Conn. lawmakers seek near-universal health cover
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HARTFORD, Connecticut  - Four Connecticut state lawmakers proposed on Tuesday a $900 million program to bring health-care to the state's poor and uninsured, weighing in on a growing national debate over health-care reform.
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CAN WE possibly gather together around the healthcare table and find a way to offer low-cost health insurance and reduce the ranks of the uninsured?
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The U.S. Congress needs to pass healthcare IT legislation before private companies develop multiple systems that don&#39;t talk to each other, two advocacy groups said Tuesday.Members of the Health IT Now Coalition and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) urged Congress to move ahead with health IT legislation such as the Promoting Health Information Technology Act. The bill would establish a public/private group to recommend health IT standards and certification and would budget $163 million a year for health-care providers to adopt health IT products, such as electronic health records.Health technologies can help improve healthcare quality, reduce costs and encourage changes in treatment, said former U.S. Representative Nancy Johnson, co-chairwoman of the Health IT Now Coalition.Health IT is &quot;going to produce radical change,&quot; Johnson said at a news conference. &quot;It&#39;s going to radically improve the quality of health care that Americans receive.&quot;With health-care costs continuing to climb, moving to an electronic system that reduces paper and medical errors is the best hope to extend health care to U.S. residents who are uninsured, she added. &quot;It is the only way that we guarantee to Americans of every age that our health-care system will continue to deliver the state-of-the-art medicine for which it has been known worldwide,&quot; Johnson said.The Promoting Health Information Technology Act has stalled in the House of Representatives and a similar piece of legislation, the Wired for Health Care Quality Act, has stalled in the Senate.Some groups, including Patient Privacy Rights, have raised concerns that the legislation doesn&#39;t adequately address patient privacy issues. &quot;The Senate Wired Act has no privacy protections or language ensuring patient control of health records,&quot; the group said on its Web site. &quot;It must not pass unless patients have the right to keep their health records private.&quot;Privacy and security must be major components of a health IT bill, Johnson said at the news conference. But she and Rhett Dawson, ITI&#39;s president and CEO, said Congress should pass a health IT bill before vendors develop multiple systems that don&#39;t interoperate. &quot;The public interest is in interoperability,&quot; Johnson said.A health IT bill would be a major accomplishment that lawmakers could show to voters before the November elections, Dawson said. &quot;We believe the time to act is now,&quot; he added.In addition to the news conference, a group of IT vendors, including Lexmark, NetApp and NCR, demonstrated health technologies at a congressional office building on Tuesday.EMC&#39;s RSA division demonstrated secure Web sign-on technologies that patients and health-care providers can use. RSA&#39;s Secure Web Access for Patient and Provider Portals allows administrators to set access rights based on who&#39;s signing in, said Seth Geftic, RSA product marketing manger. For example, a doctor could have access to more patient records than a nurse or an insurance provider, he said.In addition, RSA provides authentication technologies that can be used to recognize users when they first sign in. For example, the RSA Adaptive Authentication can use publicly available information, such as height, car loans and old addresses, to authenticate a user entering a health IT Web site for the first time, Geftic said.&quot;You don&#39;t even have to enter the last four digits of your Social Security number,&quot; added Shannon Kellogg, director of information security policy in EMC&#39;s office of government relations.
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Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts' lucrative business of selling health insurance to municipalities and unions is under attack since a law was enacted in June allowing cities and towns to join the health insurance plan for state employees.
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Thousands of public health workers were rallied Sunday to view themselves as "public health heroes" when they head to Congress this week to pressure legislators to spend more for health.
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U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen is preparing legislation that would allow states to make prescription drugs more affordable for low- and moderate-income Americans, a challenge to Bush administration policies that have thwarted such efforts in Maryland and elsewhere.
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RICHMOND -- In Virginia and 17 other states, lawmakers are considering requiring young girls to be immunized against a little-known virus that public health officials say is responsible for nearly 7,000 cases of cervical cancer each year.
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Smokers would pay an extra 50 cents for a pack of cigarettes in Massachusetts, and Bay State employers would be required to offer healthcare coverage to their workers under legislation unveiled yesterday by a key state senator.
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A group of the largest commercial hospital chains plans to propose that individuals be required to have basic health coverage.
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BOSTON -- There is a lot of talk about overhauling health care in the United States, but Massachusetts is actually trying to do it -- again.
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Maryland lawmakers are drawing up ambitious proposals to provide medical insurance to hundreds of thousands of residents without coverage, stepping into the national debate over who should pay the soaring costs of health care.
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One of New England's top business leaders says companies should contribute more to employees' health insurance than is required by the state's healthcare revamp law.
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BOSTON -- The average uninsured Massachusetts resident could obtain health care coverage for as little as $175 a month under the state's insurance law, less than half of earlier estimates, officials said Saturday.
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Lawmakers trying to get elected push last-minute bills to help constituents, from hurricane relief to tobacco buyouts.
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If Congress enacted President Bush&#39;s entire health care agenda, campaign aides have asserted, as many as 10 million people who lack health
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MIAMI Â· Community activists gearing up to enroll thousands of children in the state&#39;s health insurance program said Friday they have yet to receive the materials and information necessary to do the job.
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Democrats in the U.S. House of  Representatives on Wednesday unveiled a revised bill to expand  health insurance for needy children, hopeful they will muster  enough support to override another possible veto by President  George W. Bush.