Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Physicist Who Coined Term 'God Particle' Dies Three Years After Selling Nobel Prize To Cover Medical Bills
The Associated Press: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Leon Lederman Dies At 96
Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist who won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on subatomic particles and coined the phrase “God particle,” died Wednesday at 96. ... Lederman won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1988 with two other scientists for discovering a subatomic particle called the muon neutrino. He used the prize money to buy a log cabin near the tiny town of Driggs in eastern Idaho as a vacation retreat. The couple moved there full-time in 2011 when Leon Lederman started experiencing memory loss problems that became more severe, his wife said. His Nobel Prize sold for $765,000 in an auction in 2015 to help pay for medical bills and care. (Ridler, 10/3)
In other news on health care costs —
Modern Healthcare: Congress Angles For Air Ambulance Cost Transparency
Like other states, North Dakota has tried to curb the unexpected bills. In 2015 the Legislature passed a law to split the medical air transport companies into two call lists. To make it on the primary call list, the company would have to be in-network with at least 75% of the state's health insurance contracts. All others would have dropped to a secondary call list and would only have been able to respond if none of the companies from the primary list picked up. (Luthi, 10/2)
