David Williams

The CEOs of two academic hospitals are upset that Congress may reduce the funding for Graduate Medical Education (GME) paid through Medicare.

Reducing readmissions is becoming increasingly important for hospitals. In the olden days (and still to some extent now) a readmission was simply a new opportunity to earn revenue on the same patient.

It seems that Medicare’s focus on reducing readmissions to hospitals is stimulating renewed attention to hospital discharge planning and communications.

A MedPage Today post by what appears to be an informed consumer (and not a health care professional) provides a little peek into the factors that affect health care quality and cost.

I often hear from hospitals that they’re being squeezed greatly on cost and not getting paid enough by government and private payers. I have some sympathy for this argument, but on the other hand somehow this country outspends every other country by at least two to one, and hospitals are a big part of the reason.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) gave Republicans a great big target to shoot at, and they’ve worked up so much energy attacking so-called ObamaCare that they’ve dug themselves into a great big hole on health care. It may well be enough to keep them from control of the White House and maybe the Hill, too if things keep going the way they’re going.

Whenever I'm in Canada I enjoy reading what the newspapers have to say about health care. Today's Montreal Gazette leads with "Hip surgery wait times fail seniors" and continues inside with "Waits longest in cities for seniors' hip surgery."

Merrill Goozner of GoozNews has a provocative take on the Ryan plan for Medicare. He contends that it is the equivalent of a 100 percent estate tax (or “death tax” in GOP parlance). He has a point.

Massachusetts’ 5 year old health reform law is the subject of fierce contention on the national stage, since it formed the foundation for the much-debated Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

One of the most despairing aspects of the last 10 years has been Republicans’ failure to get serious about Medicare spending. As I’ve written many times, Medicare is the monster that will swallow us up if we don’t do something about it. Yet Republicans have made matters worse over the years in a number of ways.