In a historical and unprecedented move, the Pennsylvania legislature voted nearly unanimously in the affirmative for House Bill 1150 to mandate commercial insurance companies to cover some services for children with autism. The bill, introduced by House Speaker Dennis M. O’Brien, requires insurance companies to cover up to $36,000 of autism-related treatment for individuals less [...]
Gov. Ed Rendell (D) on Tuesday signed an executive order reopening the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council one week after it was closed due to budgetary constraints, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The order allows the council’s 44 employees to return to work, after being laid off on July 1.
The council is an independent agency [...]
Pennsylvania health care providers and consumers would benefit more if insurers Independence Blue Cross and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield remained competitors rather than collaborators, according to a consultant hired by the Pennsylvania Insurance Department to evaluate the issue, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Illinois health economics firm LECG conducted the study.
A “no compete” agreement between [...]
Physicians in Pennsylvania are concerned that the state’s Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error fund, which provides doctors with subsidies for malpractice insurance, could expire this year as lawmakers debate changes to the state’s health care system, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and state House Democrats have refused to renew the abatement [...]
In a letter to several state Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) described two alternative funding mechanisms for a scaled-down version of his proposal to expand health coverage to more uninsured state residents, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The revised proposals would expand coverage to an additional 250,000 uninsured adults; the previous proposal [...]
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) in a letter sent to state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) on Monday urged action on compromise legislation to expand health insurance coverage to the uninsured, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports (Fahy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/7).
Rendell last week proposed two alternative funding mechanisms for a scaled-down version of his proposal. [...]
Pennsylvania’s two-year legislative session is ending without a compromise on overhauling the state’s health care system, as sought by Gov. Ed Rendell (D), but the state is “far from alone” in its failure to expand coverage to the uninsured, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Republican lawmakers in the state objected to Rendell’s proposal, saying that a [...]
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s (D) “Cover All Pennsylvanians” plan will “increase the cost of practicing medicine, make health care more expensive and drive doctors out of the state,” Frederic Jarrett, a vascular and general surgeon and clinical professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
Rendell proposes funding [...]
A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece that claimed Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s (D) “Cover All Pennsylvanians” plan would increase health care costs and drive physicians out of the state is “flat out wrong,” Pennsylvania Secretary of Policy and Planning Donna Cooper writes in a Journal letter to the editor. According to Cooper, the opinion [...]
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) on Wednesday announced that he has extended through June 30, 2009, an executive order that allows the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council to continue operating, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Without the extension, PHC4 — which collects records on millions of hospital visits and outpatient procedures to help rein in [...]