(AP) -- Get ready for another hike in copays and deductibles. A survey being released Thursday by the Mercer consulting firm found 59 percent of companies intend to keep down rising health care costs in 2009 by raising workers' deductibles, copays or out-of-pocket spending limits.
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Despite national guidelines, private insurers, ER, federal and state agencies fail to routinely test for HIV
While the U.S. AIDS epidemic simmers largely unnoticed by most Americans, a failure to widely implement routine HIV testing continues to fuel its spread, HIV researchers and experts said today. Almost 60,000 Americans were infected with HIV last year, and, nationwide, 50-to-70 percent of new sexually transmitted infections are spread by people who do not know they are infected.
Guidelines issued two years ago by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that all Americans ages 13-64 be routinely tested in all healthcare settings. Now, data show that although such testing could save years of healthy life and limit the spread of HIV, they are largely not being implemented.
How Washington hospitals unleashed a MRSA epidemic
Year after year, the number of victims climbed. But even as casualties mounted - as the germ grew stronger and spread inside hospitals - the toll remained hidden from the public, and hospitals ignored simple steps to control the threat.
Researchers: Ban on fast food TV advertising would reverse childhood obesity trends
A ban on fast food advertisements in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent, according to a new study being published this month in the
Journal of Law and Economics. The study also reports that eliminating the tax deductibility associated with television advertising would result in a reduction of childhood obesity, though in smaller numbers.
New survey: More than half of US chronically ill adults skip needed care due to costs
Compared to patients in seven other countries, chronically ill adults in the United States are far more likely to forgo care because of costs; they also experience the highest rates of medical errors, coordination problems, and high out-of-pocket costs, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund. Published today as a Web Exclusive in the journal
Health Affairs, the eight-country survey finds that U.S. patients are significantly more likely to call for fundamental change in their country's health care system, with a third saying the system needs to be rebuilt completely.
Antibiotic use increases at academic medical centers
Antibacterial drug use appears to have increased at academic medical centers between 2002 and 2006, driven primarily by greater use of broad-spectrum agents and the antibiotic vancomycin, according to a report in the Nov. 10 issue of
Archives of Internal Medicine.
Crossing the digital divide
What will motivate the elderly, the chronically ill and the medically underserved to use interactive information technology systems to actively help manage their own health problems? What barriers have prevented people in these groups from using such systems more widely than they have?
Survey finds widespread dissatisfaction with current health care payment system
Leaders in health care and health care policy feel strongly that the way we pay for health care in the U.S. must be fundamentally reformed. The latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey reports that more than two-thirds (69%) of respondents expressed strong dissatisfaction with the current system, which is generally based on "fee-for-service" payment, saying the current system is not effective in encouraging high quality and efficient care.
Adequate pain care sorely lacking for patients
Medical science has learned a great deal about the causes of pain and ways to relieve it, pain experts say, but for a host of reasons, the treatment of pain and suffering has improved hardly at all in recent years.