Tag: "Medicare"

Weight Loss Therapy a Bargain for Medicare

Emory Professor, Kenneth Thorpe, examines the costs of treating obesity-related conditions and found medications that help Medicare enrollees lose weight could save money for Medicare in the long term.

Permanent weight loss of 10 to 15% will yield $9,445 to $15,987 in gross per capita savings throughout their lifetime, and $8,070 to $13,474 over ten years. Similarly, initial weight loss of 10 to 15% followed by 90% weight regain will result in gross per capita savings of $7,556 to $11,109 over their lifetime, and $6,456 to $8,911 over ten years. Targeting weight loss medications to adults with obesity (BMI ≥ 30) produces greater savings to the Medicare program.

Apr 05, 2013 | 10 comments | by Devon Herrick

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

It’s easier to apply for green card than ObamaCare.

As economy flails, debtors’ prisons thrive: jailing for failure to pay traffic fines and court fees.

Because of the sequester cuts, cancer clinics are turning away thousands of Medicare patients. Why can’t they drop the “free” wellness exams instead?

The annual cost of dementia is between $157 billion and $215 billion — that’s as much as $2,000 per household per year.

Apr 05, 2013 | 12 comments | by John Goodman

At Some Hospitals Death Rates are Rising

And Medicare is the only reason they exist. From Kaiser Health News:

For 15 years, Congress has bestowed special privileges to some small remote hospitals, usually in rural areas, to help them stay afloat. Medicare pays them more than it pays most hospitals and exempts them from financial pressure to operate efficiently and requirements to reveal how their patients fare. Nearly one in four hospitals qualifies for the program.

Despite these benefits, there’s new evidence that the quality of many of these hospitals may be deteriorating. A study published Tuesday found that during the past decade the death rates of patients at these critical access hospitals were growing while mortality rates at other hospitals were dropping.

Apr 03, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman

Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

Democrats vote to keep White House tours closed.

Medicare paid $5.1 billion for stays in nursing homes that did not meet quality-of-care requirements.

Harry Reid blocks a vote to prevent airport delays and closures.

Halfway houses don’t work.

Only 5.5% of patients email their doctors.

Mar 27, 2013 | 11 comments | by John Goodman

The Path We Are On

Current law requires:

Medicare to slash physician fees by 25 percent next January (under the BBA).
Additional (ObamaCare-required) cuts to physician fees so severe that by 2030, Medicare will be paying doctors 60 percent less than private health insurance plans (and nearly one-third less than Medicaid pays!).
ObamaCare-mandated reductions in payments to hospitals so drastic that hospital prices for both Medicare and Medicaid will be around half those paid by private health insurers by the year 2040.
Eventually, payment reductions to hospitals will mean they are paid 61 percent less by Medicare and Medicaid than by private health insurers; physicians eventually will be paid 74 percent less under Medicare than private insurance.