- Reduced cost.
“We should learn from their successes and promote the best practices, not the most expensive ones,” the president said, after reading Dr. Atul Gawande’s New Yorker article, which laid out the details:
Guidant class action suit dismissed
Guidant suit dismissed
A federal judge in Minnesota denied a request to reconsider his 2007 dismissal of a class action suit against Guidant Corp. (now a Boston Scientific Corp. subsidiary) over an implanted defibrillator recall.
The suit, by a group of third-party insurance payors, sought redress for payments they were forced to make when patients’ defibrillators had to be replaced after their 2005 recall.
Ruling that the motion to reconsider was nothing more than “an attempt to relitigate old issues,” federal Judge Donovan Frank of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota declined to reconsider his 2007 decision to dismiss the lawsuit:
Healthcare reform: It’s the efficiencies, stupid
Reforming the U.S. healthcare system is a piece of cake, a Harvard economist told a civic group in Cleveland: Just fire all the mid-level managers.
Prof. David Cutler promised his speech to healthcare industry providers at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens yesterday was meant to be provocative and he certainly delivered, according to MedCity News.
Most people would shell out for accessible, affordable healthcare, he said. And the key to affordability lies in removing inefficiencies and improving coordination.
Obama channels Spock on healthcare reform
President Barack Obama channeled Star Trek’s Mr. Spock during a wide-ranging June 23 press conference, calling claims by private insurers that a government-run health plan would drive them out of business “not logical:”
“Why would [a government-run plan] drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”
The “Massachusetts Model” gets mauled
Rough week for the Massachusetts Model
“Massive spending on non-benefit costs.”
That’s the subtitle of a Health Affairs post about what is now known as “The Massachusetts Model.”
The short synopsis: The cost of the paperwork will kill any cost savings:
Costs, costs, costs
Costs, costs, costs
Unrelenting costs increases and the economic meltdown are eroding the benefits of the Massachusetts health plan, according to a new study from the D.C.-based Urban Institute: