FILE - In this July 28, 2004, file photo, Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Firefighters, addresses the delegates to the Democratic National Convention, in Boston. Some labor unions that initially backed President Barack Obama's health care overhaul are now frustrated and angry about what they say are unexpected consequences of the plan that could hurt their members. Schaitberger said unions have been forceful in seeking solutions from the Obama administration, but none have been forthcoming. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Ron Edmonds, ap

WASHINGTON Some labor unions that enthusiastically backed President Barack Obama's health care overhaul are now frustrated and angry, fearful it will jeopardize benefits for millions of members.

Union leaders warn that unless the problem is fixed, there could be consequences for Democrats facing re-election next year.

"It makes an untruth out of what the president said that if you like your insurance, you could keep it," said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. "That is not going to be true for millions of workers now."

The problem lies in the unique multiemployer health plans that cover unionized workers in retail, construction, transportation and other industries with seasonal or temporary employment. Known as Taft-Hartley plans, they are jointly administered by unions and smaller employers that pool resources to offer more than 20 million workers and family members coverage, even during times of unemployment.

The union plans were already more costly to run than traditional single-employer health plans.

But Obama's Affordable Care Act has added to that cost for the unions' and other plans by requiring health plans to cover dependents up to age 26, eliminate annual or lifetime coverage limits and extend coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

"We're concerned that employers will be increasingly tempted to drop coverage through our plans and let our members fend for themselves on the health exchanges," said David Treanor, director of health care initiatives at the Operating Engineers union.

Workers seeking coverage in the state-based marketplaces, known as exchanges, can qualify for subsidies, determined by a sliding scale based on income. By contrast, the new law does not allow workers in the union plans to receive similar subsidies.

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Some unions angry about health care law

WASHINGTON

Some labor unions that enthusiastically backed President Barack Obama's health care overhaul are now frustrated and angry, fearful that it will jeopardize benefits for millions of their members.

Union leaders warn that unless the problem is fixed, there could be consequences for Democrats facing re-election next year.

"It makes an untruth out of what the president said - that if you like your insurance, you could keep it," said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. "That is not going to be true for millions of workers now."

The problem lies in the unique multiemployer health plans that cover unionized workers in retail, construction, transportation and other industries with seasonal or temporary employment. Known as Taft-Hartley plans, they are jointly administered by unions and smaller employers that pool resources to offer more than 20 million workers and family members continuous coverage, even during times of unemployment.

The union plans were already more costly to run than traditional single-employer health plans.

But Obama's Affordable Care Act has added to that cost - for the unions' and other plans - by requiring health plans to cover dependents up to age 26, eliminate annual or lifetime coverage limits and extend coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

"We're concerned that employers will be increasingly tempted to drop coverage through our plans and let our members fend for themselves on the health exchanges," said David Treanor, director of health care initiatives at the Operating Engineers union.

Workers seeking coverage in the state-based marketplaces, known as exchanges, can qualify for subsidies, determined by a sliding scale based on income. By contrast, the new law does not allow workers in the union plans to receive similar subsidies.

Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant, said the real fear among unions is that "a lot of these labor contracts are very expensive, and now employers are going to have an alternative to very expensive labor health benefits."

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Some unions now angry about health care overhaul

By Sam Hananel, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Some labour unions that enthusiastically backed President Barack Obama's health care overhaul are now frustrated and angry, fearful that it will jeopardize benefits for millions of their members.

Union leaders warn that unless the problem is fixed, there could be consequences for Democrats facing re-election next year.

"It makes an untruth out of what the president said that if you like your insurance, you could keep it," said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. "That is not going to be true for millions of workers now."

The problem lies in the unique multiemployer health plans that cover unionized workers in retail, construction, transportation and other industries with seasonal or temporary employment. Known as Taft-Hartley plans, they are jointly administered by unions and smaller employers that pool resources to offer more than 20 million workers and family members continuous coverage, even during times of unemployment.

The union plans were already more costly to run than traditional single-employer health plans.

But Obama's Affordable Care Act has added to that cost for the unions' and other plans by requiring health plans to cover dependents up to age 26, eliminate annual or lifetime coverage limits and extend coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

"We're concerned that employers will be increasingly tempted to drop coverage through our plans and let our members fend for themselves on the health exchanges," said David Treanor, director of health care initiatives at the Operating Engineers union.

Workers seeking coverage in the state-based marketplaces, known as exchanges, can qualify for subsidies, determined by a sliding scale based on income. By contrast, the new law does not allow workers in the union plans to receive similar subsidies.

Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant, said the real fear among unions is that "a lot of these labour contracts are very expensive, and now employers are going to have an alternative to very expensive labour health benefits."

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Health care overhaul faces backlash from once supportive labour unions

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The Health Council of Canada releases annual report on health care renewal

SASKATOON, SK, May 23, 2013 /CNW/ - Today, the Health Council of Canada releases Progress Report 2013: Health care renewal in Canada, highlighting the progress achieved by governments in five key areas: wait times, primary health care and electronic health records, pharmaceuticals management, disease prevention/health promotion and Aboriginal health.

The report finds that, overall, efforts at reform are not keeping pace with the changing health care needs of Canadians. There is variability of access to services across the country.

"Regardless of where you live in Canada, Canadians should be able to access a primary care provider when care is needed, they should have timely access to surgeries, and the cost of medications should not cause undue financial hardship," says Dr. Jack Kitts, Chair of the Health Council of Canada. "However, because of the variability across the country, this is not the case."

To achieve better health care for all Canadians, the report calls for governments to set clear policy goals with clear lines of responsibility, to continue the spread of innovative practices, and to support collaborative efforts across all jurisdictions, including the federal government.

"Progress is made when comprehensive strategies with clear targets are put in place," says Dr. Kitts. "And once those strategies are in place, we need to constantly monitor the performance of the governments and Canadians need to hold them accountable."

The report points out that Canadian premiers have begun working together on select initiatives, such as the joint pricing of prescription drugs, which saves significant health care dollars. The Health Council recommends this continue, because when governments work together with common goals, the quality of health care and access to it improve for all Canadians.

Along with the need for accountability and collaboration, the report also calls for the sharing of innovative practices. "Sharing innovative practices allows provinces to implement programs we know are making a difference without having to 'reinvent the wheel'," says John G. Abbott, CEO of the Health Council of Canada. "The Health Council helps identify and expand the reach of innovative practices across the country through our Health Innovation Portal - a database of over 360 innovative practices."

An example of an innovative practice highlighted in the report is the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia, which was established in 2012 and puts health care delivery and decision-making in the hands of First Nations people. This shift is the result of several agreements made between BC First Nations and the provincial and federal governments, in efforts to close gaps in health status between First Nations people and other residents of British Columbia.

Key report findings include:

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Health care reforms not keeping pace with needs of Canadians, says report

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TRIFECTA: ObamaCare Will Disrupt Your Health Care and Your Life
While many think that ObamaCare will improve the quality of their health care, a recent report proves the opposite to be true. President Obama #39;s health care ...

By: PJTV

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TRIFECTA: ObamaCare Will Disrupt Your Health Care and Your Life - Video

Newswise The Critical Care Societies Collaborative (CCSC), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announces recipients in the 2013 National Awards Program to Recognize Achievements in Eliminating Health Care-Associated Infections (HAIs). Eight hospitals and health care facilities were honored for successful and sustained efforts to prevent HAIs, specifically infections in critical care settings.

HAIs are infections acquired while patients are receiving medical treatment for other conditions. At any given time, about one in every 20 patients has an infection related to their hospital care. These infections cost the U.S. health care system billions of dollars each year and lead to the loss of tens of thousands of lives. In addition, HAIs can have devastating emotional, financial and medical consequences.

HHS and its government and non-government partners have seen rapid progress in reducing rates of several infections, especially in intensive care settings, since the launch of the National Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections: Road Map to Elimination, said HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Don Wright, MD, MPH. This progress is due in large part to the leadership, dedication, and hard work of hospital teams such as those that we honor through this joint HHS-CCSC Awards Program. Thanks to these frontline clinicians and professionals, we are on track to achieve most 2013 national targets and extend the effort beyond hospitals to ambulatory and long-term care settings.

Award recipients demonstrated success in reducing and eliminating central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) or catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) for 25 months or longer and show national leadership in sharing their evidence-based initiatives to improve clinical practice. These are among the most common HAIs that patients acquire while receiving medical treatment for other conditions.

Leaders of the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health HAI initiative partnered with CCSC a multidisciplinary organization composed of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), American College of Chest Physicians, American Thoracic Society and Society of Critical Care Medicine to launch the three-year awards program in 2010.

AACN Senior Director Ramn Lavandero, RN, MA, MSN, FAAN, noted the potential impact of the awards program. During the three years for which it was planned, this interdisciplinary awards program has increased health professionals awareness of best practices used by peer institutions to reduce or eliminate health care-associated infections.

Awardees were recognized May 20 in Boston during AACNs National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition. Award recipients (alphabetized by state) are: Intensive Care Unit, Franciscan St. Francis Health, Mooresville, Ind. (CAUTI) Surgical ICU and Trauma Burn ICU, University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor (VAP) Medical Surgical ICU, HealthEast St. Johns Hospital, Maplewood, Minn. (CLABSI) Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City (CAUTI) ICU, Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center, Charlotte, N.C.; ICU, Novant Health Matthews Medical Center, Matthews, N.C.; and ICU, Novant Health Huntersville Medical Center, Huntersville, N.C. (VAP) Cardiac Intermediate Unit, East Carolina Heart Institute at Vidant Medical Center, Greenville, N.C. (CLABSI) Medical Intermediate Unit, Vidant Medical Center, Greenville, N.C., (VAP) Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston (CLABSI)

In addition to the eight awardees, 11 health care organizations received honorable mention recognition for their efforts toward eliminating HAIs within their facilities. Facilities receiving honorable mention in this years awards program are listed online at http://www.aacn.org/haiawards.

According to the most recent national data, reported in October 2012, CLABSI in hospital ICUs and wards have been reduced by 41 percent, on track to meet or surpass the HAI Action Plan target of a 50 percent reduction by the end of 2013. CAUTI in ICUs and hospital wards have been reduced by 7 percent, on track to meet the year-end target of a 25 percent reduction.

For additional information, visit the HHS Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections and the Partnership for Patients websites.

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HHS-CCSC Awards Honor Efforts to Eliminate Health Care-Associated Infections

The family health care tab shows no sign of shrinking. On average, according to the latest Milliman Medical Index (MMI), a family of four covered through a typical employer health plan will pay out $9,144 this year in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. That's up about 6.5 percent over 2012, though not as much as the prior year's increase of 7.2 percent. The 2013 rise translates into slightly more than $45 a month in higher monthly premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.

A significant reason for the jump, based on today's figures from Milliman, a health care consultancy, is that employees are shouldering a greater share of the cost of health insurance. Families are paying 8.4 percent more than last year toward insurance premiums, while employers are paying 6.1 percent more. Between 2010 and now, employees have seen yearly increases of 8 percent to 9 percent in their average monthly premium; increases in the employer contribution have averaged less than 7 percent. Private-industry wages, by contrast, have risen less than 2 percent in the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Families with coverage like the one built into Milliman's assumptions will pay an average of $5,544 in monthly premiums through payroll deductions and $3,600 out of pocket for doctor visits, medications and other medical bills. Such figures are national averages; the most expensive 10 percent of patients run up more than seven times the average individual's expenses, according to Milliman.

"Average" means a family with two kids, enrolled in a company's standard preferred provider organization, which is the most widely used form of group coverage. The family pays about 41 percent of the actual cost of health care, according to the Milliman index. Employers pay the other 59 percent.

About half of Americans are insured through their employer; about 15 million people buy individual health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and are therefore responsible for all of their care. U.S. News publishes ratings of individual and family insurance plans.The Milliman report did not examine cost trends for such plans or for Medicare plans.

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American Workers' Health Care Costs Increase Again

WASHINGTON -- There's a growing concern about the competency of the IRS and its ability to oversee Obamacare.

Sara Hall Ingram, the same executive that was in charge of the tax-exempt office under scrutiny for targeting conservative groups, is now responsible for enforcing dozens of new health care laws. The question is, how much trust should we put into the IRS and Ingram for safeguarding our most personal records?

We don't know how much Sarah Hall Ingram knew about the targeting while serving as Commissioner of the IRS field office in Cincinnati, the same office under intense scrutiny and congressional review. Ingram now oversees the IRS' Affordable Care Act Office tasked with enforcing health care laws. Among them, deciding which business or individual gets a tax break.

"That's the sick irony," said Dave Swartz.

Swartz is with 'Americans for Prosperity,' a grassroots group that was not targeted by the IRS.

"She can not be the person that implements our health care," argues Swartz. "I don't think the public trust is there for that to happen."

Senior White House Advisor Dan Pfeiffer defended Ingram, saying she has done nothing wrong.

A new Washington Post/ABC poll found that 56 percent of Americans believe the IRS was deliberately intrusive of Tea Party groups.

"Confidence in government has become an oxymoron. Trust in government has become an oxymoron," said Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation. "We are at a almost a historic low in terms of the level of trust the average American places in government entities."

And with the same IRS executive now in charge of something as personal health care, Franc says it will give rise to yet another level of distrust.

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Health Care: In the IRS we trust?

Quality Improvement and Health Care Delivery Reform -- 2013
David R. Nielsen, MD Description and Goals: 1) Review the fiscal, political, and clinical environment in which quality improvement (QI) and other reforms are...

By: Duke Clinical Research Institute

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MILWAUKEE - Ministry Health Care, which owns several hospitals and clinics in Northeast Wisconsin, plans to cut jobs.

A company spokesman says Ministry expects to cut between 225 and 250 full-time equivalent positions across its Wisconsin and Minnesota facilities through a combination of attrition and job elimination. Ministry owns 15 hospitals and 47 clinics, including St. Elizabeth Hospital in Appleton, Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh, Ministry Door County Medical Center in Sturgeon Bay and Calumet Medical Center in Chilton.

Company leaders say two main factors are leading to the job cuts. High-deductible health insurance plans have led to decreased demand for doctor and outpatient services. Also, the company says the automatic federal budget cuts known as sequestration have resulted in Ministry losing $10 million in payments for Medicare services annually.

Coming to this conclusion has not been easy, Nick Desien, President and CEO of Ministry Health Care, said in a news release. We recognize that a decision to reduce the size of our workforce will impact the lives of many of our friends and colleagues. However, it is necessary to continue our mission of providing the highest quality of care to our patients, especially the poor and vulnerable, without a disruption in services.

Ministry did not say when the cuts would begin or if any facilities would be closed.

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Ministry Health Care cutting 200+ jobs

In a world that increasingly moves at digital speed, we humans are painfully slow and selective processors of information.

We'll get through a couple of paragraphs of, say, a Paul Krugman op-ed in The New York Times about fiscal policy. But then we see something shiny in the marginalia about, oh, Jennifer Lawrence or Bradley Cooper, and faster than we can process the meaning of "Keynesian," we're off to tangent city.

Which explains, in part, why surveys indicate that many of us don't "get" health care reform.

President Barack Obama's historic Affordable Care Act of 2010 is an ambitious, tightly woven road map intended to eventually lead most Americans to better care while controlling costs, all without scrapping what passes for a free market in the health care world.

While we've been singularly focused on the constitutionality of the "act" portion of the Affordable Care Act these past three years -- a matter settled last summer by the U.S. Supreme Court -- I spotted a shiny bit of insight recently that might refocus our collective attention on that underappreciated "affordable" part.

A report by a pair of nonprofits, the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute and the Catalyst for Payment Reform (love the acronym, CPR), graded each state based on how its laws shield medical billing from public view and thus make it difficult to comparison shop. (Lest you think this a guerilla attack, the nation's largest employers, including Boeing, General Electric and Wal-Mart, are all part of the CPR collective.)

How did the states fare? The report gave 29 of them an F and seven a D, meaning that 36 out of 50 states in our union think you can't handle the truth when it comes to the true cost of your own care. Only those annoying overachievers Massachusetts and New Hampshire earned an A.

So how do these obscure laws translate to the price of milk? Funny you should ask, because there's a report for that, too.

In 2011, the nonprofit Institute of Medicine issued "The Healthcare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes." It found that since 1999, health care costs had increased by 131 percent while everyday salaries had risen by an average of 35 percent.

If groceries had gone up as fast as health care costs since 1945, the report says, you'd be paying around $48 for a gallon of milk, $55 for a dozen eggs and $134 for a dozen oranges today.

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Martin Bashir - Conservatives push grand Obama #39;conspiracy #39; on IRS, AP, health care
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Martin Bashir - Conservatives push grand Obama 'conspiracy' on IRS, AP, health care - Video

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More baby boomers are pushing back their retirements and working longer, even as the recovery of the stock market replenishes portfolios that were depleted during the recession.

The reason: health care expenses.

The cost of medical care for a 65-year-old couple retiring this year is $220,000 over the remainder of their lives, according to new estimates by Fidelity Investments.

Th estimate assumes the couple has traditional Medicare, the government sponsored health plan for the elderly, and assumes life expectancies of 17 years for men and 20 years for women.

The estimate includes Medicare premiums, deductibles and co-insurance - the portion of medical care paid for by the patient - for health care and prescription drugs. The $220,000 does not include most dental care, over-the-counter drugs or long-term care.

Fidelity said health care costs are likely to be among the largest expenses in retirement.

"It will consume a considerable amount of a couple's retirement savings," said Brad Kimler, executive vice president of Fidelity's Benefits Consulting Business.

A recent poll by Fidelity of people aged 55 to 64 found 48 percent of respondents think they will need only $50,000 to pay for health care in retirement.

As people get closer to retirement and start to calculate the costs of medical care after they leave employer-sponsored plans, many decide to work longer to put aside more money to cover the costs of health care.

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Health care costs push off baby boomers' retirement plans