Health Care Costs

(Newser) - As states across the country struggle to cope with staggering budget shortfalls, 19 of them have cut back on Medicaid, reports the Washington Post . The states, along with DC, are lowering payments to hospitals and nursing homes, ending coverage for less common treatments, and booting some citizens out of the program entirely. "It's not a pretty list at all," said the director of Utah's Medicaid program. More »

(Newser) - In a move intended to combat the spread of infections, Scotland will forbid doctors to wear the long white coats that have been a symbol of the medical profession for more than a century, the Guardian reports. The country will institute a dress code next year that bans not only the coats—whose cuffs can become contaminated—but also ties and watches. Doctors won’t even be allowed to keep pens in outside pockets. More »

(Newser) - Tom Daschle, Barack Obama's incoming Director of Health and Human Services, has an aggressive strategy for reforming health care, and no intentions of seeing it fizzle the way the Clintons' efforts did in 1993, reports the Los Angeles Times . The key will be reeling in major health-care interest groups, along with members of Congress, and forcefully heading off the kind of opposition campaign that scared voters last time around.  More »

(Newser) - As expected, President-elect Barack Obama today nominated Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services, CQ Politics reports. Daschle will also head the new White House Office of Health Reform, geared toward providing near-universal health care to Americans. Daschle “will be responsible not just for implementing our health care plan,” Obama said. “He will also be lead architect.” More »

(Newser) - As firms collapse and abruptly cut off insurance, some laid-off workers face staggering medical bills without any clear way to pay for them, the Wall Street Journal reports. In many cases, workers rush to take care of medical needs upon hearing their employers are going under, only to find those expenses not covered—one woman induced labor the day her company announced it was closing, only to find herself saddled with the $20,000 bill. More »

(Newser) - A British government institute that approves drugs based on cost-benefit analysis is coming under fire at home even as other countries are seeing it as a model for bringing down costs, the New York Times reports. Though the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence often balks at expensive life-prolonging medications—denying one cancer patient a $54000 treatment that would have given him six months—some see it “as the only workable paradigm” of US reform. More »

(Newser) - Healthy and insured but afraid you might someday lose your medical coverage? UnitedHealth has just launched a new product that lets consumers pay now for the guarantee that they’ll be able to get insurance later—even if they get sick, the New York Times reports. Critics are skeptical of the novel “Continuity” product, noting that health care changes under the new administration could render it obsolete. More »

(Newser) - Washington is approaching a broad consensus: It’s time for the government to step in to create universal health care, the Los Angeles Times reports. Both left and right have abandoned pet plans in favor of a middle ground that maintains the current employer-based system, while driving down costs and rewarding good care. And leaders in the debate want to funnel vast sums into such reform, despite burge