Report: Nonprofit hospitals seizing patients’ wages to collect medical debts. In a 3,500-word story co-published with NPR, ProPublica (12/19) reports on the use of lawsuits and wage garnishment by some hospitals to collect on medical debts. The piece says that while no one tracks how many hospitals sue their patients and how frequently, “ProPublica and ... Continue Reading

Many new items came up this week that I will comment on. 1. Primary care physicians likely to see cut in Medicaid Payments (Congressional Quarterly 12/12). Medicaid (welfare) has not kept up with the overhead costs of a visit. The doctor has to pay to see a medicaid patient – a loosing proposition. So to ... Continue Reading

Two items came by my desk this week. 1. More medications are going to be excluded next year from formularies because of price, Bloomberg News (1/26, Langreth), Express scripts will exclude 66 brand name drugs and CVS health 95 drugs from the 2015 formularies. (prices of pharmaceuticals are rising to unconscionable levels even in the ... Continue Reading

Topping the news this week is greed from Pharmaceutical companies: 1. A 60 minute report (October 5th) describes a cost of a cancer drug going from $33,000 for a treatment course to $98,000, because a competitor came out with a similar drug for $100,000 per treatment course, see the link to watch the 14 minute ... Continue Reading

Four worthwhile news items this week are worth repeating. – 1. The failed, not secure federal healthcare.gov website has so far cost $2.1 billion dollars (Bloomberg News 9/24,Wayne) and to date $73 billion has been spent to implement the Affordable Care Act (The Hill 9/25, Viebeck). Remember the government doesn’t earn money, only prints it ... Continue Reading