Policy and Legislation
Many questions remain on how specific details of the Affordable Care Act will be resolved, but one significant trend is clear: the shift toward risk sharing among patients, providers and insurers is well underway.
A quarter of the nation's hospitals, those with the worst rates of hospital-acquired conditions, will lose 1 percent of every Medicare payment for a year starting in October. The sanctions, estimated to total $330 million over a year, kick in at a time when most infections measured in hospitals are on the decline, but still too common.
MedPAC is out with its 15th annual mid-year report, offering advice for Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services to improve and sustain the senior's health program as it enrolls millions of retiring baby boomers. Here's what hospitals need to know about the commission's latest thinking.
Of the states that built their own health insurance exchanges that are now operational, Washington, Kentucky and Minnesota enjoyed some successes that might be replicated.
The Congressional Budget Office recently said it could no longer evaluate the fiscal implications of all of the law's provisions, leading to some concerns about the implications of a lack of independent assessment.
The U.S. Senate voted in Sylvia Matthews Burwell as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services on Thursday afternoon. She is slated to officially take over for outgoing Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after a swearing in ceremony on Monday.
An Illinois home health case heard recently by the Supreme Court could reach far beyond that sector, dramatically changing the way labor unions operate across the country.
Hospitals in states that have expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act are already bringing in fewer self-pay and charity care patient cases, according to an analysis by the Colorado Hospital Association.
Ugly stories about waiting lists and poor care in VA facilities are coming out in the press. But in truth, there is not enough information to say whether the VA system is worse or better than the private system as a whole, or even to compare the VA with individual private sector hospitals.
States' taxing of Medicaid managed care organizations to raise revenue for state-share Medicaid payments may be illegal, according to the HHS Inspector General. If so, this raises serious questions that could shake up MCO financing models.