Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP News From Medical News Today Latest Health News and Medical News posted throughout the day, every day.
President Announces Plans To Crack Down On Health Care Fraud
The Boston Globe: "President Barack Obama said Tuesday he'll bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud, grabbing a populist idea with bipartisan backing in his final push to overhaul the system. ... Obama's anti-fraud announcement was aimed directly at the political middle." "Waste and fraud are pervasive problems for Medicare and Medicaid. ...
Senate Poised To Pass COBRA Subsidy Extension, Medicare 'Doc Fix'
The Senate is set to vote Wednesday on a jobs bill that would extend the COBRA subsidy program and Medicaid funding for states and prevent a Medicare reimbursement cut for doctors. The Associated Press: The bill "extends health insurance subsidies for the unemployed through December. It would add $132 billion to the budget deficit over the next year and a half. ...
States' Legislative Health Initiatives Stall
The Boston Globe: "A group of Massachusetts mayors, fed up with what they say is legislative inaction on skyrocketing municipal health care costs, has launched a ballot initiative for 2012 aimed at giving cities and towns more flexibility in reducing expensive benefits for employees, retirees, and elected officials" (Murphy, 3/10)...
Agency For Healthcare Research And Quality News And Numbers: High Cholesterol, Diabetes Lead Drug Spending For The Elderly
Purchases of cholesterol and diabetes prescription drugs by elderly Medicare beneficiaries reached nearly $19 billion in 2007 - about one-fourth of the approximately $82 billion spent for medications for the elderly, according to the latest AHRQ News and Numbers...
Senate Test Vote Today On Bill To Extend COBRA Subsidy, Doc Fix And State Medicaid Funding
The Senate is poised to consider a measure today that would include extending subsidies for COBRA benefits and unemployment insurance, prevent the Medicare payment cut for doctors and provide additional funding to state Medicaid programs...
Administration, Health Insurers Point Fingers At Each Other In Premium Hike Dust-Up
The Obama administration and insurance industry executives are continuing their battle over rate increases. Politico: "Insurance industry executives sat down with administration officials in the White House last week to justify their rising premium costs, attributing them to increasing medical costs. But it's an answer President Barack Obama apparently wasn't buying...
Medical Miracles More Likely, But At What Cost?
The Fiscal Times reports on medical miracles and their place in the national health care reform debate with a likely subheading: high health care costs. "The idea of foregoing heroic efforts and new technologies to save dying patients is anathema for most Americans...
Eligible Consumers Should Act Before March 31 To Enroll In Medicare
Consumers eligible for Medicare should enroll in Medicare Part B during the 2010 General Enrollment Period (GEP), which ends on March 31. Consumers who are not enrolled in Medicare, but should be, are urged to enroll by March 31 for Part B coverage, which would take effect July 1. Medicare Part B covers doctor visits and other outpatient care...
Physician's Perspective: Bundling Medicare Payments Could Cut Costs, Without Reducing Quality
The Washington Post has a section today titled "Scenes from the 21st century doctor's office." One feature, written by Manoj Jain, an infectious-disease specialist in Memphis, advocates for a new system of "bundled" Medicare payments to doctors. He notes that currently, "patients, insurance companies and Medicare pay separately for each procedure in the predominant 'fee-for-service' model...
States Struggle With Strapped Budgets, Cuts To Health Programs
The Dallas Morning News: "Lawmakers have been thinking ahead to a massive shortfall, topping $10 billion, that's probably coming when they write the next budget in 2011. But state officials told them Monday that they'll have to fix a hole in the current budget, too. Rising health care costs have dug a hole of about $1.7 billion, the officials said...
Medicare Payment Issues Raise Questions, Concerns
Medicare payment issues including rising costs, caps on physical therapy and other outpatient services for some patients are in the news. The Dallas Morning News reports that Medicare Advantage plans with drug benefits are getting more expensive: "Seniors in those plans will pay an average of $39.61 a month this year in premiums, up 14...
Today's OpEds: Positive And Negative Consequences Of Health Reform
If Reform Fails The New York Times Any change as big as this is bound to cause anxiety. Republicans have happily fanned those fears with talk of "dangerous experiments" on the "best health care system in the world." The fact is that the health care system is broken for far too many Americans. And the country cannot afford the status quo (3/6)...
Racial Differences In Hospice Use For Heart Failure
Building on previous studies that found racial differences in hospice use, a new study from the Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew SeniorLife and Boston University School of Medicine finds that blacks and Hispanics use hospice for advanced heart failure at a rate of up to 50 percent less than whites, despite a markedly higher rate of incidence of the disease in these populations...
Integrated Single Specialty Provider Healthcare Model Can Help Medicare Plans Save Millions By Delivering Evidence-Based Cancer Care
New Century Infusion Solutions, Inc. (NCIS), the first Oncology Benefit Management (OBM) company, is pleased to announce the publication of a white paper by the Lewin Group: "Medicare Cancer Care Coordination Using The Integrated Single Specialty Provider (ISSP) Model." The report estimates that over a 10-year horizon, a payer could realize oncology savings of "$16...
Health Reform Fact Check: Republicans Have Used Reconciliation, Obama Bill Will Bring Down Health Costs
Several news organization have "fact checks" on the reconciliation procedure and health reform provisions. The Associated Press examined then-candidate Barack Obama's Oct. 2007 statement of "We're not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy...
Legislation Requires Hospitals To Disclose Prices In Wisconsin
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The frustration of finding out what hospitals and doctors charge for common services -- from routine office visits to diagnostic tests and surgical procedures -- could soon get a lot easier in Wisconsin...
Neurologists On Capitol Hill To Push For Health Care Reform
What: More than 100 neurologists from 40 states will be in Washington, DC, March 8-9, 2010, for "Neurology on the Hill," an event hosted by the American Academy of Neurology to educate lawmakers about the need for health care reform changes that consider neurologists and the patients they treat, including people with Alzheimer's disease, stroke, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, mi...
AMA Enters Health IT Partnerships
The American Medical Association has made deals with computer retailer Dell, and Ingenix, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, to "help physicians adopt and implement electronic health records", the Chicago Tribune reports. The terms of the deals were not released, but one part of the arrangement with Ingenix will be to offer doctors a Web-based medical record system called CareTracker...
Federal Court Rejects California Medicaid Cuts
The San Francisco Chronicle: "A federal appeals court barred California on Wednesday from lowering Medi-Cal payments to doctors and hospitals by 5 percent and from cutting in-home care workers' wages by nearly 20 percent, saying the state's budget crisis doesn't justify violating federal laws that protect the poor and disabled. In four rulings, the Ninth U.S...
Last Chance To Change Medicare Health Plans
People with Medicare have one last chance to change their Medicare health plan before they are locked into their plan for the rest of 2010. During the Open Enrollment Period, which began January 1 and lasts through March 31, people with Medicare are allowed to change their choice of Medicare health coverage once...
How Expanded Medicare Authority Can Drive Improvements In The Medical Delivery System
Despite the loss of the Democrats' supermajority necessary to pass comprehensive national healthcare reform, new federal legislation is needed to promote greater efficiency in the medical delivery system. Comprehensive reform of Medicare's provider-payment system would accelerate delivery system change but would be highly disruptive for many hospitals and physicians...
GOP Rejects Obama's Compromise On Health Care, Wants 'New Approach'
USA Today: "President Obama offered to add a handful of Republican ideas to his 10-year, $950 billion health care plan Tuesday but was rebuffed and urged to start over.The letter from Obama to the GOP signalling his interest in four specific Republican health reform ideas was met with an icy reception from Republican leaders. ...
South Carolina, Oklahoma And Arkansas Grapple With Medicaid Cuts To Help Balance Budget
States consider major cuts to Medicaid services and reimbursement rates to help fill gaps in the budget. The Associated Press: "Lawmakers are considering cutting all services for nearly 26,000 people with disabilities as South Carolina tries to plug a $560 million budget hole...
Today's Editorials And Opinions
Why Aren't We Talking About Prices? U.S. News & World Report If our opaque and often secretive health-payment system were made transparent, the ground would be laid for consumers to find better premiums and prices for their families. One way to do this would be through open, fair, and guaranteed access, for any citizen, to competing insurers anywhere in the country (Bernadine Healy, 3/2)...
Senate Gridlock Ends, COBRA And Medicare Fees Extended
Los Angeles Times: "Senate leaders Tuesday night resolved an impasse over emergency aid to the jobless that had driven a wedge into Republican ranks and given Democrats a political weapon...
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