The Service Employees International Union today unveiled a Spanish-language video featuring two Latino doctors aimed at encouraging Latinos to enroll in a health plan through the new state insurance exchanges.
Two Latino physicians, Dr. Say Salomón and Dr. Michelle Espinoza, recorded videos in English and Spanish and talked about the benefits of signing up once state insurance exchanges become active Tuesday.
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Here's a sobering thought: Nearly 40% of all children in the U.S. are eligible for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides automatic healthcare coverage for the poor. That means 4 in 10 kids in the U.S. are growing up in poverty or near-poverty.
Here's another sobering thought. Not every kid who is eligible gets coverage through the entitlement program. Their parents must apply for CHIP/Medicaid and many don't.
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Most of the people who come to the emergency room with gunshot wounds have no insurance, and if they're admitted as inpatients, hospitals will spend an average of $23,500 caring for them, according to a new study of gun trauma and healthcare costs.
But the study from the Urban Institute found that gunshot victims' uninsured status may affect their care. “Uninsured victims of firearm assaults appear to have different treatment when they arrive at the ED. Their ED visits are the most expensive, they are admitted for inpatient care less often, and their treatment, once admitted, appears to be less intensive,” the study says. “The numbers indicate that some hospitals may be making treatment decisions based on the insurance status of the patient rather than the patient's condition.”
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A report released Thursday by the Center for Studying Health System Change suggests that New York state, particularly Long Island, will not see much in the way of health insurance expansion in the coming months and years.
According to “Long Island Follows Bumpy New York Road to National Health Reform,” part of that is because New York already has a generous Medicaid program, and Long Island also is one of the most affluent communities in the state, with a high rate of privately insured residents.
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A study found no evidence that primary-care physicians spend less time with safety net patients and the uninsured than with privately insured patients, countering longstanding assumptions that doctors give less attention to Medicaid and uninsured patients.
The study in the September issue of the journal Health Affairs looked at the amount of time physicians spent with patients and found no significant differences between those with private insurance and patients with Medicaid or those uninsured.
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The benefits of expanding Medicaid coverage to homeless and chronically ill adults under healthcare reform may seem obvious. But enrolling this population and providing them with healthcare services will not be easily achieved, a survey published in Health Affairs shows.
The survey, which included more than 700 homeless adults enrolled in a housing and healthcare effort between 2004 and 2009, found adults reported “serious physical and mental health conditions, suggesting that chronically homeless adults have a wide variety of health needs that require a broad range of health services.”
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Hospital leaders have warned state elected officials that failure to expand their Medicaid programs under the federal healthcare reform law will imperil the finances of many hospitals serving lower-income communities. They say they need the expansion to continue serving uninsured and underinsured people who have no way to pay for care.
Now a not-for-profit hospital system in North Carolina says it's closing one of its facilities because that state decided not to expand Medicaid to adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Vidant Health, with nine hospitals, says it will close Vidant Pungo Hospital, a 25-bed facility in the coastal town of Belhaven, within six months, costing about 100 employees their jobs.
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Clinton
The reform law got a boost Wednesday from former President Bill Clinton, who praised the law's benefits and urged supporters and detractors to work together on fixing its problems.
Clinton's speech is a needed boost for the White House less than a month before open enrollment begins, especially as the Obama administration is now focused on garnering support from Congress for a military strike against the Syrian government. <
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Serious and potentially fatal dental infections are the cause of a growing number of hospitalizations, according to a study in the September edition of the Journal of Endodontics.
The study covered a nine-year period, from 2000 to 2008, using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. The NIS is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient-care database in America.
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A large North Carolina hospital and a suburban Chicago system are the latest to trim their payrolls and point to revenue pressure from the federal healthcare reform law as a primary cause.
At Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., the belt-tightening hits the C-suite, including the CEO's salary.
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A large North Carolina hospital and a suburban Chicago system are the latest to trim their payrolls and point to revenue pressure from the federal healthcare reform law as a primary cause.
At Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., the belt-tightening hits the C-suite, including the CEO's salary.
Read more »
