Doesn't matter to me if health care is privately delivered:Alta's Klein
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EDMONTON (CP) - Alberta Premier Ralph Klein acknowledged Tuesday that he personally doesn't have a problem with private delivery of health-care services.
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Consumer-directed health care (CDHC) - high-deductible plans often touted as the answer to spiraling health care costs - is not likely to curb health care costs, and could even worsen health outcomes by reducing patients&#39; receipt of needed preventive care
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Independent Health has added options and adjusted rates for 2005 in Encompass 65, a group of Medicare managed care plans. The health plan has introduced a no monthly premium plan that includes office visits
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A major obstacle to the success of the new Medicare law has emerged in recent weeks: Private insurers have told the Bush administration they will not expand their Medicare role
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A nationwide study has found that the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid are more likely than those with private insurance to receive a diagnosis of cancer in the late stages of the disease.
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OTTAWA (CP) - The former governor of Canada&#39;s central bank has made an unusual foray into the political fray over health care, questioning proposals for greater competition within the single-payer medicare system.
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WASHINGTON - A day before the first presidential debate, the government's health policy watchdog raised concerns that early mailings to seniors about the new Medicare prescription discount cards championed by President Bush were confusing or inadequate.   "We found that these beneficiaries received very little mail from drug card sponsors that would enable them to make an informed choice among cards," the Health and Human Services Department inspector general wrote in the Sept...
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(Source: AT&T)  IP Networks Boost Secure Health Communications. AT&T provides health care executives with secure communications solutions to keep health care moving forward.
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Texas officials argue that a new rule to disclose the size of their health care obligation to retirees does not apply to their state.
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It has been a summer of dire warning about eroding health care, leading doomfully toward a health summit in September. This is not new. For a decade, virtually the entire political class and opinion elites have said our health care is not ...
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Massachusetts health insurers are promoting a new type of Medicare coverage for seniors in 2008 that potentially offers better coverage than traditional government-sponsored Medicare. The new plans, called private fee-for-service, also raise questions about the long-term direction of Medicare because they cost more than traditional coverage but are not held to higher quality and efficiency standards.
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The growth in health care spending by private employers slowed in recent years, creating some optimism that the employers had turned the corner in their struggle with rising costs. But any relief appears to have been short lived, according to a study to be released today.
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TORONTO - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says he wants taxpayers to pay the province&#39;s controversial health premium despite a potential landmark arbitration decision that could force employers -- including his own government -- to pay for a large chunk
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DAVID HARDAKER: To the election campaign, now and does Labor&#39;s Medicare Gold package have the support of the private health care groups or not?
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MONDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) -- Uninsured Americans or those with certain types of public health insurance are more likely to have oral or breast cancer diagnosed at an advanced stage, compared to people with private insurance whose disease is caught earlier.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. needs new medical privacy rules as the country moves toward greater use of IT to store health records, a group of health-care experts said Wednesday. "Thousands" of databases that contain U.S. residents' health records exist, and patients don't have any way to keep their personal information from being shared with third parties, said Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist and founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation. Private companies have been data-mining prescription records for years, she added. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996, sets security standards that health-care providers must follow, but the law leaves major gaps in privacy, Peel said at an electronic health-records privacy forum sponsored by public relations firm Dittus Communications. HIPAA gave many organizations with ties to health-care vendors, including offshore transcription vendors, insurance brokers and credit bureaus, authorization to use health care-records, she said. "Because of this confusion that HIPAA engendered, data is being exchanged and used for reasons that have nothing to do with people getting well," she said. "People think this is the wild west because of HIPAA, and every piece of data that's not nailed down can be used for some other purpose." While panelists at the forum seemed to agree that some type of privacy policy for e-health records is needed, they did not agree on how to accomplish it. Peel called for the U.S. government to create a national standard, but David Merritt, project director at the Center for Health Transformation and the Gingrich Group, called for private groups to develop privacy standards. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed moving a privacy commission to the private sector, but a bill sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, would keep that commission in the federal government. In addition, Kala Evelyn Ladenheim, program director for state health policy leadership at the National Conference of State Legislators, called on the federal government to allow states to develop their own privacy policies. Some states may create stronger protections than a national effort would, she said. But 50 state privacy policies would be difficult for health providers to comply with, countered Tom Wilder, senior regulatory counsel for America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group representing health insurance providers. In most other industries, private organizations have developed privacy policies, Merritt said. He called on a public and private partnership to create privacy standards. "The government is really good at creating commissions and creating advisory boards ... and studying an issue," he said. "What the government is not good at, and what we shouldn't ask it to do, is to lead and to act." Peel disagreed, saying health-care providers would have conflicts when creating privacy standards, and HHS employees may not have the public's best interest in mind. "We would actually say the problem is that the government is not in the lead," she said. "Unelected officials, bureaucrats and conflicted industry representatives shouldn't be making decisions about privacy."
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BALTIMORE - Health care organizations not considering offshore outsourcing are missing out on significant cost savings, but administrators need to be aware of potential risks, including lax handling of data security by some vendors and the effect on employee morale, a health care IT analyst said Tuesday.