Friday, January 8, 2010
QD: News Every Day--mulling options for health care reform
ACP Internist's wrap-up of current events looks at how state and federal figures continue to jockey for position in health care reform negotiations.
Health care reform
Democrats in the U.S. House held a conference call to discuss health care reform options before formally returning to session next week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to rally the Representatives, saying they would push her Chamber's agenda where its legislation differed from the Senate's. (Washington Post, The Hill)
The House and Senate may end up compromising on new taxes that would help pay for health care. The House favors a tax on millionaires while the Senate favored a tax on high-value insurance plans. It's easy to understand just who's a millionaire, but if you're curious just what the "Cadillac" plans are, here's an explanation. Meanwhile, the health insurance industry seeks its own tax cut. (The Hill, Kaiser Health News/NPR, Reuters)
The White House enlisted Democratic Governors to promote health care reform. They'd been mostly silent so far, in contrast to their Republican counterparts. At issue is how much money the states will have to contribute to an expanded Medicaid program--that is, every state except Nebraska, which was promised federal support for any expansion in that state in exchange for a crucial Senate vote from its Senator, Ben Nelson, last year. Facing flak for that, Sen. Nelson now wants the federal government to cover all the states' financial burden for expanding Medicaid. (Politico, AP)
ACP outlines how it will continue to work with both chambers as they hammer out details of health care reform. One priority is the primary care shortage, and both the House and Senate bills support expansion and testing of the patient-centered medical home and expand funding for the National Health Service Corps. (ACP Advocate)
H1N1 influenza
Canada is loaning Mexico 5 million doses of H1N1 vaccine. France was looking to sell its leftovers to the Middle East and to Egypt, which wants to inoculate half its schoolchildren. Germany was looking for buyers for its leftovers in Eastern Europe. (Agence France-Presse, IRIN)
Primary care shortage
Tucked away in news coverage just before the holiday break, a story highlighted nurse-managed health centers as a way of relieving the primary care shortage. More than 250 such facilities exist and a nursing consortium is pushing for more legislative and funding support. Currently, 26 states allows nurses to run the centers, 20 require some relationship to a doctor and six require physicians to be at the clinic at least part of the time. (Healthcare Finance News)
Labels: H1N1, health care cost, health care reform, primary care shortage, QD
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
11:34 AM
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Previous Posts
- News of the not-so-obvious
- QD: News Every Day--negotiations continue from eve...
- Highlights from our January issue
- Losing Money on Medicare
- Calorie counting as a class issue
- QD: News Every Day--how hospitals will fare with h...
- QD: News Every Day--ping-pong for reform
- Medical News of the Obvious
- QD: News Every Day--a new year of familiar debates...
- ACP Internist will return in January
Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs, MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP,
graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of
Medicine, where he also did his internal medicine training.
Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs
spent three years as a full-time faculty member at UCLA School of
Medicine before opening his private practice in Beverly Hills in
2000.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass
Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
ACP Member Mike Aref, MD, PhD, ACP Member, is an academic
hospitalist with an interest in basic and clinical science and
education, with interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic
testing using novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic
reasoning, medical informatics, new medical education modalities,
pre-code/code management, palliative care, patient-physician
communication, quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical
imaging.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical
Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, ACP Member, shares her ideas on education,
ethics in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on
medicine are informed by her past experiences in caring for
patients, as a researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient
who's had breast cancer.
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections
of a Grady Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
Technology in (Medical) Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
White Coat Underground
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist also contribute to and draw upon content from Get Better Health, a network created by Val Jones, MD, to support and promote health care professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the clinician's point of view on health care reform, science, research and patient care.
Other blogs of note:
American
Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
db's Medical
Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
Interact
MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS
Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
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