Hits and Misses
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Kentucky hospital sees 12 percent surge in emergency-department visits under ObamaCare.
U.S. judge strikes down rule forcing drug companies to discount drugs for hospitals.
Watercress tops list of “powerhouse” fruits and vegetables. Who knew?
American Hospital Association wants Medicare claims audits stopped.
“Administration to question “hundreds of thousands” of ObamaCare applicants to re-determine eligibility for subsidies.”
This is not shocking in the least bit. Ever since its implementation, the whole process has been bungled. Just take a look at this Forbes article!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/06/12/federal-bungling-of-obamacare-verification-creating-nationwide-chaos-in-medicaid-departments/
“the whole process has been bungled”
That’s putting it lightly!
“Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Kentucky hospital sees 12 percent surge in emergency-department visits under ObamaCare.”
This is a broken record that just keeps on playing. Everywhere will see ER visits increase under ObamaCare.
“We’re seeing patients who probably should be seen at our (immediate-care centers),”
This is because they can’t be seen at these centers. Since wait times and access to care is difficult, they will use the ER as an alternative.
“two million reported personal information that differed from data in government records, according to federal officials and Serco, the company hired to resolve such inconsistencies.”
Are there any checks that enrollees have to go through to be sure of accurate information? If not, it probably differs from people trying to game the system.
Sarah Kliff had a good article on Serco about a year ago (http://tinyurl.com/lsofj5x). There has been some interesting news about the company since then.
I had to Google what watercress was. Which probably accurately describes the state of my health…
Watercress: that weird looking green in your salad you’re never truly sure is edible.
American Hospital Association wants Medicare claims audits stopped
The relevant question: does the OIG find errors that are missed by the Medicare recovery audits? If so, does the amount recovered through OIG audits exceed the cost of OIG audits? In economic terms, a profit maximizing activity should be conducted until the last dollar of input equals the last dollars of output.
U.S. judge strikes down rule forcing drug companies to discount drugs for hospitals.
A few years ago only about 6,000 hospitals and clinics qualified for the 340B discount drug program. Under the PPACA, this number was expected to rise to something like 20,000. I don’t believe the ruling effect the hospitals and clinics that were recipients prior to the ACA.
Many policy wonks argue this amounts to a giveaway to clinics that make a huge profit on the drugs. It’s been suggested that some clinics were able to reap huge windfalls by ordering more discounted drugs than needed then selling them to other hospitals and clinics at a huge markup. That may be an egregious anecdote that rarely occurs. Yet, drug makers have a quota system to restrict the amount of drugs sold to reflect historic purchases to prevent arbitrage.
Gee, what a surprise that so many people’s reported incomes differs from what they report in order to get other people’s money to help purchase a product that we now have to buy.
Do you think the administration will go after these people as hard as they went after the IRS for unfairly targeting conservative groups?
If anyone could figure out what watercress is, we’d probably eat it. I’ve never seen it, but it sounds gross.
I feel like good foods generally do.
I am pumped about spinach topping the list, though. I love spinach.
I try to avoid any food with a name of more than two syllables.
Considering the number of syllables in “chocolate,” I’d probably be healthier sticking to that rule.
Watercress also aids in weight loss — at least if I have to eat it I would lose weight.