Physicians

Two Large Medical Groups Shun Medicare Advantage Plans

September 26, 2023 Cheryl Clark, MedPage Today. Resist! California, Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Physicians, Private health insurance

Signaling what may be an emerging national trend, two influential medical groups with San Diego-based Scripps Health are cancelling their Medicare Advantage contracts for 2024 because of low reimbursement and prior authorization hassles, leaving 30,000 enrolled seniors to look for new doctors, or different coverage. "Negotiations with the payers for MA with our medical foundation groups and Scripps Health were unsuccessful and we have been forced to withdraw from those plans due to annual losses that exceeded $75 million," Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder told MedPage Today in an early morning email.

Doctor Fights To Let Pharmacists Prescribe Birth Control

September 2, 2021 Tracey A. Wilkinson, Truthout. Resist! Abortion, Health Care, Indiana, Physicians

Indiana - People love the pill. As a pediatrician and a researcher who studies access to contraception, I speak to patients from all walks of life, and, even if they choose not to use the birth control pill themselves, most people support making it affordable and easy to access for everyone. Its near-universal support is not surprising: Birth control can improve people’s lives by giving them the freedom to plan their families, allowing them to delay pregnancy until they decide they are ready. Still, for many people, getting to a doctor to get a prescription for birth control isn’t as easy as it should be. That’s why I support and advocate for legislation that would make Indiana the 20th state to expand access to birth control by allowing pharmacists to directly prescribe and dispense the birth control pill and patch.

When This War Is Over, Many Of Us Will Leave Medicine

April 26, 2020 Michele Harper, Elemental. Educate! COVID-19, Healthcare, Pandemic, Physicians

I couldn’t see. My face shield was blurred by a streaky haze. I tilted my neck back and forth in an effort to peer beyond it, beneath it, through it, whatever might work. Was it condensation? I started to raise my hands to my face to wipe it away before I remembered and yanked them back down: I cannot touch my face, can’t ever touch my face — neither inside this room nor outside it. As I stood at the head of the patient’s bed in ER Room 3, her nurse, Kate, secured a mask over the patient’s face to deliver additional oxygen. I checked to ensure the oxygen was cranked up to the maximum flow rate while we waited for the respiratory therapist. Even with that increased oxygen, the patient was saturating 85% at best, and her blood pressure was dropping. Ninety minutes earlier, the patient — a woman of 68 years with significant impairment from a stroke — had been fine.

In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physicians Group In US Has New Prescription: It’s Medicare for All

January 22, 2020 By Jon Queally, Commondreams.org Educate! Doctors, Health Care, Medicare, Physicians

"Major changes are needed," declares the 159,000-member American College of Physicians, "to a system that costs too much, leaves too many behind, and delivers too little." The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of Physicians—in a move described as a "seachange for the medical professions"—officially endorsed a single-payer system as among only one of two possible ways to improve the nation's healthcare woes.

Capitalism Is Killing Patients… And Their Physicians

November 5, 2018 Dr. Michael Pappas, Popular Resistance. Educate! Capitalism, Healthcare, Physicians, Worker Rights

Until physicians are willing to accept the fact they they are being exploited by the same system that harms their patients, there will be no progress made in addressing physician depression and suicide. At that same time, until health care providers generally accept that it is our current capitalist system which puts profit production above the well being of every living thing on this planet--including themselves--we will not be able to effectively address true social and structural causes of disease and suffering. Capitalism exploits, damages, and destroys us all.

Celebrate Medicare’s 50th Birthday By Expanding It To All

July 30, 2015 Garrett Adams, www.pnhp.org Educate! Medicare, Physicians, Public Health

By Garrett Adams in PNHP - The nation has a lot to celebrate when Medicare turns 50 on July 30. Medicare has brought care and dignity to millions of seniors, relieving their suffering and extending their lives. Before President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law in Independence, Missouri, in 1965, only about half of those over 65 had health insurance. In the 50 years since then, life expectancy has risen by more than nine years to a little over 79 years. Medicare ended segregation in our country’s hospitals when federal reimbursements for patient care were made contingent on ending discrimination. Within a few months the walls tumbled in the face of sound public policy and financing based on social justice. Today, Medicare covers about 17 percent of our population, over 55 million people, including those other than the elderly whom the private insurance industry has abandoned – the permanently disabled and those on dialysis from kidney failure.

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