January 6, 2025
(Axios) – Charging patients to message their doctors through portals could reduce health worker burnout and modestly lightened clinicians’ workloads at the Mayo Clinic, researchers said. Why it matters: More health systems have been charging to answer patient queries since … Read More
January 3, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – From a humble base, it gobbled up big chunks of the U.S. health system, including doctor practices, pharmacy-benefits managers and medical billing services UnitedHealth recorded $372 billion in revenue last year—making it about the same size … Read More
January 3, 2025
BMC Medical Ethics has new articles available online. Articles include:
December 31, 2024
(ProPublica) – Health insurers frequently review patients’ progress to see if they can be moved down to a lower — and almost always cheaper — level of care. That can cut both ways. They sometimes cite a lack of progress … Read More
December 30, 2024
(The Hill) – A report from the Senate Intelligence Committee offers a critical look at the CIA’s handling of cases of unexplained health incidents, determining its approach hindered its ability to care for staff and alienated employees. The Friday report on … Read More
December 30, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The government’s Medicare Advantage system, which uses private insurers to provide health benefits to seniors and disabled people, pays the companies based on how sick patients are, to cover the higher costs of sicker patients. Medicare … Read More
December 27, 2024
(The Guardian) – Drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro are an attractive prospect for online businesses and traditional pharmacies as well as the firms that make them It is a trend rooted in profit-making. Adverts featuring prescription-only weight-loss medications are … Read More
December 27, 2024
(Reuters via Yahoo! News) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday its analysis of samples from the first severe case of bird flu in the country last week showed mutations not seen in samples from … Read More
December 27, 2024
(The Washington Post) – Overdose deaths have reached record levels in the United States in recent years. Despite signs of decline, the number of people dying nationwide from overdoses has eclipsed 100,000 annually between 2020 and 2023, according to national … Read More
December 27, 2024
(New York Times) – Since the late 1990s, drug companies have spent tens of billions of dollars on television ads, drumming up demand for their products with cheerful jingles and scenes of dancing patients. Now, some people up for top … Read More
December 27, 2024
(ABC) – From a pig kidney transplant to restoring genetic deafness, 2024 was a year full of medical breakthroughs. The breakthroughs include the discovery of a cause of an autoimmune disease, the development of a “game-changing” drug and potential hope … Read More
December 27, 2024
(Wired) – By learning lessons from other sectors, public health can ensure it is ready to face future outbreaks in record time. Public health is under pressure. Across health care systems around the world, funding is declining, exhausted professionals are … Read More
December 24, 2024
(STAT News) – In the wake of the tragic murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, all of us who serve in health care must take time to pause and reflect on how we move forward. As a religious sister and … Read More
December 23, 2024
(NBC News) – Health care sharing ministries advertise reimbursements for members’ medical bills. But they are largely unregulated, and most have restrictions on maternity coverage. One service ministries commonly restrict is maternity care, for which many require a waiting period … Read More
December 23, 2024
(New York Times) – Shuttered drugstores pose a particular threat to older adults, who take more medications than younger people and often rely on pharmacies for advice. Nearly 30 percent of pharmacies in the United States closed between 2010 and … Read More
December 23, 2024
(CNBC) – “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled “The Genome Revolution.” “The potential to deliver ‘one shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy … Read More
December 23, 2024
Clinical Ethics (vol. 19, no. 4, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
December 20, 2024
The New England Journal of Medicine AI (vol. 1, no. 12, 2024) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
December 18, 2024
(CNN) – A Manhattan grand jury on Tuesday indicted Luigi Mangione for murder as an act of terrorism in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, according to newly released court documents. Mangione faces 11 counts, including one of murder … Read More
December 18, 2024
(Axios) – U.S. voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were more likely than their elders to accept the recent killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, new polling found. The big picture: The reaction … Read More
December 17, 2024
(Washington Post via MSN) – Every year, health insurance companies deny tens of millions of patient claims for medical expense reimbursements, and the tide of those denials has been rising, according to surveys of doctors and other health-care providers. Insurers … Read More
December 16, 2024
(KFF Health News) – Hawley’s local Indian Health Service hospital wasn’t equipped to deliver babies. But she said staff there agreed that the agency would pay for her care at a privately owned hospital more than an hour away. That … Read More
December 16, 2024
(New York Times) – The people of UnitedHealth Group are nurses, doctors, patient and client advocates, technologists and more. They all come to work each day to provide critical health services for millions of Americans in need. We know the … Read More
December 13, 2024
(ProPublica) – Leaked internal documents show that the insurance giant is culling providers of applied behavior analysis from its network and scrutinizing the medical necessity of therapy. Advocates say the company’s strategy may be illegal. ProPublica has obtained what is … Read More
December 13, 2024
(KFF Health News) – More and more minor interventions, however, have been rebranded and billed as surgery, for profit. These tiny interventions don’t yield huge bills — in the hundreds rather than the thousands of dollars — but, cumulatively, they … Read More