General Electric’s announcement today that it will invest $6 billion in a worldwide “Healthymagination Initiative” raises familiar questions about the interplay of free enterprise and healthcare reform in the U.S. While some components of GE’s plan could help lower costs, raise quality, and increase access, as CEO Jeff Immelt contended in a press conference, the overall program seems...
Health Care Industry Archive
May 2009
Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and Dr. Ralph Brindis, the incoming president of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), recently endorsed two different kinds of electronic disease registries. Both can contribute to healthcare quality improvement, but in different ways. Clancy made her remarks at a hearing held by the National Committee...
On the heels of HCA’s good news about its first-quarter results, Tenet Healthcare, the second largest for-profit hospital chain, reported that it earned $178 million in the first three months of 2009, compared with a loss of $31 million for the prior-year period. The majority of the gain, $134 million, was attributable to a debt swap in January; the company exchanged $1.6 billion of notes due...
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has moved further down the road of allowing “clinically integrated” networks of physicians and (in some cases) hospitals to bargain with health plans and self-insured employers on rates. In a staff report involving a Maryland physician-hospital organization (PHO), the FTC said that the PHO could negotiate with payers on behalf of its independent providers....
Sen. Max Baucus, one of the leaders of healthcare reform efforts, has depicted the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as an obstacle to reform because it has so far been unable to score many of the proposals that he has made. And he is urging the CBO to find cost savings wherever it can. “Otherwise, healthcare reform is in jeopardy,” Baucus is quoted as saying. This is not the first time...
Chrysler’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy has dealt another body blow to the tottering system of employer-based insurance. The United Auto Workers’ health trust, which the Big Three automakers set up in 2007 to meet their retiree healthcare obligations, now has a 55 percent stake in the new company that will own most of Chrysler’s assets. The quid pro quo is that the health trust (known...
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