Medicare

Re "Possible Plan B in health debate," Aug. 28 The Democrats do not need Plan B for healthcare reform. Plan C is better. As long as the opposition refuses to create a true bipartisan bill that helps the country, the Democratic majority can simply go to reconciliation. Since Medicare already exists, they can throw out the bad bills and institute "Medicare for all." The cost could be paid by increased taxes on the over-$1-million-a-year crowd. This would result in massive savings for companies, even those currently not paying for employee healthcare.

Re "Obama shifts to offense," Sept. 3, and "Patient approach," Editorial, Sept. 2 President Obama, I am glad you are going to speak to the nation to explain precisely and clearly what the healthcare plan is all about. The Republicans are using scare tactics, hoping to defeat any reform plan. President Obama, please let the people afraid of change know that our nation will only benefit from universal healthcare. We no longer will be refused by insurance agencies because of preexisting conditions; we no longer will have to file for bankruptcy because of exorbitant medical costs.

In a move that creates a national giant in the highly competitive battle for federal Medicare dollars, PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. said Monday it plans to buy its longtime Orange County rival, FHP International Corp., in a $2.1-billion stock and cash deal. The merged company, with revenues of more than $8.6 billion, would become the nation's fifth-largest health maintenance organization, with 1.4 million members in Southern California among a total of nearly 4 million in 15 states and Guam.

UC Irvine is a major target in a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging the University of California's five medical centers overbilled the government by filing "millions of dollars" in false insurance claims, legal records show. A former UC administrator and a medical resident allege the medical centers routinely billed Medicare, Medi-Cal and other government programs for faculty physicians' services when medical residents actually did the work, according to the confidential suit obtained by The Times.

A whistle-blower lawsuit by two former University of California employees alleges that the university's five medical centers--at UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and UC Davis--billed the government for millions of dollars in fraudulent insurance claims.

For the first time, a federal judge has struck down Medicare and Medicaid payments to Christian Science healers as a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Although Christian Science practitioners use no drugs or conventional medical treatments, they have received millions of dollars in federal reimbursements because the law explicitly applies to the Christian Science church. "Legislative accommodation of religious beliefs is a valuable and worthy enterprise, but here .

Medicare's hospital trust fund is operating in the red for the first time since the program was created in 1965, and the surplus that took a generation to build could be exhausted in five years, the system's trustees reported Wednesday. Reacting to the grim news, President Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), maneuvering on a sensitive election year issue, invited each other Wednesday to forge a bipartisan deal to rescue the financially ailing program.

The government will report Wednesday that the Medicare and Social Security trust funds will each run out of money a year earlier than expected, officials said Monday. The Medicare trust fund, which pays the hospital bills of the elderly, will go bankrupt in 2001 if steps are not taken to shore it up, the trustees will report. "Hospital usage is way up," reflecting the needs of the fast-growing 85-and-over population, one official said.

Major research hospitals have routinely violated Medicare rules and jeopardized the lives of patients by using experimental medical devices in pursuit of illegal profits, a secret industry witness told a Senate hearing Wednesday. Seated behind a screen and talking through a voice modulator, the anonymous witness said that he watched one patient die when an experimental cardiac catheter unraveled inside the patient's heart and shredded an artery.

A secret star witness, his identity cloaked by a black hood, is scheduled to be spirited Wednesday 3through the marble halls of the historic Dirksen Senate Office Building to an ornate hearing room jammed with corporate attorneys and powerful lobbyists anticipating the worst. In years past, Congress has reserved such high drama for Mafia snitches and union racketeers who had blown the whistle on corruption or mismanagement.