This new feature highlights a selection of HCFO grantees that have recently appeared in the news. This month’s featured grantees appear in articles about Medicaid cuts, a National Symposium on Health Care Reform, Managed Care Drug Costs, the University of Michigan Center for Law, Ethics and Health, and Aurora Health Care Inc.’s antitrust lawsuit.

April 2006

Sara Rosenbaum, J.D., a professor of Health Care Law & Policy at George Washington University, was quoted in a story for National Public Radio on March 13, 2006 that examined the Medicaid cuts included in President Bush's 2007 budget. The article stated that "[the cuts] will reduce federal red ink by an estimated $39 billion over the next five years. But it will also make changes to the Medicaid health program that could have a bigger impact than the dollar amounts suggest." Rosenbaum noted that, "this is the first time in certainly 30 years, that efforts to try to rein in Medicaid spending have been directed at beneficiaries, and the changes that are contained in this bill completely remake the Medicaid program."  

Roger Feldman, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Minnesota, will serve as a panelist at the inaugural Mayo Clinic National Symposium on Health Care Reform. The Mayo Clinic announced in a press release that Feldman will participate in a panel titled "Overspent, Overdrawn, Overwhelmed: Reducing Health Care Costs."

Findings from a HCFO funded study, led by Helene Levens Lipton, Ph.D., a professor of health policy and pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, were featured on eMaxHealth.com on March 22, 2006. According to the article, the study found that, "providing financial incentives for doctors to rein in their prescription practices has not led to cost-cutting innovations."

Peter D. Jacobson, J.D., director of the Center for Law, Ethics, and Health at the University of Michigan, will provide closing remarks at an event titled, "Does the Animosity Between the Legal and Medical Professions Undermine Patient Care?" Senator George Mitchell will deliver the inaugural Arthur F. Southwick Lecture at the event.

Stephen Parente, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Minnesota, was quoted in an April 1, 2006 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that examined the antitrust lawsuit against Aurora Health Care Inc. The article states that the lawsuit challenges Aurora's negotiating tactics that "require health insurers to include all of its hospitals and doctors in every health plan they sell." Parente states, "if a health system's contracts required it to be in every health plan, it would be almost impossible to put together a narrow network." According to Parente, this could result in less competition.

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In the News Archives