Daily Policy Digest
Health Issues
| Health Insurance Exchanges Create State Problems The health insurance exchanges create the appearance of private-sector delivery but instead create politically favored monopolies... |
| Preventable Hospital Readmissions Continue to Pose Problem More than 1 million Americans wind up back in the hospital only weeks after they left for reasons that could have been prevented... |
| States Seek to Redefine Who Can Provide Care A proposal in California would allow physician assistants to treat more patients, nurse practitioners to set up independent practices, and pharmacists and optometrists to act as primary care providers... |
| Hip-Replacement Cost Hard to Pin Down Just under half -- 45 percent -- of top-ranked hospitals were able to provide a bundled price -- physician and hospital -- for the cost of a hip replacement... |
| Defensive Medicine May Be Costlier Than It Seems Several economic studies have found that states that have enacted malpractice reforms experienced a mere 2 percent to 5 percent reduction in health care spending compared to states that have not... |
| Misleading World Health Rankings Thanks to such technologies as emergency incubators, the U.S. neonatal mortality rate has dropped to just 5 percent today from 95 percent in the 1960s... |
| Many Companies May Drop Employee Coverage under ObamaCare A 2011 McKinsey survey found that 30 percent of employers would "definitely or probably" drop health insurance after 2014... |
| Rolling Back the War on Vaccines Only 60 percent of U.S. parents of children age 24 months to 35 months adhered to the recommended vaccination schedule in 2009... |
| Labor Unions Regret Backing Affordable Care Act as Costs Rise Sheet Metal Workers Local 85 in Atlanta estimates the Affordable Care Act's requirements will add between 50 cents and $1 an hour to the cost of members' compensation packages... |
| Some Families to Be Priced out of Health Overhaul A glitch in the health insurance reform law means close to 500,000 children could remain uninsured... |
