$35 Million Settlement Announced in UW Billing Case

Seattle Times | 4.30.04

Senate OKs Bill to Ban Web Access Tax

FindLaw | 4.30.04
By MARY DALRYMPLE AP Tax Writer
“One change clarified that the ban did not apply to state and local taxation of voice telecommunication services, including Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP. That technology allows consumers to use the Internet to make telephone calls.”

• Implications for Skype and other VOIP (P2P) vendors once they go beyond “beta”?
• Reprieve from paying taxes for educational online access!

Instant Messaging? A corporate tool?

The President’s Health Information Technology Plan

President George W. Bush 4.26.04

Transforming Health Care: The Presidents Health Information Technology Plan

By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs, and improve care.

—President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 20, 2004

President Bush has outlined a plan to ensure that most Americans have electronic health records within the next 10 years. The President believes that better health information technology is essential to his vision of a health care system that puts the needs and the values of the patient first and gives patients information they need to make clinical and economic decisions—in consultation with dedicated health care professionals.

The Presidents Health Information Technology Plan will address longstanding problems of preventable errors, uneven quality, and rising costs in the Nations health care system.

…

Creating a New, Sub–Cabinet Level Position of National Health Information Technology Coordinator. The President announced that he is creating a new sub-Cabinet level post at HHS, to provide national leadership and coordination necessary to achieve his 10-year goal. The individual will report directly to the HHS Secretary, and will be charged by the President with: Guiding ongoing work on health information standards and working to identify and implement the various steps needed to support and encourage health information technology in the public and private health care delivery systems.

Coordinating partnerships between government agencies and private sector stakeholders to speed the adoption of health information technology.

Some Finding No Room at the ER

Washington Post | 4.26.04

Some Finding No Room at the ER

Screening Out Non-Urgent Cases Stirs Controversy

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post Staff Writer

“Under the new policy, University hospital demands partial payment up front from non–emergency patients who seek treatment in the ER. For some, including Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, the fee is a small cash co–payment; insurance pays the rest. For the uninsured, however, the charge can be a few hundred dollars—money many don’t have. So they leave, toting a list of low–cost clinics in the area.”

“It’s an incredibly mean, nasty time to be in medicine,” said Mark Earnest, a general internist at University and vice president of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved. “There is not a consensus on how we are going to take care of people, and the result is everybody having to worry about their own survival.”

“In 2002, U.S. hospitals provided $22.3 billion in uncompensated care, up from $18.5 billion in 1997, according to the most recent data from the American Hospital Association. In the past, hospitals have made up some of the deficit by charging insured patients higher fees, a cost–shifting trick that in medical circles is dubbed the Robin Hood model. But that money is disappearing, too.”

“The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, leaves plenty of room for interpretation, especially on terms such as ’emergency’ and ’treat.’ Cancer may be a killer, for instance, but a cancerous lump in the breast is not, by law, an emergency. Furthermore, EMTALA requires only that the patient be stabilized.”

“In the ideal world, you would not want to do medical screening,” Paradis said. “But when the core mission is at risk, this is an acceptable tradeoff.”