Weekly Edition: August 17, 2018
Hospitals Battle For Control Over Fast-Growing Heart-Valve Procedure
Phil Galewitz
Medicare limits payments for valve replacement via a catheter to hospitals with large numbers of heart procedures. But smaller facilities are crying foul.
Energy-Hog Hospitals: When They Start Thinking Green, They See Green
Julie Appleby
Some hospitals have taken steps to be more energy-efficient. Though at times these changes barely represent rounding errors in their budgets, comprehensive efforts are beginning to make a difference.
Financial Ties That Bind: Studies Often Fall Short On Conflict-Of-Interest Disclosures
Rachel Bluth
A new study in JAMA Surgery finds that a large sample of published medical research failed to disclose details on the financial relationships between medical device makers and physicians. Changes in the disclosure process could close this loop.
Voters To Settle Dispute Over Ambulance Employee Break Times
Alex Leeds Matthews
Unlike most other workers, private-ambulance employees are frequently called away from their meals and rest breaks to respond to emergency calls, but there’s no law explicitly allowing that practice. Proposition 11 would change that, but some say its real purpose is to get California's largest ambulance company out of costly litigation.
Listen: Why Young Doctors Appear To Be Embracing Single-Payer
KHN's Shefali Luthra talks about how the American Medical Association's student caucus managed to push the overall organization to begin reviewing and possibly — eventually — reconsider its decades-long opposition to single-payer health care.
Purdue Pharma’s Sales Pitch Downplayed Risks Of Opioid Addiction
Fred Schulte
Through a widely circulated brochure and a videotape of testimonials, the maker of OxyContin stressed patients’ right to opioid treatment for pain.
‘No One Is Ever Really Ready’: Aid-In-Dying Patient Chooses His Last Day
JoNel Aleccia
With its expansion to Hawaii this year, medical aid-in-dying is now approved in eight U.S. jurisdictions. Even when legal, the controversial practice of choosing to die after a terminal diagnosis is difficult, said one Seattle man who shared his final deliberations.
Advances In Treating Hep C Lead To New Option For Transplant Patients
Julie Appleby
The opioid epidemic has increased the number of donated organs. Until recently, though, organs from donors who died of drug overdoses were often discarded because an estimated 30 percent of them were infected with hepatitis C.
Feds Urge States To Encourage Cheaper Plans Off The Exchanges
Michelle Andrews
Many insurers added surcharges to policies they sold to individuals last year to make up for a cut in federal funding. Now, federal officials suggest that states encourage insurers to sell policies without those surcharges outside of the marketplace to help people who don’t get a premium subsidy.
States Leverage Federal Funds To Help Insurers Lower Premiums
Steven Findlay
Even as it chips away at Obamacare, the Trump administration is solidly behind state-based initiatives to cover high-cost patients, known as “reinsurance” programs. It approved two more last month.
Podcast: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’ See You In Court!
In this episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Alice Ollstein of Talking Points Memo, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner talk about a spate of lawsuits involving the Affordable Care Act, as well as the latest in state and federal efforts regarding the Medicaid program for the poor.
Medicaid Officials Target Home Health Aides’ Union Dues
Shefali Luthra
Federal officials are proposing a rule to prohibit home health aides paid directly by Medicaid from having their dues for the powerful Service Employees International Union automatically deducted from their paychecks. The effort would likely mean those workers are far less likely to pay dues and could diminish the union’s influence.
Shortage Of Insurance Fraud Cops Sparks Campaign Debate
Pauline Bartolone
About a quarter of fraud investigator positions at the state Department of Insurance are open, and Steve Poizner has made the vacancies a focus of his campaign for insurance commissioner. His opponent, Ricardo Lara, says chasing criminals isn’t the only solution to rising health care costs.
Listen: The Latest On Workplace Wellness Programs
Ohio's Republican gubernatorial candidate has proposed using a wellness program inspired by the Cleveland Clinic for the state's Medicaid population. But these types of plans are not new — they have a list of pros and cons, as well as regulatory issues.