Tag: "Medicare"

Buried in the Pelosi Bill

Medical liability alternative incentives, BUT “a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.”

Repeal of antitrust exemption for health insurers. CBO: “To the extent that insurers would become subject to additional litigation, their costs and thus their premiums might increase.”

Feds will be able to negotiate Medicare drug prices. Under their deal with Obama, drug makers agreed to give up about $80 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. The House bill — reneging on their agreement — would cost the drug industry about $140 billion over that period.

111 new federal bureaucracies will be created.

Calories must be posted for vending machines and Big Macs.

Nov 03, 2009 | 7 comments | by

How Much Does the Pelosi Bill Really Cost?

According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s press release, the cost is $894 billion. But this figure is net of certain new revenues, including penalties by individuals and employers who fail to meet new insurance requirements in the bill. Were the Senate Finance Committee (Baucus) bill reported the same way, its cost would have been $518 billion, rather than the widely reported figure of $829 billion.

Reporting the Pelosi bill costs the same way as all other bills have been reported, the real cost is $1.055 trillion. If the Medicare physician payment fix (believed to be almost a certainty) is included, the total is $1.3 trillion.

There are also other likely costs.

Nov 03, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/10/30

Entering a hospital? You probably need an advocate.

Medicare is paying patients up to $1,157 to go to the “right” hospital.

Guess who has not had a real pay increase over the past 100 years? Congress.

Oct 30, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Competition from a “Public Plan”: What to Expect

Oct 29, 2009 | 4 comments | by

An Argument for Teamwork

This is from a review by Joseph Rago of Chaos and Organization in Health Care:

Medicare recipients, on average, see seven doctors; patients with coronary artery disease see 10; those with lung cancer, 11. Usually these doctors don’t work together or even coordinate their care, resulting in errors, waste and a lower quality of treatment.

Oct 23, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Medicare at a Distance

It’s getting increasingly sophisticated:

At the local hospital in McCandless, Pa., where Mr. Buirge sought treatment, the 58-year-old lay in bed as a stroke specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 15 miles away, watched him on a giant TV, courtesy of a video camera in Mr. Buirge’s room. The diagnosis was critical, since for most stroke patients, a clot-dissolving drug received shortly after arriving at a hospital can reduce the effects of stroke and limit permanent disabilities. But the risk is that for some patients with a certain type of stroke, such a drug can actually increase bleeding in the brain and boost the chance of death.

After reviewing Mr. Buirge’s vital signs and a CT scan, the stroke specialist used the remote camera to check such things as the patient’s speech and eye movements and his ability to follow commands. The Pittsburgh-based doctor then recommended that the local hospital administer the drug, called tPA.

Full story is by Ben Worthen in The Wall Street Journal.

Oct 22, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/10/20

In 2009, about 40% of individual income taxes will go toward debt interest payments.

Australia: No TV for kids under two.

A growing number of affluent Americans are turning to their financial advisers for guidance navigating the Medicare maze.

Up to one in 50 hospital patients in Britain’s National Health Service shows problems caused by prior NHS care.

Oct 20, 2009 | 2 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/10/16

Is it fair to charge people a premium that reflects the real cost of the insurance they are buying? RWJ finds that question hard to answer. Let’s hope they stay away from other insurance markets.

Mayo unit stops accepting Medicare. Senior access already deteriorating and the health reform  bill isn’t even out of committee yet.

Video: Kids sing for health reform.

Oct 16, 2009 | 9 comments | by

This is the Agency that is Going to Bend the Cost Curve?

Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Pollack reports that Medicare is about to stop paying for Avastin as a treatment for eye diseases. He writes, “But the way the bureaucratic gears mesh in this case, the move could end up costing Medicare itself hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and individual patients thousands of dollars.” Apparently there are two drugs used for macular degeneration, both made by Genentech, Lucentis that costs $2,000 per injection, and Avastin that costs $50 or less when used in the dose needed for eye disease. Medicare has decided to pay $7.50 per shot for Avastin but will continue to pay full price for Lucentis. Physicians would lose money on every dose of Avastin, but not on Lucentis.

According to Dr. David W. Parke II, chief executive of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, “about a million injections a year were given for macular degeneration, about half of them Avastin and the other half Lucentis.” Because patients pay 20% of the cost of the drug, both they and Medicare will have to pay a whole lot more to avoid going blind.

Oct 14, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Would Rationing by Any Other Name Be as Painful?

This appeared in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Beginning in 2015, Medicare would rank doctors against their peers based on how much they cost the program – and then automatically cut all payments by 5% to anyone who falls into the 90th percentile or above.

Since there will always be a missing chair when the music stops, every year one of 10 physicians will be punished if he orders too many tests, performs too many procedures or prescribes too many drugs – whether or not the treatments result in better patient outcomes. The 5% fine is substantial given that Medicare’s price controls already pay only 83 cents on the private dollar.

Hardest hit: cardiology and oncology.

Oct 07, 2009 | 5 comments | by
« Previous Page — Next Page »