Healthcare update

50 Depressing Facts About The Healthcare System That Will Make You Beg For Reform:

America spends $7,290 per capita on health care, far more than other countries.

From 2000 to 2007, health care premiums increased 10.6% per year. In the same period, overall inflation averaged only 2.8%.

Only 28% of U.S. doctors use electronic medical records. 90% do in the U.K.

Washington Rule Makers Out of the Shadows:

Federal rule makers, long the neglected stepchildren of Washington bureaucrats, suddenly find themselves at the center of power as they scramble to work out details of hundreds of sweeping financial and health care regulations that will ultimately affect most Americans.

In Bethesda, Md., more than 200 health regulators working on complicated insurance rules have taken over three floors of a suburban office building, paying almost double the market rate for the space in their rush to get started.

Getting Mentally Ready for Health Reform:

A survey of U.S. physicians:

60% said health reform will compel them to close or significantly restrict their practices to certain categories of patients.

Of the above, 93% said they will be forced to close or significantly restrict their practices to Medicaid patients, while 87% said they would be forced to close or significantly restrict their practices to Medicare patients.

While over half of physicians said health reform will cause patient volumes in their practices to increase, 69% said they no longer have the time or resources to see additional patients in their practices while still maintaining quality of care.

Health Care Ruling -- Good News for Reform Backers:

Supporters of the Affordable Care Act should take a great deal of comfort from Judge Henry Hudson's decision today. 

Yes, Judge Hudson did strike down one provision of the landmark health care law, but his opinion is so poorly reasoned, so bereft of legal analysis and so inconsistent with precedent that it has no chance of convincing the Supreme Court to strike down this law. If this is the best that opponents of health reform have to offer, than the act's supporters have nothing to fear.

Indeed, Judge Hudson's decision striking down just one small part of the Affordable Care Act -- the requirement that nearly all Americans either carry insurance or pay slightly more income taxes -- places him on a collision course with the views of one of the Supreme Court's most conservative members: Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Constitution doesn't just give Congress sweeping authority to regulate the national economy, it also empowers Congress to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" its authority to enact economic regulation. As Justice Scalia explains, this means that "where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective."

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World’s fattest woman may have a brain tumor. But she won’t fit in the MRI machine.