Daily Rounds: $1M+ Hospital Bills; Justice's Health Law Legacy; Obamacare Trek; Spring-Forward Heart Risk

Million-dollar hospital bills rise sharply in Northern California - The Sacramento Bee - "A million dollars can buy a mansion in one of Sacramento's nicest neighborhoods, near its best schools and parks. Or it can buy an ever-dwindling number of weeks in the intensive care unit of a local hospital...Northern California hospitals save people like Showalter, Austin and Stahl every day. But cases like theirs – complicated procedures that can require months in the hospital – have become frighteningly expensive, with associated costs rising much faster than prices for routine care. The number of Northern California hospital stays resulting in charges of $1 million or more rose sevenfold in the past decade, from 430 in 2000 to almost 3,000 during 2010, according to a Bee review of new data." (The Sacramento Bee)

Health care act offers Roberts a signature case - The New York Times - "Chief Justice Roberts is just 57, and he will probably lead the Supreme Court for an additional two decades or more. But clashes like the one over the health care law come around only a few times in a century, and he may well complete his service without encountering another case posing such fundamental questions about the structure of American government. The case will require the chief justice to choose between two competing instincts." (The New York Times)Obama's health care law: A trek, not a sprint - Associated Press — "It took only a year to set up Medicare. But if President Barack Obama's health care law survives Supreme Court scrutiny, it will be nearly a decade before all its major pieces are in place. And that means even if Obama is re-elected, he won't be in office to oversee completion of his signature domestic policy accomplishment, assuming Republicans don't succeed in repealing it. The law's carefully orchestrated phase-in is evidence of what's at stake in the Supreme Court deliberations that start March 26." (AP via US News and World Report)

Daylight Saving Time — Still mostly a scam - The Washington Post - "Daylight saving can be bad for your health. Again, some mixed results here. The extra sunlight is good for vitamin D synthesis. But the disruption in sleep patterns caused by setting your clock forward can actually kill people. Here’s the finding reported in a brand new study out of the University of Alabama in Birmingham: “The Monday and Tuesday after moving the clocks ahead one hour in March is associated with a 10 percent increase in the risk of having a heart attack,” says researcher Martin Young. And a 2009 study (pdf) in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that tired workers are at greater risk of workplace accidents." (The Washington Post)