Health-care ills; Health care costs more, serves fewer
March 11, 1991
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The U.S. health-care system made a dream come true for Priscilla Brewer's family in 1976. Doctors at Norton Children's Hospital in Louisville, Ky., knocked her daughter's leukemia into remission. Between the hospital's leukemia research grant and Brewer's insurance, the family paid nothing.
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Health jobs keep growing; Technology, unchecked costs fuel rise
May 8, 1991
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Ten years ago, Bill Rentler used ultrasound waves to inspect the quality of newly made pipes at U.S. Steel in McKeesport, Pa. Laid off twice in five months, he also would lay awake nights wondering how he could keep living with such uncertainty.
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Health-premium pain; Small firms are getting squeezed out
June 13, 1991
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Next month, Larry Beddingfield enters health-insurance hell. That's when the monthly premium to cover his wife and five children jumps from $258 to $917.19 - $11,000 a year.
That's nearly 10% of the revenue Beddingfield averages in his Huntsville, Ala., electronics installation business, Commercial Systems Inc. The Houston-based insurer that took over his original carrier last year, Life of America, attributes the jump to the takeover. But Beddingfield believes the reason is his wife's $22,000 battle with breast cancer several months ago.
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Anatomy of a scam; Rip-off artists help push up health costs
June 25, 1991
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The crime is wildly lucrative. The tools can be found in any doctor's office: some medical equipment, a pen and a claim form.
Health-insurance fraud is reaching an alarming scale. This year, for the first time, insurers will recover more than $100 million from medical scam artists, nearly double what they recouped two years ago. Yet health-fraud cops say the only thing growing faster than their own resources and success is the sophistication of the crooks. This month a Los Angeles grand jury indicted Michael Smushkevitch, alleged head of a health-insurance fraud ring thought to have taken in a staggering $1 billion since 1986.
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How safe is your workplace? Experts cite 10,500 deaths every year
Sept. 5, 1991
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HAMLET, N.C. - Black footprints on a door show the desperation of the 25 workers who died Tuesday trying to escape an inferno in a chicken processing plant.
Beyond the horror of the moment, those footprints at the Imperial Food Products plant represent an occupational safety system gone awry.
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Drug costs under fire; Companies say research justifies rise
Sept. 25, 1991
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For a couple of years now, insurers and lawmakers have been doing a slow burn on the soaring cost of prescription drugs. Now, that outrage is boiling over among insurers, consumer groups and lawmakers.
The latest attack came Tuesday in a staff report from the Senate's Special Committee on Aging that for the first time raised what to drugmakers is an unnerving prospect: price regulation.
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Your retirement at risk; Retirees' health plans get the ax
Nov. 14, 1991
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Ray Wright feels fairly sure that Du Pont Co. will pay for his health care after he retires.
The 38-year-old coal miner works at a Shadyside, Ohio, mine owned by Du Pont's Consolidated Coal. He knows coal company bankruptcies have stripped thousands of retired miners of health-care benefits. "According to our contract, we'll have full health care. If my job holds up ... I feel pretty safe."
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Health plans with muscle; Cash rewards are made to faithful few
May 27, 1992
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When Dominion Resources managers began thinking in late 1990 about starting an employee health-promotion program, they were of a mind with the doughnut-lover on his first 10K run: filled with doubt.
"Health-club memberships, jogging trails, exercise equipment - we discovered wellness programs can involve a lot of expense and yield disappointing results," recalls Ken Davis, a vice president of the Richmond, Va.-based electric-utility holding company. "We decided what the other programs we studied lacked was an immediate incentive for employees to act."
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Jury gives RSI award; 'Litigation in its infancy'
Aug. 24, 1992
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Employers may re-examine the way they treat workers with repetitive-motion injuries now that a Seattle jury has awarded $1.2 million to a former Boeing worker who lost use of both hands.
Janice Goodman, 56, is believed to be one of the first workers suffering from repetitive-strain injuries to win a damage award from a jury. Generally, such employees are covered under state workers-compensation laws and are barred from suing their employers.
