Healthcare
Take 5 for your Health
NURSES RALLY TO PROTEST STAFFING AND COMPENSATION AT RESEARCH MEDICAL CENTER Dozens of registered nurses and supporters marched and chanted outside of Research Medical Center in Kansas City on Thursday evening to draw attention to labor issues. The picketers, who were organized by the National Nurses United union, say the hospital is failing to comply…
Hospital Leader Challenges Brownback On Innovation, Medicaid Comments
The head of the Kansas Hospital Association is taking issue with comments made by Gov. Sam Brownback at a recent news conference. Asked about his continuing opposition to Medicaid expansion, Brownback downplayed the importance of the issue, telling reporters that innovation is more important to hospital finances than the billions of additional federal dollars that expansion would…
Missouri Convenience Stores Do U-Turn On Tobacco Tax
After opposing efforts to hike the state’s cigarette tax for more than a decade, Missouri convenience stores are now pushing two tobacco-increase plans, either of which they said would add $800 million to state coffers within a decade of their enactment.
Medicare and Medicaid 50 years old today
Advocates of government-sponsored health care gathered Thursday at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, to mark the anniversary of legislation that’s both a local story and a milestone for medical care in the United States. Fifty years ago, on the same stage where speakers sat, President Lyndon Johnson signed the law establishing…
Missouri’s Refusal To Expand Medicaid Leaves Hospitals Feeling The Pain
It’s a sweltering Monday afternoon, and in the emergency room of Truman Medical Centers near downtown Kansas City, a patient complains of excruciating abdominal pain. The attending physician advises her there’s only so much he can do. “The reality is you can get whatever pain medication I’m able to give you in an effort to…