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Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills

September 11, 2019

As proposals to ban surprise medical bills move through Congress and state legislatures with rare bipartisan support, physician groups have emerged as the loudest opponents

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Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills

Wednesday, September 11th, 2019

Often led by doctors with the veneer of noble concern for patients, physician-staffing firms — third-party companies that employ doctors and assign them out to health care facilities — have opposed efforts to limit the practice known as balance billing. They claim such bans would rob doctors of their leverage in negotiating, drive down their payments and push them out of insurance networks.

Opponents have been waging well-financed campaigns. Slick TV ads and congressional lobbyists seek to stop legislation that had widespread support from voters. Nearly 40% of patients said they were “very worried” about surprise medical bills, which generally arise when an insured individual inadvertently receives care from an out-of-network provider.

…continue reading ‘Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills’

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KHN

The Hospital Treated These Patients. Then It Sued Them.

September 3, 2019

Most hospitals do not frequently take patients to court over medical debt. But since 2015, Carlsbad Medical Center, in New Mexico, has filed lawsuits by the thousands

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The Hospital Treated These Patients. Then It Sued Them.

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2019

CARLSBAD, N.M. — The first time Carlsbad Medical Center sued Misti Price, she was newly divorced and working two jobs to support her three young children.

The hospital demanded payment in 2012 for what Ms. Price recalled as an emergency room visit for one of her children who has asthma. She could not afford a lawyer, and she did not have the money to pay the bill.

Ms. Price let the summons go unanswered, figuring she would settle the balance — with interest, about $3,600 — when she could. A few months later, she opened her paycheck and discovered the hospital had garnished her wages by $870 a month.

…continue reading ‘The Hospital Treated These Patients. Then It Sued Them.’

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New York Times

Op-Art: The Shame of Crowdfunding Health Care

August 26, 2019

Cartoonist Dustin Harbin fell off a bike into an outpouring of charity. But Americans shouldn’t have to seek out strangers to pay health bills

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Op-Art: The Shame of Crowdfunding Health Care

Monday, August 26th, 2019

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…continue reading ‘Op-Art: The Shame of Crowdfunding Health Care’

Thumb image via article – Dustin Harbin

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New York Times Opinion

A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check)

August 22, 2019

A novel twist on medical tourism to avoid the high cost of U.S. health care saves an employer money and even earns the patient a bonus

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A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check)

Thursday, August 22nd, 2019

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CANCÚN, Mexico — Donna Ferguson awoke in the resort city of Cancún before sunrise on a sweltering Saturday in July.

She wasn’t headed to the beach. Instead, she walked down a short hallway from her Sheraton hotel and into Galenia Hospital.

A little later that morning, a surgeon, Dr. Thomas Parisi, who had flown in from Wisconsin the day before, stood by Ms. Ferguson’s hospital bed and used a black marker to note which knee needed repair. “I’m ready,” Ms. Ferguson, 56, told him just before being taken to the operating room for her total knee replacement. For this surgery, she would not only receive free care, but would receive a check when she got home.

…continue reading ‘A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check)’

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New York Times

Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America

July 22, 2019

Forced off their parents’ insurance and faced with high insulin prices, young adults dangerously ration, stockpile, and turn to the black market for the medication they need to stay alive

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Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

On the day Jathan Laverty turned 26, he was working at a Columbus, Ohio, coffee shop and freelancing as a corporate event technician, hoping to get a foot in the door of the event planning industry. This birthday turned that search for a full-time job into something urgent.

Laverty has Type 1 diabetes, and as of that day in 2017, he was no longer eligible for coverage under his parents’ health insurance. He found himself needing medication to live that he could not afford.

“It’s a human necessity for me,” Laverty, now 28, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s my life or death every time I do or don’t take insulin.”

…continue reading ‘Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America’

Thumb image via Buzzfeed news – Courtesy Jathan Laverty

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Buzzfeed News

The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

July 16, 2019

New “living drugs”—made from a patient’s own cells—can cure once incurable cancers. But can we afford them?

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The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

Tuesday, July 16th, 2019

It matters that the first patients were identical twins. Nancy and Barbara Lowry were six years old, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with eyebrow-skimming bangs. Sometime in the spring of 1960, Nancy fell ill. Her blood counts began to fall; her pediatricians noted that she was anemic. A biopsy revealed that she had a condition called aplastic anemia, a form of bone-marrow failure.

The marrow produces blood cells, which need regular replenishing, and Nancy’s was rapidly shutting down. The origins of this illness are often mysterious, but in its typical form the spaces where young blood cells are supposed to be formed gradually fill up with globules of white fat. Barbara, just as mysteriously, was completely healthy.

The Lowrys lived in Tacoma, a leafy, rain-slicked city near Seattle. At Seattle’s University of Washington hospital, where Nancy was being treated, the doctors had no clue what to do next. So they called a physician-scientist named E. Donnall Thomas, at the hospital in Cooperstown, New York, asking for help.

…continue reading ‘The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies’

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The New Yorker

Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

June 26, 2019

Not every hospital sues over unpaid bills, but a few sue a lot. In Virginia, 36% of hospitals sued patients and garnished their wages in 2017, according to a study published Tuesday in the American Medical Association’s journal, JAMA

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Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

Wednesday, June 26th, 2019

On a sunny morning — the second Friday in June — the first defendant at court is a young woman, Daisha Smith, 24, who arrives early; she has just come off working an overnight shift at a group home for the elderly. She is here because the local hospital sued her for an unpaid medical bill — a bill she didn’t know she owed until her wages started disappearing out of her paycheck.

The hospital, Mary Washington, sues so many patients that the court reserves a morning every month for its cases.

Inside the courthouse, it’s not hard to figure out where to go. Right through court security, there are signs on colored paper: “If you are here for a MW case, please register at the civil window.” When the elevators open, there’s another Mary Washington sign. Wearing name badges, Mary Washington billing staff members walk through the halls. They’ve set up a kind of field office in a witness room at the back of the courtroom, where they are ready and waiting to set up payment plans for defendants.

…continue reading ‘Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous”

Image via NPR Shots – Jaci Starkey

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NPR Shots

Move Over, Martin Shkreli

June 13, 2019

This Pharma Exec Is Accused Of Fixing Prices On 107 Drugs

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Move Over, Martin Shkreli

Thursday, June 13th, 2019

In some ways, it was the corporate world equivalent of the infamous baptism scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, when, in a single 24 hours, the newly anointed don of the Corleone family executed a plan to simultaneously eliminate rivals in La Cosa Nostra.

In this case, however, the family was made up of generic-drug makers Teva Pharmaceuticals, Mylan, Actavis, Lupin, Novartis’ Sandoz, Taro Pharmaceuticals and others. On a single day, Friday, April 2014, the scheme hiked the price on 22 generic drugs—ranging from cephalexin, a bacterial infection antibiotic, which jumped 185%, to ketoconazole cream, used to combat athletes foot and jock itch, which jumped 110%, to diflunisal, an anti-inflammatory, up as much as 182%.

In annals of marketing, their concerted action was impressive. The move rubbed out price competition and profit erosion in an industry plagued by them—and created a windfall for those in on the game.

…continue reading ‘Move Over, Martin Shkreli’

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Forbes

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Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills

Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills

The Hospital Treated These Patients. Then It Sued Them.

The Hospital Treated These Patients. Then It Sued Them.

Op-Art: The Shame of Crowdfunding Health Care

Op-Art: The Shame of Crowdfunding Health Care

A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check)

A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check)

Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America

Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America

The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

The Promise and Perils of Cellular Therapies

Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

Hospitals Earn Little From Suing For Unpaid Bills. For Patients, It Can Be ‘Ruinous’

Move Over, Martin Shkreli

Move Over, Martin Shkreli

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