Pennsylvania Health Insurance

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) on Thursday signed into law a bill that will prohibit health care facilities from requiring mandatory overtime of staff, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The law, set to take effect in July 2009, seeks to protect health care facilities from forcing nurses, technicians, technologists, certified nursing assistants and phlebotomists, and other caregivers from being disciplined or discriminated against for refusing to work overtime.

Insurer Conseco has transferred many of its long-term care policies to Senior Health Insurance of Pennsylvania, a new state-supervised, not-for-profit trust, a move that will affect more than 140,000 Conseco beneficiaries, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) on Wednesday announced that he has extended through June 30, 2009, an executive order that allows the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council to continue operating, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Without the extension, PHC4 -- which collects records on millions of hospital visits and outpatient procedures to help rein in health care spending -- would have been shut down at the end of this month. The state Legislature will have the opportunity to renew PHC4 when it convenes in January.

A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece that claimed Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's (D) "Cover All Pennsylvanians" plan would increase health care costs and drive physicians out of the state is "flat out wrong," Pennsylvania Secretary of Policy and Planning Donna Cooper writes in a Journal letter to the editor.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's (D) "Cover All Pennsylvanians" plan will "increase the cost of practicing medicine, make health care more expensive and drive doctors out of the state," Frederic Jarrett, a vascular and general surgeon and clinical professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Pennsylvania's two-year legislative session is ending without a compromise on overhauling the state's health care system, as sought by Gov. Ed Rendell (D), but the state is "far from alone" in its failure to expand coverage to the uninsured, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Republican lawmakers in the state objected to Rendell's proposal, saying that a weakening state economy would require tax increases to sustain the coverage expansion.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) in a letter sent to state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) on Monday urged action on compromise legislation to expand health insurance coverage to the uninsured, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports (Fahy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/7).

In a letter to several state Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) described two alternative funding mechanisms for a scaled-down version of his proposal to expand health coverage to more uninsured state residents, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The revised proposals would expand coverage to an additional 250,000 uninsured adults; the previous proposal sought to expand coverage to an additional 270,000 adults.

Physicians in Pennsylvania are concerned that the state's Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error fund, which provides doctors with subsidies for malpractice insurance, could expire this year as lawmakers debate changes to the state's health care system, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

Pennsylvania health care providers and consumers would benefit more if insurers Independence Blue Cross and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield remained competitors rather than collaborators, according to a consultant hired by the Pennsylvania Insurance Department to evaluate the issue, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Illinois health economics firm LECG conducted the study.