Aggressive sales tactics have allegedly led surgeons to use defective or wrong-size implants, screws or other products on patients, including former Olympian Mary Lou Retton.
Facing bankruptcy, Detroit largely dismantled its public health department in 2012, and the city essentially went two years without a government-run public health system. Five years later, this major American city offers a grim cautionary tale.
Providence, the country’s 10th-biggest hospital chain, says it’s too expensive to upgrade an older hospital, so it will join forces with giant Kaiser Permanente to build a new one.
Community Health Systems, a large, for profit hospital chain, shrank from more than 200 to 84 facilities. It is continuing to sue patients for hospitals that now exist as little more than legal entities.
Big Bend Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in a sparsely populated region of West Texas, announced that because of a nursing shortage its labor and delivery unit must close for days at a time and patients must go instead to a hospital an hour away.
The Biden administration is weighing how to treat urgent care clinics as part of broad regulations banning surprise, out-of-network medical bills. At the heart of the matter: What counts as an emergency?
California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a recall election in September, fueled in part by anger over his pandemic policies. The health care industry has ponied up more than $4.8 million so far to defend the first-term Democrat.
Pharmaceutical companies routinely cover the cost of patient copays for expensive drugs under private insurance. A federal judge could make the practice legal for millions on Medicare as well.