Archive for the 'Medicare' Category
Friday, March 14th, 2008
Like a recurring illness, stalemate looms again over the prospects for settling the issue of payment levels to private plans in Medicare, which now exceed the average per beneficiary cost of traditional fee-for-service Medicare by 13 percent, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. MedPAC recommends eliminating the differential, which funds extra benefits for private-plan […]
Posted in All Categories, Insurance, Medicare, Payment, Policy | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Comparing health systems, the growth of U.S. health spending, and proposals to fix Medicare physician payment topped the January-February 2008 most-read list for the Health Affairs Blog. Sign up for email or RSS feed alerts to stay on top of new postings. Additional commenting always welcome.
U.S. Worst At Beating Death From Treatable Illness
by Jane Hiebert-White
HEALTH […]
Posted in All Categories, Blog, Europe, Medicare, Physicians, Policy, Politics, Public Health, Spending, States | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
The good people in the Office of the Actuary (OA) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) take great pains every year to summarize and explain their health spending forecast without spin or exaggeration. The editors of Health Affairs are perennially grateful to them for taking an approach that helps the journal fulfill […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Policy, Spending | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the seventh and last post in a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. Paul Ginsburg, Robert Berenson, Mina Matin, Jay Crosson, Frank Opelka, and Eugene Rich have contributed earlier posts.
One of the advantages of coming last in a series of blog postings is that I can comment […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | 2 Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth post in a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. Paul Ginsburg, Robert Berenson, Mina Matin, Jay Crosson, and Frank Opelka have contributed earlier posts. The series will also feature a post by Gail Wilensky.
In January 2007 the 110th Congress convened with the Democrats newly in the majority. Among the […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth post in a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. Paul Ginsburg, Robert Berenson, Mina Matin, and Jay Crosson have contributed earlier posts, and in the coming days the series will feature posts by Eugene Rich and Gail Wilensky.
There will be little relief in Medicare expenditures in the coming years as the number […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth post in a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. Paul Ginsburg, Robert Berenson, and Mina Matin have contributed earlier posts, and in the coming days the series will feature posts by Frank Opelka, Eugene Rich, and Gail Wilensky.
Medicare expenditures for physician services continue to be impacted by the annual growth in volume […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | 5 Comments »
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the third post in a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. Paul Ginsburg and Robert Berenson have contributed earlier posts, and in the coming days the series will feature posts by Jay Crosson, Frank Opelka, Eugene Rich, and Gail Wilensky.
Mina Matin is the lead author of this post; she is a third-year resident in family […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. The first post by Paul Ginsburg appeared yesterday. In the coming days, the series will feature posts by Jay Crosson, Mina Matin, Frank Opelka, Eugene Rich, and Gail Wilensky.
To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) gets no respect. In this […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Editor’s Note: In the post below, Paul Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), begins a Health Affairs Blog series on Medicare physician compensation and the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism. In the coming days, the series will feature posts by Robert Berenson, Jay Crosson, Mina Matin, Frank Opelka, Eugene Rich, and Gail Wilensky.
The Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) system is intended to keep spending […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Physicians, Policy | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
Full implementation of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit contributed to an 18.7 percent increase in Medicare spending in 2006, the fastest rate of growth since 1981 and double the rise in 2005, the federal government reported today. In 2006, Medicare spending rose to $401.3 billion, up from $338.0 billion a year earlier, says the […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicaid, Medicare, Pharma, Spending | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Will health information technology (IT) be the silver bullet to create value in the health care sector? Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discusses health IT and other health system management issues in an interview with Leonard Schaeffer, founding chairman and CEO of WellPoint, Inc., and currently […]
Posted in All Categories, Health IT, Medicare, Payment | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Editor’s Note: Lammot du Pont, and Helen Pfister of Manatt Health Solutions are also coauthors of this post. The post is an edited version of a longer article written with guidance and support from the California HealthCare Foundation; the Community Clinics Initiative, a project of Tides and the California Endowment; the Colorado Health Foundation; and the RCHN Community Health Foundation.
As the health care industry […]
Posted in All Categories, Health IT, Medicaid, Medicare | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Peter Orszag today continued his assault on the elephant in health policy’s living room, the 2.1 percent “excess cost growth” by which the nation’s total health spending growth has exceeded the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) since 1975. At a reporters’ briefing sponsored by Health Affairs, Orszag unveiled a […]
Posted in All Categories, Effectiveness, Medicaid, Medicare, Spending | 5 Comments »
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
It is perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy that American problems require uniquely American solutions. As a solution to the lack of outpatient prescription drug coverage for the over 65s and disabled, Medicare Part D is unarguably unique. It’s also expensive, complex and awash with perverse incentives. But it is well established, and efforts to introduce greater […]
Posted in All Categories, Medicare, Pharma, Politics | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
House Democratic leaders last week quietly compromised away the Medicare provisions in their State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization bill as they hunkered down for a veto fight. Prudently set aside for the moment is the Dems’ aggressive attack on Medicare Advantage (MA) insurance subsidies. Gone also is an intriguing and widely overlooked package […]
Posted in All Categories, Hospitals, Medicare, Physicians | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
The rising prevalence of obesity is said to be threatening to drown the health care system under a wave of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. So some policymakers have suggested taxing foods high in saturated fats as a way to steer consumers clear of snacks that are bad for them and perhaps offset coming health care […]
Posted in All Categories, Europe, Medicare, Public Health | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
In an interview published online at Health Affairs [2-week free access], David Eddy, founder and medical director of Archimedes Inc. in Aspen, Colorado, discusses evidence-based medicine (EBM) with Sean Tunis, founder and director of the Center for Medical Technology Policy in San Francisco. Archimedes was founded to improve the quality and efficiency of health care […]
Posted in All Categories, Consumers, Cost, Effectiveness, Insurance, Medicare, Quality, Spending | 5 Comments »
Monday, June 18th, 2007
While presidential candidates are expected to sound firm and decisive on the big issues, a more appropriate posture in the case of health care might be to admit that the current environment is too unsettled to predict what the best policies might be 18 months from now.
The candidates might take a hint from the glaring […]
Posted in All Categories, Insurance, Medicare, Politics, Spending | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
The Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) has succeeded in providing seniors with more “choice” among Medicare Advantage (MA) private health insurance plans. However, particularly in rural areas, much of the increased choice stems from a proliferation of private fee-for-service (PFFS) plans, which mimic traditional Medicare’s fee-for-service structure but receive reimbursements that exceed spending in the traditional […]
Posted in All Categories, Competition, Medicare, Policy | 6 Comments »
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