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Stanislaus County gives nod to interim budget
Modesto Bee - 06-11-2008 - Stanislaus County's interim budget approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors tries to minimize the impact on the community and maintain levels of serv-ice, Chief Operations Officer Patty Hill Thomas said... That might mean fewer dollars for children on welfare, lower wages for In-Home Supportive Services workers who help families care for disabled relatives or a tougher time finding a doctor who will accept Medi-Cal payments.
25 Million Americans Are 'Underinsured'
Business Week - 06-11-2008 - The number of American adults who had inadequate health insurance to cover their medical expenses rose 60 percent from 2003 to 2007, from 16 million to more than 25 million people. Hardest hit were families with middle and higher incomes, those whose income was 200 percent above the federal poverty level or those with an annual income of $40,000 or more, a new report by The Commonwealth Fund found.
Simi hospital will cut jobs, slash several programs
Ventura County Star - 06-11-2008 - As it prepares to open a $75 million patient care tower that awaits final state approval, the hospital will eliminate its 16-bed subacute care program for seniors and other patients who need constant, long-term care. Many of them are on life support systems and are unlikely to recover, though others eventually return home.
End-of-life patients need big picture
USA Today - 06-11-2008 - Patients with advanced cancer often don't know how long they have to live or how chemotherapy will affect their lives, according to a study. In many cases doctors don't give patients such information, and other times patients misunderstand their doctors and perhaps hear what they want to hear, the study found. As a result, patients may ask for aggressive, painful therapies that have no hope of helping them.
Congress Presses FDA on Investigations
Wall Street Journal - 06-11-2008 - The criminal-investigations wing of the Food and Drug Administration is in hot water with Democrats and Republicans in both the Senate and the House. The Office of Criminal Investigations, or OCI, has operated largely autonomously in recent years, emphasizing a crackdown on illegal abuse of drugs such as Oxycontin. Its budget doubled to $42.8 million from fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2009, even as FDA officials were conceding that funds for assuring the quality of imported drugs weren't adequate. Monday, the Bush administration announced it would ask Congress for an extra $275 million to beef up FDA inspections.
Options Data Unsealed
In UnitedHealth Case
Wall Street Journal - 06-11-2008 - Freshly unsealed information filed by plaintiffs in a class action against UnitedHealth Group Inc. offers details of allegations regarding how its executives discussed and decided to issue stock options at the center of a backdating scandal. The scandal led to the ouster of its chief executive officer 18 months ago and spawned several lawsuits. In a settlement reached in December, ex-CEO William McGuire agreed to forfeit $420 million in stock-option gains and retirement pay to settle shareholder and federal-government claims connected to options backdating at the Minnetonka, Minn., health-insurance company. But it continues to roil the company via a shareholder class action led by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which contends it suffered millions of dollars in stock-market losses from the debacle.
