"Obama team sets new rules for private Medicare plans" by Associated Press | March 31, 2009
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration yesterday placed new curbs on private insurance plans that are popular with seniors in Medicare but have been criticized for marketing abuses and high costs to the government.
Translation: taxpayers are being ripped off by insurance companies.
Medicare officials said the changes include winnowing the number of versions of a plan that insurers can offer, protecting patients with chronic diseases from excessive copayments and banning a practice by some plans that can add even more to the costs of brand name drugs....
The new policies reflect an administration effort to put its stamp on private plans in Medicare, which flourished under Republicans but are seen by some Democrats as undermining the traditional program....
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Here is an IDEA: ONE PAYER, ONE-PLAN! Got it?!!!
Then again, you may NOT WANT GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE:
NEW YORK - One in five Medicare patients end up back in the hospital within a month of discharge, a large study found, and that practice costs billions of dollars a year.
The findings suggest patients aren't told enough about how to take care of themselves and stay healthy before they go home, the researchers said. A few simple things - like making a doctor's appointment for departing patients - can help, they said.
Because it is about TURNOVER and FILLING BEDS (cha-ching)!!!!
The study found that half of the non-surgery patients who returned within a month hadn't seen a doctor between hospital stays. "Hospitals put more effort into the admission process than they do into the discharge process," said Dr. Eric Coleman, one of the study's authors from the University of Colorado in Denver.
Because YOU are BRINGING in $$$$!!! YOU being SICK is GOOD BIDNESS!!!!!
Coleman, who runs a program to improve communication between healthcare systems, said patients often have a honeymoon notion about how things will be once they're home. Then when they become confused about how to take their medicine or run into other problems, they head back to the hospital because they don't know where to turn, he said.
Yeah, it is all the PATIENT'S FAULT!!
Am I EVER SICK of hearing THAT ONE!!!!!!!
More attention is being paid now to readmissions and their cost because President Obama's budget calls for reducing spending on Medicare readmissions to pay for healthcare reform....
Oh, when YOU and YOUR HEALTH start to COST GOVERNMENT MONEY (like the smoking costs) then they are ALL UP IN IT!!!
Of course, when it comes to BANKS and WAR LOOT, well....
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Give me Sicko or give me death.
If we don't get the first one, America, we are definitely getting the second one.
Then again, we might get both in AmeriKa!
"Ex-nurse charged with killing 5 patients" by Associated Press | April 3, 2009
SAN ANTONIO - A former nurse has been charged with injecting 10 patients with bleach, killing five of them, at a Texas dialysis clinic that temporarily closed last year after deaths mysteriously spiked.
Since the deaths over a four-week span last April, Kimberly Saenz had been the focus of the investigation at the
The grand jury in Angelina County handed up indictments on one count of capital murder, which includes all five patient deaths, and five counts of aggravated assault, which replace the two charges filed last year and allege that three other patients were injected and survived.
Lufkin police have said two patients witnessed Saenz draw bleach into syringes and inject them into patients. DaVita has painted Saenz as a rogue nurse. She worked as a licensed nurse for nearly four years in Texas and spent eight months at DaVita before being fired on April 29.
The previous day, the clinic had closed because of the spate of deaths. It reopened under heavy state oversight after being instructed to follow a serious plan of correction. State records showed 19 deaths at the clinic in the five months before its closure.
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I guess the answer is don't get sick in AmeriKa in any case.
