CMA Press Clips
Daily reports on health care policy and medicine from newspapers and magazines throughout California and around the nation.
Doctors Slam Insurers Over Their Rankings
Wall Street Journal - 7/20/10 - Doctor groups criticized growing efforts by health plans to steer patients toward certain physicians based on cost or quality, arguing in a letter to insurers that the rankings may be unreliable and unfair.
Medical association honors North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson
Eureka Times-Standard - 7/20/10 - North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, has been honored with the "2010 Legacy Award" by a collection of Northern California medical societies. The California Medical Association Tenth District delegation caucus -- which includes representatives from the medical societies of Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Mendocino, Lake, Humboldt and Del Norte counties -- presented Thompson with the award at its recent annual meeting.
Valley doctors, chiropractors accused of fraud
Fresno Bee - 7/20/10 - Allstate Insurance Co. is suing San Joaquin Valley doctors and several chiropractors in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, alleging they falsely operated chiropractic clinics as medical groups to get insurance payments.
Insurers tout disease management programs, but critics are wary
Washington Post - 7/20/10 - Venante Kotey is a stay-at-home mother in Dumfries. Bridget Hamilton-Roberts is a nurse more than 500 miles away in Atlanta. They've never met. But over the past year and a half, Hamilton-Roberts has become critical to Kotey's health -- all through conversations over the telephone.
UnitedHealth profit soars in Q2
Sacramento Business Journal - 7/20/10 - UnitedHealth Group's profit surged 31 percent in the second quarter, beating Wall Street estimates.
Doctor's notes: You can read them, but should you?
LA Times - 7/20/10 - There is no question that a patient's medical records belong to the patient. Patients can ask for copies of everything health professionals enter into their files. Patient records, however, are meant to help the doctor or other health professional organization obtain information and treat the patient safely and effectively.
Seniors now urged to get whooping cough shot
San Francisco Chronicle - 7/20/10 - In what could be the worst year for whooping cough in more than five decades, state public health officials broadened recommendations Monday for those who should be immunized against the disease to include seniors and women in their childbearing years.
Whooping cough increases in Sacramento area
Sacramento Bee - 7/20/10 - California is experiencing what could be its most severe epidemic of whooping cough in a half century, says the state Department of Public Health.
