Sliding in under the radar, the House has followed up its passage of health reform legislation by passing another bill that would restore nearly $200 billion in projected Medicare payment cuts to physicians over 10 years. The Senate recently defeated a similar proposal, and it’s doubtful that the upper chamber will reverse itself, especially in the midst of a fierce battle over healthcare...
Just as the Senate’s reform legislation was about to be unveiled, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), one of the chamber’s leading experts on healthcare, published a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine about why the bill would be disastrous if it passed. The piece adds little to the litany of Republican complaints about the Democrats’ approach, but it does contain more...
The Democrats in the U.S. Senate have finally worked out a healthcare reform package that, judging by initial reports, seems remarkably similar to the one that came out of the Senate Finance Committee last month. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation will cost $848 billion over 10 years, but that it will reduce the deficit by $130 billion, because the costs will be offset by...
Medicare and Medicaid fraud is a perennial target of government cost-cutters. While a perfectly honest system-which we will never have-would not have a major impact on the rising cost of healthcare, the ante was raised recently when the White House revealed that Medicare and Medicaid improperly paid out $54.2 billion in fiscal 2009. Of that amount, $24.1 billion came from the Medicare...
The nation’s hospitals are bouncing back from the recession in a big way, even though the rising unemployment rate has reduced their pool of paying customers. According to a new Thomson Reuters study of financial data on more than 400 hospitals, the median profit margin of U.S. hospitals increased from near zero in the third quarter of 2008 to 8.4 percent in the second quarter of 2009. To...
Physician shortages are much more on hospital leaders’ minds these days than shortages of nurses or allied health professionals, a new AMN Healthcare survey of 285 hospital chief executive officers shows. The CEOs doubt there are enough clinicians available to cope with the sharply increased demand for services that healthcare reform is expected to generate. Ninety-five percent of the...
As healthcare reform starts to look more and more inevitable, various interest groups are stepping up their efforts to influence the legislation. And, while special interests have traditionally been branded as profit-driven at the expense of the public interest, some of them have potent arguments. Take Medicare HMOs. Reformers in both the House and the Senate want to trim government payments to...
Many physicians have complained that they must invest in electronic health records now in order to qualify for government subsidies that will be paid in increments over five years, starting in 2011. These incentives are substantial-physicians may be eligible for up to $44,000 from Medicare or $64,000 from Medicaid if they have enough Medicaid business. But physicians either have to lay out a...
In recent years, many states have published the comparative costs of specific healthcare services to help consumers choose among healthcare providers. Most of these reports are hard to use because they list the charges of hospitals and outpatient facilities, rather than what particular insurance plans pay for those services or what their members pay out of pocket. So it’s not surprising...
There has been a great deal of discussion recently about repealing the federal law that exempts insurance companies from antitrust regulations, and the just-passed House reform bill would do just that. It is unlikely, however, that this will have much impact on insurance rates even if it is included in the final legislation. A more meaningful step would be to take a hard line on hospital...
- More Insurance Competition Will Not Reduce Costs
- No Rationing, Say Experts, But Public Doesn't Hear
- Some Health Reform Questions for The President
- Interest Groups Redouble Fight on Healthcare Reform
- NEJM Roundtable on Health Cost Control Offers Insights
- House Health-Care Reform Bill Deserves Public Support
- House Health Reform Bill Does Not Please Many in Health Care
- White House Puts Focus On Medicare and Medicaid Fraud
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