Will Texas Medicaid End Up Paying For J&J's Hip Replacement Recall?

by: be_devine

Sun Oct 17, 2010 at 01:01 PM CDT

Medical giant Johnson & Johnson's subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics recently issued a massive hip replacement recall of 93,000 hip implants.  DePuy admits that the recalled hip implants have a failure rate of at least 13%, which means that more than 12,000 people will have to undergo a surgery to remove an replace the defective devices.

Who will pay for these surgeries, each which can cost $50,000 or more?  Government programs (like the Texas Medicaid program and the federal Medicare program) already have paid substantial costs to surgically remove the recalled hip replacement parts, and assuming $50,000 for each surgery, the total medical costs of DePuy's hip implant recall could exceed $600 million.  DePuy tells patients that these costs should be submitted to the patient's insurance company for payment.  In many cases, this will be Texas' Medicaid or Medicare.

Race Baiting Texas CBS Affiliate

by: be_devine

Fri Oct 24, 2008 at 02:50 PM CDT

We've all probably heard by now about Ashley Todd, the Texas A&M student who claimed that she was beaten by a black man who carved a "B" in her face because she was a McCain supporter. We've also all probably heard that Ashley Todd admitted that she made this story up.

Well, KXII, the CBS affiliate in Sherman, Texas, continues to report this case. And they forget to mention that small, inconsequental part about Todd making the whole thing up. In fact, KXII posted the story at 1:52pm, hours after Todd herself admitted that she lied.

I notified the station in the comments that they were reporting a story as true that has, in fact, been recanted. Nevertheless, they continue to report the story as true and my comment does not appear on their blog.

Nothing like a little journalistic integrity, eh.