Redefining Cancer, and Other Links
One way to cut costs: redefine “cancer.”
Is psychotherapy over the Internet better than face-to-face counseling?
Tag: "Medicare"
Jul 31, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman
Howard Dean: ObamaCare Will Lead to Rationing
One major problem is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.
Source: Wall Street Journal.
Jul 29, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman
Doctors Bailing Out
The number of physicians who have stopped accepting Medicare has nearly tripled over the last three years.
Source: Wall Street Journal.
Jul 29, 2013 | 15 comments | by John Goodman
Premier ACOs Posting Mediocre Results
Nearly a third of the health systems chosen for the ambitious Pioneer accountable care organization program with Medicare are leaving after the first year of the three-year program. The goal of accountable care is for hospitals and doctors to save money while lowering costs…
But only 13 of the Pioneers actually saved enough money to share those savings with Medicare, despite having invested in the programs and staff required to better coordinate care. And two Pioneers ended up owing the Medicare program $4 million. (Washington Post)
Jul 17, 2013 | 10 comments | by John Goodman
Why Congress Shouldn’t Practice Medicine
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has proposed a new rule that would effectively put to rest a provision inserted into last year’s fiscal cliff bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to help a U.S. company.
The original provision threatened to slash payments to the Swedish maker of a radiosurgical device called the Gamma Knife, thereby helping its competitor, a U.S. company that makes Linac — short for linear accelerator — machines. (WSJ)
Jul 12, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman
ER vs. Doctor’s Office, and Other Links
Patients in Medicare Advantage plans got expensive balloons and stenting to clear coronary arteries at a rate 31 percent lower than patients in traditional Medicare, and angiography procedures were 36 percent lower. But geographical variation is still large and we don’t know if this was good for patients.
Jul 11, 2013 | 18 comments | by John Goodman
Seniors Get Paid If They Stay Healthy, and Other Links
Should Medicare pay seniors to stay healthy?
Wow: those left out of Medicaid expansion won’t have to buy insurance.
24 million Americans will qualify for an exemption from the ObamaCare mandate.
Jun 28, 2013 | 12 comments | by John Goodman
What the Bay State Is Getting Out of ObamaCare
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services adjusts hospital payments for treating Medicare patients based on differences in regional costs. Historically, each state was allocated a fixed pot of money that was divided up among its hospitals to adjust for differences in rural and urban hospitals’ labor costs. Until now. As Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel explains:
Enter [Senator John] Kerry, who slipped in an opaque provision into the Obama health law to require that Medicare wage reimbursements now come from a national pool of money, rather than state allocations. The Kerry kickback didn’t get much notice, since it was cloaked in technicality and never specifically mentioned Massachusetts.
One peculiar provision in Medicare regulations requires urban hospitals within a state to receive wage rate adjustments that are at least as generous as a state’s rural hospitals. Ordinarily this would make little difference since rural hospitals tend to have lower labor costs than urban hospitals — except in Massachusetts.
You see, “rural” hospitals in Massachusetts are a class all their own. The Bay States has only one, a tiny facility on the tony playground of the superrich — Nantucket. Nantucket College Hospital’s relatively high wages set the floor for what all 81 of the state’s urban hospitals must also be paid. And since these dramatically inflated Massachusetts wages are now getting sucked out of a national pool, there’s little left for the rest of America.
The result: Massachusetts― urban hospitals get far more money — about $257 million more — forcing cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals in 40 other states.
Jun 24, 2013 | 14 comments | by Devon Herrick
