company health insurance life pacificcare

HCPro Health Plans - Top Stories
HealthLeaders Media is a leading multi-platform media company dedicated to meeting the business information needs of healthcare executives and professionals.

• Daschle lays out a plan to overhaul healthcare
  Tom Daschle formally began the incoming administration?s quest to overhaul the nation?s healthcare system, telling former Senate colleagues that the task had become more urgent because many people were losing health insurance, along with their jobs, in the recession. Members of both parties offered a friendly welcome to Daschle, the man chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to be secretary of health and human services. The hearing was the first of many to be held for members of the team being assembled by Obama, and the questions and answers touched only briefly on the economic and fiscal crisis that will test the new administration.
• State seeks ruling on TennCare
  

  Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen’s administration has asked a federal judge to release the state from a decades-old court order in a healthcare lawsuit that could allow the state to drop some TennCare recipients and potentially save the state tens of millions of dollars. The move returns to the forefront a long-standing case over the state’s ability to fairly determine whether a group of about 150,000 disabled TennCare recipients are entitled to the benefits.

• House Dems to vote on Obama-favored health plan
  

  Leaders of House Democrats say they are scheduling a vote on renewing a politically popular health insurance program for children, giving President-elect Barack Obama an early victory on healthcare. Unless Congress acts, federal funding for the program expires March 31. The legislation will look similar to bills the House and Senate twice approved in 2007.

• Shortfalls won't curb Iowa's healthcare goals
  

  Iowa is facing a shortfall in the next budget year that some think will top $600 million, and in response Gov. Chet Culver has ordered immediate spending cuts and called for reductions. However, neither Culver nor Democratic lawmakers who run the Legislature have done anything to tamp down ambitious and costly goals for healthcare in Iowa. At the top of the list was an effort to ensure healthcare to nearly all Iowa children by 2010.

• Commentary: What Medicaid tells us about government healthcare
  In this opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, former senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Scott Gottlieb says accumulating medical data shows that Medicaid recipients’ poor health outcomes aren’t just a function of their underlying medical problems, but a more direct consequence of the program’s shortcomings. Gottlieb questions why Barack Obama now wants to build on this system despite its shortcomings.
• Five Health Insurance Predictions for 2009
  Congress will cover more children and cut Medicare Advantage payments to private insurers this year, but 2009 will be a year of minor reforms, and plenty of debate and discussion rather than action.
• Uninsured can get health plans as state's Cover Florida program opens
  

  The first day of Florida’s low-cost, bare-bones health insurance program started with a flurry of interest from uninsured Floridians, but also with confusion and glitches. The state Agency for Health Care Administration could not post phone numbers and Web sites of insurers selling the new policies, leaving consumers to hunt for the information or delay signing up. In a state where one in five adults are uninsured, the third-highest rate in the nation, hundreds of people called the state agency and the insurers about the low-cost, "Cover Florida" coverage.

• New York governor would insure dependents up to age 29
  

  New York Gov. David A. Paterson will propose that private employers be required to offer health insurance to workers’ dependents who are ages 19 to 29. The proposal is part of what the administration hopes will be a step toward universal healthcare coverage in New York. Currently, employers are not required to offer health insurance to dependents who are older than 18 or, if they are in college, 22. The proposal expand coverage to some 800,000 people 19 to 29 years old who are uninsured.

• Blue Shield to restore coverage for dropped Californians
  

  Blue Shield has agreed to reissue medical coverage to nearly 700 Californians whose policies were canceled after they got sick and to make changes in the way it handles insurance bought by individuals, officials have announced. Blue Shield of California's Life & Health Insurance Co. also agreed to reimburse consumers whose coverage was canceled for medical expenses they paid out of pocket. In turn, the state dropped its case against Blue Shield and declined to pursue $12.6 million in proposed fines.

• Stimulus to offer health subsidies for jobless, senator says
  The economic stimulus package now being assembled on Capitol Hill will include significant subsidies to help the newly unemployed keep their health insurance after they lose their jobs, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said. COBRA benefits let laid-off workers keep their group healthcare coverage for up to 18 months, but the benefits are too expensive for many unemployed people because they must pay the full cost of their premiums. Democratic senators want the federal government to ease that burden so more people can keep their insurance.
• Tufts Medical, Blue Cross negotiations break down
  The breakdown in contract talks between Boston’s Tufts Medical Center physicians and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts has patients fretting they may not be able to see their doctors, and scrambling to come up with alternate caregivers. Tufts Medical Center and its physicians group said they had been unable to reach an agreement with Blue Cross after 11 months of talks. Without a solution, Tufts doctors will no longer accept Blue Cross members as of Feb. 1.
• Stark reintroduces his healthcare bill
  

  Rep. Pete Stark, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's health panel, has reintroduced his healthcare legislation without waiting for details from President-elect Barack Obama. Stark has introduced versions of the overhaul legislation for the last 15 years, and recently said he wanted to wait for Obama to spell out his priorities so lawmakers can work to "accomplish his goals." A spokesman for Stark said the bill is designed to provide healthcare coverage for all Americans, and fits within the framework Obama set during the presidential campaign.

• Tufts Medical Center to break with Blue Cross
  

  Boston-based Tufts Medical Center has begun warning thousands of patients that Tufts doctors will no longer accept Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO coverage after Jan. 31. A letter to patients states that Blue Cross refuses to pay Tufts doctors at a "reasonable rate." The medical center is encouraging its patients to contact Blue Cross directly to "express your frustration."

• Seven hospitals in New York accused of $50 million Medicaid fraud
  

  Four hospitals in New York state paid kickbacks to get more patients into their drug treatment programs, which billed Medicaid for services that weren’t standard or necessary and lacked state certification, lawsuits allege. Another hospital paid people to search homeless shelters and other places for patients to enter a three-day stay in detox in exchange for cigarettes, beer, food, and other items, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuits allege those five hospitals and two others fraudulently billed Medicaid for more than $50 million in more than 14,000 different claims.

• Kaiser's Cleveland Clinic-only plan didn't work out for hospital, insurer
  

  Kaiser Permanente’s decision to send nearly all its patients needing hospitalization to the Cleveland Clinic was designed to enhance the health-maintenance organization’s reputation and boost profits by consolidating care from 11 hospitals to one. A decade and a half later, Kaiser has gone back to using numerous community hospitals as well as its own health centers for members who do not need transplants or specialized care. Kaiser never saw the increase in Cleveland-area customers i