The federal government has stopped reimbursing a Miami doctor who wrote nearly 97,000 prescriptions for mental health drugs to Medicaid patients over a period of 18 months, in a case that prompted a key senator to call for a nationwide investigation. ...more

December 20, 2009

MIAMI (AP) — The federal government has stopped reimbursing a Miami doctor who wrote nearly 97,000 prescriptions for mental health drugs to Medicaid patients over 18 months, in a case that prompted a key senator to call for a nationwide investigation. ...more

December 17, 2009

They may still call it a "public plan," but private insurers - not the government - would offer coverage under a compromise Democrats are considering to win Senate passage of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. ...more

December 8, 2009

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was romantically involved with a former staffer when he recommended her earlier this year to become the next U.S. attorney for Montana, a spokesman said. ...more

December 5, 2009

For three years, the federal agency in charge of preventing Medicare fraud repeatedly ignored internal watchdog warnings about swindlers stealing millions of dollars by scamming several programs, documents show. ...more

November 15, 2009

Passage of a sweeping bill is now considered a lock by the wisest and most conventional Beltway pundits. And legislation may even include the most shining prize of all, the public option that liberals - no matter what the talking points for public consumption - consider a way station to the Valhalla of a government-controlled system. ...more

November 7, 2009

As I was talking recently with the founder of a large American corporation, the conversation turned (inevitably) to health care reform. His employees in their 20s, on average, cost the company about $1,500 a year in health bills. Those in their 50s cost at least 10 times more. The effect of proposed health care reform - which limits the ability of insurers to charge higher premiums for older adults - would be, he said, a large shift of America's health care burden to the younger generation. ...more

November 4, 2009

The debate about the health care system's overhaul is filled with topics and terms unfamiliar to many. Each week, we'll examine some of the issues, the politics behind them and how they would affect consumers. ...more

October 25, 2009

There are 18 states, as columnist Mark Shields recently pointed out to me, that have gone Democratic in each of the last five presidential elections. Of the 36 senators who represent those states, only two are Republicans. Both are from Maine, one of the last, storm-lashed, surf-pounded footholds of the Yankee GOP. So it is hardly shocking that the lone Republican supporter of Democratic health reform on the Senate Finance Committee should be Maine's Olympia Snowe. ...more

October 21, 2009

I listen and read about all the changes needed to reduce our health care costs and offer everybody insurance. I keep hearing about socialized medicine and how it works (be it good or bad) in Canada and the United Kingdom. ...more

September 8, 2009