Health News: Finding Good Health Care in Bad Times

Many Americans were having problems affording good health care even before the recent recession and wave of layoffs began. The economic downturn has only made things worse. The Wall Street Journal has two articles on finding good health care in hard times.

One story looks at how a family's health care support system unraveled in the recession. The family's children have a rare bone-marrow disorder and relied on donations to meet the costs insurance didn't cover. But the economic downturn has greatly reduced the donations; contributions to their former church's medical care fund are down, and a fundraiser held to gain contributions has yielded less money this year than last.

On a more positive note, there's an article explaining how some new online services have arisen to provide basic medical consults in an easy, low-cost manner. Patients can interact with doctors in a variety of ways (online video, text chat, or phone), and the fees can be as low as $10 for a 10-minute consult. Other services charge a monthly fee and then a per-consult fee. This article looks at some of the companies now offering these services, and notes their pluses and minuses.

Health News: Health Care Reform Problems and Prognosis

Health care in the U.S. seems destined to change somehow during the Obama administration, though nobody knows how. A cople of recent articles look at some of the issues and problems involved, and what solutions might be needed.

The L.A. Times offers a story called "A National Health Care Primer," which examines some of the big issues that will have to be tackled as the debate gets underway. Among them: Will people be able to keep their current health insurance? If I don't have insurance now, would I have to buy it? And, of course, How can the country pay for all this re-jiggering of the health care system?

One person who knows the pluses and minuses of the U.S. health care system is Dan Cortese, the outgoing CEO of the Mayo Clinic. The Wall Street Journal's health blog sat down with him and asked him a few questions about a subject that he's become more and more involved in over the last few years: national health policy and how to design a health care system.

The point person for health care reform in the Obama administration will be Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, the newly named secretary of health and human services. Another article in the Journal's health blog looks at the successes, and setbacks, she's had in trying to push through health reform in her state.

Compare Health Care Choices at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov

Americans looking to make more sense of the maze of hospital choices facing them have a new tool to help them, called Hospital Compare at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov. The site attracted a lot of attention when the U.S. government first launched it, and now it will get a lot more notice thanks to a new ad campaign that began today.

WebMD says that the Department of Health and Human Services is spending $1.9 million to publicize Hospital Compare. According to WebMD, Hospital Compare sizes up "about 2,500 U.S. hospitals according to how often they meet 26 performance measures, based on Medicare data." It notes that the site was first created in 2005 and relaunched a second time a couple of months ago, using data from patient satisfaction surveys.