Healthcare Financial News

In his address to the American Medical Association at its annual meeting on Monday, June 15, President Obama tried to assuage the group’s concerns about his proposal to create a public health plan as part of healthcare reform. He told the physicians, “The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend,” reports the Washington Post. The AMA has come out against a public plan that would mandate participation by all doctors who treat Medicare patients or one that is based on Medicare rates.

"I understand that you are concerned that today's Medicare rates will be applied broadly in a way that means our cost savings are coming off your backs," the President told the audience of physicians. "These are legitimate concerns, but ones, I believe, that can be overcome. What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system. So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this--they are not telling the truth."

President Obama also told the AMA that he is open to reducing medical malpractice lawsuits as a way to cut healthcare costs, but that he will not agree to cap malpractice awards. In addition, he said he wanted to investigate “a range of ideas” that emphasize patient safety, evidence-based guidelines, and letting doctors concentrate on practicing medicine, reports the New York Times. “That’s how we can scale back the excessive defensive medicine reinforcing our current system of more treatment rather than better care,” he said.

The RN shortage in many areas of the country is easing as the recession and job insecurity of spouses cause older nurses to delay retirement or return to the workforce and part-time nurses to become full time, according to a study published on the Health Affairs web site. But a new RN shortage looms in the next decade as baby boomers retire from the nursing workforce.

The researchers project a shortfall of RNs developing around 2018 and growing to about 260,000 by 2025. Although these projections represent a smaller shortfall than earlier estimates, the magnitude of the 2025 deficit would still be more than twice as large as any nurse shortage experienced since the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s. Avoiding this shortfall will require expanding the capacity of nursing education programs, which since 2002 have turned away 30,000 or more qualified applicants annually, the researchers say.

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A shortage of medical isotopes has resulted in U.S. hospitals limiting or canceling diagnostic tests, reports Reuters. An aging Canadian nuclear reactor, which produces a third of the world’s medical isotopes, has been shut down for a leak and may be closed permanently.

The University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the University of Chicago Medical Center told Reuters that they have been forced to switch to more costly tests, such as positron emission tomography scans, which Medicare doesn’t cover, and to delay tests. The Society of Nuclear Medicine said 60 percent of its member hospitals are delaying procedures and 31 percent are canceling them as a result of the shortage.

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