New Code WACK! episode
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A Giant ‘Shell Game?’
The Egregious Gimmicks of
Corporate Health Care
Featuring Ed Weisbart, MD
Physicians for a National
Health Program
Breaking News in Healthcare Reform
Snippets of news & commentary with a special focus on
health policy, Medicare for All & California
Like Weekly News Roundup? Then you’ll love our popular podcast Code WACK! where we shine a light on the outrageous hassles patients face when dealing with America’s callous healthcare system. Subscribe below!
“…something else … may be driving bipartisan interest in medical debt: growing mistrust as health systems get bigger and act more like major corporations.”
Medical Debt Snares Millions of People. States, Red and Blue Are Passing Laws to Help
NPR | Noam Levey | October 7, 2024
“Newsom, who was elected after making (long-since broken) promises to spearhead a single-payer system, has turned out to be quite a good friend to the health care lobby; this veto, which major PBMs had hoped and lobbied for, is a bitter result for advocates….”
California Governor Thwarts Lawmakers’ Effort to Regulate Big Pharma’s Middlemen
Truthout | Tyler Walicek | October 5, 2024
“Plans with higher ratings receive generous bonuses from the federal government….”
UnitedHealth Sues CMS Over Medicare Advantage Star Ratings
Healthcare Dive | Rebecca Pifer | October 4, 2024
“The case illustrates how even in California, where the right to an abortion is enshrined in state law, there’s a glaring loophole. Catholic hospitals, which restrict reproductive health care … are aggressively expanding nationally by acquiring secular hospitals. In … parts of Northern California, they are the only choice. At the same time, maternity wards are closing rapidly….”
Catholic Hospital Offered Bucket, Towels to Woman It Denied an Abortion, California AG Said
California Healthline | Molly Castle Work | October 4, 2024
“Numerous reports from stakeholders criticized hospitals’ compliance along the way, with hospitals themselves often saying that the requirements were burdensome and often too vague.”
GAO Wants CMS to Check Whether Hospitals’ Price Transparency Data are Actually Usable
Fierce Healthcare | Dave Muoio | October 3, 2024
“The story of how private equity has been able to so thoroughly debilitate emergency care is one of the more dramatic examples of how corporate interests are corrosive to America’s health care system — and how powerless they leave individual consumers.”
The Profit-Obsessed Monster Destroying American Emergency Rooms
Vox | Keren Landman, MD | October 3, 2024
“In most rich countries, people don’t have to worry about sifting through a dozen different health plans — and they don’t live in fear of losing their health care after losing a job, and they receive more affordable, higher-quality care than Americans do.”
Why is US Health Care Like This?
Vox | Dylan Scott | October 2, 2024
“Epic, known formally as Epic Systems, turns out to be a privately held company that provides the electronic database for patient records and billing used today in 39 percent of all U.S. hospitals. But that understates Epic’s market dominance.”
An Epic Dystopia
The American Prospect | Robert Kuttner | October 1, 2024
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