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DaVita to Pay $4.42 Billion for HealthCare Partners By Makiko Kitamura - 2012-05-21T09:11:52Z Enlarge image DaVita Inc. Chairman and CEO Kent Thiry DaVita Inc. Chairman and CEO Kent Thiry said, “We believe our combined enterprise will offer new and exciting levels of clinical quality, service, and consumer/taxpayer savings.” DaVita Inc. Chairman and CEO Kent Thiry said, “We believe our combined enterprise will offer new and exciting levels of clinical quality, service, and consumer/taxpayer savings.” Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg DaVita Inc. (DVA), whose biggest shareholder is billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), agreed to pay about $4.42 billion in cash and stock to acquire HealthCare Partners, continuing an international spending spree on providers of medical care. DaVita, a U.S. provider of kidney dialysis services, will pay ... Continue reading →

Insurers Face $1 Trillion Revenue at Stake in Health Law By Alex Wayne - Mon May 14 18:00:00 GMT 2012 Enlarge image Supreme Court Roulette: $1 Trillion Stakes for Health Insurers Health-care law supporters and opponents gather outside the Supreme Court during the first week of arguments. Health-care law supporters and opponents gather outside the Supreme Court during the first week of arguments. Photographer: Rich Clement/Bloomberg Health insurers will gain $1 trillion in new revenue over the next eight years under the 2010 health- care law, assuming it’s upheld by the Supreme Court, according to a Bloomberg Government study. The amount is equal to about one-half percent of the nation’s estimated gross domestic product from 2013 to 2020, and insurers led by UnitedHealth Group Inc. ... Continue reading →

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, ... Continue reading →

Suspicious Medicare Bills Found at 2,600 U.S. Pharmacies By Alex Wayne - Thu May 10 17:19:35 GMT 2012 More than 2,600 U.S. drug stores, or 4 percent of all retail pharmacies, may have suspicious or excessive billing to Medicare, government investigators said. Some pharmacies dispensed unusually high percentages of painkillers and other controlled substances or expensive brand- name drugs, according to a report today from the inspector general for the Health and Human Services Department that analyzed claims data from 2009. Other stores billed Medicare a per patient rate of more than 2.5 times the national average, investigators said without naming the drug stores. The 2,637 suspect pharmacies billed Medicare, the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, about $5.6 billion in 2009. ... Continue reading →

iStockphoto.com Branded: Hospitals in McAllen, Texas, may not be as costly as first thought. Remember McAllen? It's the Texas border town that became synonymous with wasteful medical spending during the nation's big health care debate. Even Barack Obama was talking about it. In part because of McAllen's bad reputation, based on studies by the Dartmouth Atlas, Congress ended up instructing Medicare to reward hospitals that provide care efficiently, and take money away from those where patients end up getting a lot more tests, doctors' visits and procedures. In an ideal world, the thinking went, patients with the same health and diagnosis should cost the same to treat — especially since Medicare pays set fees and doesn't haggle with providers the way private insurers do. Fast ... Continue reading →