Docs Foresee Trouble With Digitizing Records

Peter Orszag: No one wants to work Saturdays, but we need them to

(NEWSER) - If we're serious about raising the quality of health care while lowering its cost, doctors need to do two things: The first is suck it up and work weekends, writes Peter Orszag. There are plenty of compelling reasons: People who are hospitalized on Saturdays and Sundays don't fare so well, for one. A 2007 study found that for every 1,000 heart-attack sufferers admitted on the weekend, 9 to 10 more died versus weekday admissions. Our hospitals sit idle 25% of the time, meaning we're not using our expensive equipment and space fully. More»

That makes the problem worse; we need better primary care

(NEWSER) - Teaching hospitals want to increase the number of medical residencies financed by the federal government by 15,000 from the current 100,000. Seems to makes sense: More doctors makes for a healthier nation, right? Wrong, write Shannon Brownlee and David Goodman. In fact, it would only make the nation's health care worse by "perpetuating a system in which too many doctors provide poor-quality care at too high a price." More»

Having KO'd most cuts, they're aiming at Cadillac tax and Medicare commission

(NEWSER) - Who's winning the health care battle? Lobbyists, says the New York Times, who've succeeded in blocking virtually every avenue for cutting health care costs that has been put on the table. They've killed proposals that would pinch doctors, hospitals, insurers and employees who are the beneficiaries of so-called Cadillac health plans. Now they're aiming at the last two measures still standing: a scaled-back Cadillac tax and a nonpartisan Medicare cost-cutting commission. More»

(NEWSER) - Everybody's thinking small on health care reform, writes David Goldhill in the Atlantic. Our system is so abysmal—the headline on his lengthy piece is "How American Health Care Killed My Father"—that it needs a radical restructuring, and that should start with insurance. Let's just stop buying it, or all but. Everyone should be required to have catastrophic insurance to cover bills above, say, $50,000. For everything else, the system should be pay-as-you-go. More»

Will accept lower payments for Medicaid, Medicare

(NEWSER) - The nation’s hospitals have struck a deal with White House and Senate negotiators that will save the government $155 billion over 10 years, the Washington Post reports. The hospitals will accept lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments, and a gradual reduction in the amount paid to help care for the uninsured. The government, meanwhile, has promised that a public insurance plan would pay better-than-Medicare rates. More»