Healthcare Daily Digest for Friday, 5 April: Medicaid a Little Safer in Soon-to-be-Released Presidential Budget

The big news next week will be President Obama’s budget, which will be released on Wednesday.

Scrapped from it: major cuts to Medicaid which had been in earlier drafts bandied about by people needing to make a point.

As the Associated Press argues, “Big cuts in the federal-state program wouldn’t go over too well at a time that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is wooing financially skittish Republican governors to expand Medicaid coverage to millions who now are uninsured. That expansion in the states is critical to the success of Obama’s health overhaul, which is rolling out this fall and early next year.”

Friday — FINALLY — headlines:

Curious About How Irony Works?: “A 30-second TV ad, paid for by a conservative political group called Maine People Before Politics, urges residents to tell their legislators to pass the Republican governor’s proposal. The ad began airing Thursday.” This is from the Great State of Maine, and a story about Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to pay off the state’s $484 million debt to Maine hospitals.

Jobs Outlook Not Great in Healthcare, Pharmaceutical Fields: “Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies continued to shed jobs in March and the rest of the first quarter of 2013, according to the latest employment report released Thursday morning by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.”

You Guys Might Want to Rethink That Re-Branding…: Enhance Healthcare Changes Name To ‘Enhance Perioperative and Anesthesia Consulting.’ Oof.

Will Hospitals Benefit From Healthcare Overhaul? Who Knows!: “The hospital industry should get a boost once the health-care overhaul takes full effect next year, but a lot will depend on various factors affecting how the nation’s caretakers get paid, Fitch Ratings said Thursday.”

Oh Crystal Ball, Crystal Ball, Save Us All, Tell Me Life is Beautiful: “The global healthcare industry in the year 2020 will be a highly connected environment powered by large data networks, cloud computing, and mobile devices. There will be widespread increases in the number of connected healthcare networks providing seamless integration between care providers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, and other invested parties anywhere in the world. Care within this model will become more patient-centric, less expensive to provide, and more innovative.”