VA Setting Stage For Biggest Transformation Of The Veterans’ Medical System In A Generation
The proposed guidelines would allow veterans more choice is seeking care outside the troubled VA system. Although, proponents of the switch say that it can help with wait times, critics say it will strain the private sector and increase costs for taxpayers.
The New York Times:
V.A. Seeks To Redirect Billions Of Dollars Into Private Care
The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to shift billions of dollars from government-run veterans’ hospitals to private health care providers, setting the stage for the biggest transformation of the veterans’ medical system in a generation. Under proposed guidelines, it would be easier for veterans to receive care in privately run hospitals and have the government pay for it. Veterans would also be allowed access to a system of proposed walk-in clinics, which would serve as a bridge between V.A. emergency rooms and private providers, and would require co-pays for treatment. (Steinhauer and Philipps, 1/12)
In other national health care news —
The Associated Press:
Huge Migrant Teen Detention Camp In Texas Shutting Down
The nonprofit running what once was the largest U.S. detention camp housing migrant teenagers said the last children left the facility Friday. The tent city in Tornillo, Texas, is shutting down, and all tents and equipment will be removed from the site by the end of January, said Krista Piferrer, spokeswoman of BCFS Health and Human Services. (1/11)
Politico:
Trump Wants To Bypass Congress On Medicaid Plan
The Trump administration is quietly devising a plan bypassing Congress to give block grants to states for Medicaid, achieving a longstanding conservative dream of reining in spending on the health care safety net for the poor. Three administration sources say the Trump administration is drawing up guidelines on what could be a major overhaul of Medicaid in some states. Instead of the traditional open-ended entitlement, states would get spending limits, along with more flexibility to run the low-income health program that serves nearly 75 million Americans, from poor children, to disabled people, to impoverished seniors in nursing homes. (Pradhan and Diamond, 1/11)
The New York Times:
Hospitals Must Now Post Prices. But It May Take A Brain Surgeon To Decipher Them.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, responding to a new Trump administration order to begin posting all hospital prices, listed a charge of $42,569 for a cardiology procedure described as “HC PTC CLOS PAT DUCT ART.” Baptist Health in Miami helpfully told consumers that an “Embolza Protect 5.5” would cost them $9,818 while a “Visceral selective angio rad” runs a mere $5,538. On Jan. 1, hospitals began complying with a Trump administration order to post list prices for all their services, theoretically offering consumers transparency and choice and forcing health care providers into price competition. (Pear, 1/13)
The Hill:
Booker Tries To Shake Doubts About Pharmaceutical Ties Ahead Of 2020
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is trying to overcome doubts that he is too close to the pharmaceutical industry ahead of an expected presidential campaign. The progressive criticism of Booker reached a crescendo in early 2017 when he voted against a budget amendment calling for importing drugs from abroad. (Sullivan, 1/13)
The New York Times:
The Flu Is Widespread In The U.S., And It’s Not Too Late To Get Vaccinated
The flu season is going strong. About six million to seven million people in the United States have come down with the illness so far, with half of them sick enough to have seen doctors, according to estimates released on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 69,000 to 84,000 ended up in the hospital during the period from Oct. 1, 2018 through Jan. 5. (Grady, 1/11)
The New York Times:
Memorial Sloan Kettering Curbs Executives’ Ties To Industry After Conflict-Of-Interest Scandals
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, one of the world’s leading research institutions, announced on Friday that it would bar its top executives from serving on corporate boards of drug and health care companies that, in some cases, had paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Hospital officials also told the center’s staff that the executive board had made permanent a series of reforms designed to limit the ways in which its top executives and leading researchers could profit from work developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering, a nonprofit with a broad social mission that admits about 23,500 cancer patients each year. (Thomas and Ornstein, 1/11)