Special HOA with U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Sylvia M. Burwell – Video


Special HOA with U.S. Secretary of Health Human Services Sylvia M. Burwell
The Affordable Care Act, also known as the health care law, was created to expand access to affordable health care coverage, lower costs, and improve quality and care coordination for all Americans...

By: Elianne Ramos AKA ergeekgoddess

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Special HOA with U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Sylvia M. Burwell - Video

Health Care: A Trillion Dollar Industry In The Making

How many times is a trillion dollar industry created? Not very often. After all, a trillion of anything is a very large number. To put it in perspective, only the largest 15 countries in the world had a Gross Domestic Product greater than $1 trillion in 2013.

However, no less an authority than McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Companypredictsthat health care spending in China will reach $1 trillion by 2020, up from $350 billion today. The Chinese government is even more aggressive, predicting that spending in the countrys health care sector will top $1.3 trillion by the end of this decade. Even at that level, though, health care spending will be one-third that of the United States, and only $1,000 per person,comparedto $8,915 per person in America. While Chinas health care industry will show tremendous growth in the coming years, it will still only be a fraction of what it will ultimately become when it reaches $1 trillion in 2020.

Two factors are at work driving health care spending in China. With rising per capita incomes, Chinas increasingly affluent consumers are demanding the latest in medical treatment and services. At the same time, changing diets and air and water pollution are causing a rise in the incidence of cancer, heart, diabetes and other chronic diseases among Chinas population. Both are creating new opportunities for pharmaceutical, medical device, hospital management and companies that provide a wide range of health-care products and services.

A number of years ago, I took a group of my Chinese managers to the United States for a week of meetings. Although we had a busy schedule, we did manage to free up an afternoon in the middle of our stay for them to kick back and do some sightseeing. Instead of asking to visit some well-known sights in the area as I expected, however, they told me they wanted to use their time off to go to a shopping mall. As we pulled into the parking lot and they got off the bus, every one of them made a beeline for the drug store to buy vitamins! That told me two things. First, it told me that when people make more money, they want to live longer. Second, the actions of my Chinese managers told me they didnt trust what they could find in China.

Health care is one of the last big industries in China to open up to foreign investment and technology and the timing could not be better. In addition to rising demand for the best available treatment from newly affluent consumers, China is facing new challenges as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases afflict more of its population.

According to areportby the World Health Organization (WHO), China accounted for over three million newly diagnosed cases of cancer, almost 22 percent of the global total, and 2.2 million cancer deaths, 27 percent of the worlds total, in 2012. In addition to being hard hit by cancer, the WHO also estimates that approximately 230 million Chinese currently suffer from cardiovascular disease, and that annual cardiovascular events will increase by 50 percent between 2010 and 2030 based on population aging and growth alone. The incidence of diabetes tells a similar story. Almost one-in-three global diabetes sufferers today is in China, with approximately 114 million adultsafflictedby the disease.

In order to combat these growing health issues, many of Chinas 22,000 hospitals will need to be substantially upgraded or replaced in the coming years. In addition, the Chinese government is counting on foreign-owned hospitals, the ownership of which was previously highly restricted or forbidden, to fill some of the void. The governments goal is to increase private hospital service contribution to 20 percent of the total hospital service value by 2015, from less than 10 percent currently.

In August of this year, China announced a pilot project whereby overseas investors can establish wholly foreign-funded hospitals, either by acquisition or greenfield, in seven of its cities and provinces. As a result, private equity and other substantial investors are actively searching for new investment opportunities in hospitals and companies with the latest in health care technology.

Whether it is hospital management, the establishment of specialty clinics, pharmaceuticals, the providing of higher technology medical devices, or a wide range of other health care products or services, Chinas health care industry a trillion dollar industry in the making will constitute one of the largest markets in the world.

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Health Care: A Trillion Dollar Industry In The Making

Catholic Bishops Vote to Revise Rules for Health Care Partnerships

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With Catholic health systems expanding, stricter rules could have implications for reproductive and maternity care across the country.

With Catholic health systems expanding, stricter rules could have implications for reproductive and maternity care across the country.

by Nina Martin ProPublica, Nov. 11, 2014, 10:17 a.m.

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Update, Nov. 12: On Tuesday, the bishops conference overwhelmingly voted to pursue a revision of the directives pertaining to mergers and partnerships. The vote was 213 to 2 with one abstention.

The medical field is advancing so rapidly, its very important for us to address these issues as well [as] for the sake of our people, said Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, according to the Washington Times. Its not something thats adversarial.

Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York, said revisions were needed because Catholic health initiatives have expanded to include buying physicians practices and more. It makes it really very important for us to do the best we can to illuminate Catholic principles in cooperation, he said in the Times story.

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The 2011 merger of the two remaining hospitals in Troy, N.Y., had many potential benefits and one huge hurdle.

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Catholic Bishops Vote to Revise Rules for Health Care Partnerships

Sterilization deaths show India's health care ills

NEW DELHI (AP) The women were poor, from villages in central India where the promise of a few dollars is all but impossible to resist. Many had babies so young they were still nursing at their mothers' breasts.

The deaths of 12 women after they underwent sterilization procedures this week have raised serious ethical questions about India's drive to curb a booming population by paying women who get sterilized. The deaths also exposed the dangerous lack of oversight in India's $74 billion health care industry.

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Sterilization deaths show India's health care ills

What Is The Definition Of Single payer health care Medical School Terminology Dictionary – Video


What Is The Definition Of Single payer health care Medical School Terminology Dictionary
Visit our website for text version of this Definition and app download. http://www.medicaldictionaryapps.com Subjects: medical terminology, medical dictionary, medical dictionary free download,...

By: Medical Dictionary Online

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What Is The Definition Of Single payer health care Medical School Terminology Dictionary - Video

The new Veterans Affairs secretary explains how he will fix department – Video


The new Veterans Affairs secretary explains how he will fix department
Bob McDonald told us the reorganization will streamline management and the way veterans get their benefits, including everything from college loans, mortgages, health care and burial plots....

By: CBS Evening News

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The new Veterans Affairs secretary explains how he will fix department - Video

Catholic Bishops Weigh Tightening Rules for Health Care Partnerships

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With Catholic health systems expanding, stricter rules could have implications for reproductive and maternity care across the country.

With Catholic health systems expanding, stricter rules could have implications for reproductive and maternity care across the country.

by Nina Martin ProPublica, Nov. 11, 2014, 10:17 a.m.

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The 2011 merger of the two remaining hospitals in Troy, N.Y., had many potential benefits and one huge hurdle.

Samaritan was secular, committed to providing the widest possible spectrum of reproductive and maternity care to its Albany-area patients. St. Mary's was Catholic, limiting or banning many reproductive options and any merger partner had to abide by the same rules.

It took several years of negotiations among three different health systems, much back-and-forth with women's advocates, and the sign-off of the local bishop. But in the end, the parties struck a deal that all of them could live with. The centerpiece was the brand-new Burdett Care Center, housed on Samaritan's second floor.

To all appearances, Burdett was a typical maternity ward. But in reality, it was a separately incorporated hospital-within-a-hospital, secular and thus free from the Catholic restrictions that Samaritan had agreed to follow. Burdett could provide birth control and perform tubal ligations; if a woman was having a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, doctors could treat her according to generally accepted standards of care.

Complicated? Yes. Cumbersome? Very. Still, as a compromise to preserve access to care in Troy, "it's worked very well," said Lois Uttley of the nonprofit group MergerWatch, which helped broker the arrangement.

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Catholic Bishops Weigh Tightening Rules for Health Care Partnerships

Oakland woman brings health care and sense of home to local immigrants

OAKLAND -- By some standards, Laura Lopez isn't qualified to run a nonprofit -- let alone the one that she has built into one of the East Bay's most pioneering health care services.

Her only degree is from a high school in Lima, Peru. And her English still isn't good enough to write a grant proposal.

When the founders of an organization created to provide health care to undocumented day laborers decided a decade ago to promote Lopez from outreach worker to executive director, she wasn't even sure what her new title meant.

"I asked, 'Does being executive director mean I can still go in the street and talk to the people?'" she recalled. "And they said, 'Yes.'"

Laura Lopez, executive director of the Street Level Health Project, is photographed at the center in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group) ( Laura A. Oda )

These days, the only part of the job Lopez hasn't mastered is knowing when to call it a night and go home to her family.

Under her leadership, the Street Level Health Project has grown from a health clinic operating one day a week out of a single room in an abandoned hospital to a full-fledged community center in Oakland's Fruitvale district that serves people speaking 55 different languages. Depending on the day, visitors can see a doctor, get something to eat, take a class, meet their friends or get a referral for additional services such as legal advice or help finding housing.

Perhaps the center's most important function is as an entry point into Alameda County's health care system. The county is unique in that it provides medical coverage to undocumented workers, but getting them enrolled has been a big challenge, said Alex Briscoe, director of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency.

Many undocumented workers, leery of deportation, stay away from government-sanctioned programs. But Lopez has proved so skilled at earning their trust and getting them to seek medical care that the county set up centers in Hayward and Berkeley that are modeled on Street Level's community-based approach.

Last year, the nonprofit's doctors saw nearly 1,000 patients, many of whom were referred to the county's program, which offers more advanced primary or specialty care.

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Oakland woman brings health care and sense of home to local immigrants

Health Care Sector Update for 11/11/2014: PTLA, ICUI, ENZY, BMY, PFE

Top Health Care Stocks

JNJ +0.11%

PFE +0.17%

ABT +0.58%

MRK +1.36%

AMGN -0.07%

Health care stocks were mostly higher, with the NYSE Health Care Sector Index adding about 0.5% and shares of health care companies in the S&P 500 ahead about 0.4% as a group.

In company news, Portola Pharmaceuticals ( PTLA ) was see-sawing between small losses and gains, bouncing back from a steeper decline earlier Tuesday after the biotech company reported below-consensus revenue during its July-to-September quarter while its per-share earnings topped analyst estimates.

The company reported a $35.8 million, or $0.86 per share, net loss, almost double its $18.6 million net loss last year but still beating the Capital IQ consensus by $0.06 per share.

Revenue fell 14.3% compared with the same quarter last year to $2.4 million as collaboration income from PTLA's work with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company ( BMY ) and Pfizer ( PFE ), Bayer Pharma and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Daiichi Sankyo and Lee's Pharmaceuticals slid $400,000 from last year. The Street was looking for $2.63 million in reveneue.

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Health Care Sector Update for 11/11/2014: PTLA, ICUI, ENZY, BMY, PFE