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Kaiser Health News and NPR: That’s A Lot Of Scratch: The $48,329 Allergy Test

Janet Winston had a rash that wouldn’t go away. The English professor from Eureka, Calif., always had been sensitive to ingredients in skin creams and cosmetics. This time, however, the antifungal cream she was prescribed to treat her persistent rash seemed to make things worse. Was she allergic to that, too? ... Her Stanford-affiliated doctor had warned her that the extensive allergy skin-patch testing she needed might be expensive, Winston said, but she wasn’t too worried. After all, Stanford was an in-network provider for her insurer — and her insurance, one of her benefits as an employee of the state of California, always had been reliable. Then the bill came. (Feder Ostrov, 10/29)

Early this month, a respected medical journal published a research paper on its website that analyzed the effects of a business trend roiling the field of dermatology: the rapid entrance of private equity firms into the specialty by buying and running practices around the country. Eight days later, after an outcry from private equity executives and dermatologists associated with private equity firms, the editor of the publication removed the paper from the site. No reason was given. Furor over the publication and subsequent removal of the article has deepened a rift in the field over what some see as the “corporatization” of dermatology and other areas of medicine. (Hafner, 10/26)

Kaiser Health News: Dialysis Giant DaVita Defends Itself In Court And At The Polls

It’s been a year of playing defense for DaVita Inc., one of the country’s largest dialysis providers. A federal jury in Colorado this summer awarded $383.5 million to the families of three of its dialysis patients in wrongful death lawsuits. Then this month, the Denver-based company announced it would pay $270 million  to settle a whistleblower’s allegation that one of its subsidiaries cheated the government on Medicare payments. But its biggest financial threat is a ballot initiative in California that one Wall Street firm says could cost DaVita $450 million a year in business if the measure succeeds. (Young, 10/29)