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Republicans in Congress say their priority for next year is to build momentum for an eventual repeal of the new health law. But they could be in for a surprise: While repeal may be popular with Republican voters, the GOP could face pushback from some allies in the health care industry.
A study of four major insurers' payments to hospitals finds great differences among different parts of the country. San Francisco is the most expensive city among the eight areas in the study.
At the end of November, the most recent "doc fix" will expires. Without congressional action, physicians who see Medicare patients will face an across-the-board 23% reduction in their fees. If nothing happens by January, physicians would face an additional 7 percent reduction.
A blue-ribbon bipartisan panel of experts, chaired by former budget director Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici, recommends major changes to the way the government pays for health care.
An analysis of Medicare data finds many cancer patients are getting aggressive end-of-life care. The intensive approach might not be best for them and adds to the drain on Medicare's budget.
Dr. Donald Berwick, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is well-liked and known as a passionate advocate for improving the health care system. Some Republicans accuse him of favoring health care rationing - a charge Democrats dismiss as nonsense.
Tomorrow, Dr. Donald Berwick, the adminstrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee on Finance. Here is an advance copy of his prepared statement.
Families buying insurance on their own often find that the plans do not cover any of the usual expenses associated with having a baby.
We need more proposals like those being made by the President's deficit reduction commission, and the Medicare reform proposal authored by Republican House members Ryan, Cantor, and McCarthy. Irrespective of whether they are the best proposals, their authors started from a place where they told the truth.
Despite the outcomes of the mid-term elections, the health overhaul is the law, and it's up to HHS to make the "vital protections" it put into a place a reality.
But states' increasing use of the private plans is raising questions about whether low-income residents are getting adequate care.
An untold number of dialysis patients are injured or die as a result of needle dislodgements, but Medicare rules don't require clinics to report such adverse incidents to outside authorities.
A new survey of more than 2,800 employers found no big reason for workers to worry.
In states like Illinois, parents can provide at-home care for children with severe illnesses and Medicaid foots the bill. But the funding disappears the minute they turn 21, forcing families to make a painful choice: Find the money to pay for sometimes exorbitant health care costs or send their children to a nursing home.
Beginning in 2011, the new health law bars payments for over items such as aspirin, vitamins and cough medicine from the popular accounts set up with pretax dollars. Consumers can still get the coverage with a prescription.
The Republicans and their allies spent a lot of time - and a lot of money - attacking the new health law and promising to undo it. And they did so with such a fury that almost nobody seemed to notice they were making a pair of arguments that were fundamentally incompatible.
Though lots of different approaches to controlling health care costs have been discussed, it's hard to know which of them will really work.
Though it seems like an idea that can be easily attacked as a way to ration care, so-called value-based insurance design couples GOP principles of market-based incentives and consumer choice with the Democratic reformers' goal of eliminating costly and unnecessary care.
After five years, 10 Medicare pilot projects showed mixed results. Leading group physician practices were measured on quality, patient satisfaction, and cost savings. They all scored well on quality, but only half made the cut on savings.
Nationwide, new physician-owned hospitals are scrambling to open by the end of the year. Beginning Jan. 1, the health law bans them from taking part in Medicare, making it hard for the facilities to survive.
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