Policy and Legislation
The number of accountable care organizations in Medicare's Shared Savings Program will grow by 89 in January 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said this week, boosting the total participants to 405. Medicare ACOs will now serve more than 7.2 million patients.
Medicare is penalizing 721 hospitals with high rates of potentially avoidable mistakes that can harm patients, known as "hospital-acquired conditions." Penalized hospitals will have their Medicare payments reduced by 1 percent over the fiscal year that runs from October 2014 through September 2015.
The state that was supposed to pioneer single payer healthcare for the nation is dropping the idea. Gov. Peter Shumlin said the comprehensive tax scheme needed to raise more than $2 billion annually would be too disruptive.
In its toughest crackdown yet on medical errors, the federal government is cutting payments to 721 hospitals for having high rates of infections and other patient injuries.
Researchers and advocates worry the NIH may use that money for research not related to children's health.
More than 1 million people selected a health plan during the fourth week of the health law's open enrollment and nearly 2.5 million have done so since it began Nov. 15, federal officials said Tuesday.
More than $665 million will be distributed to states around the country to test new service and payment models, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday.
Independent Bill Walker, who won election last month in a governor's race so tight the results weren't known a week after the voting was over, campaigned on the promise that he'd expand Medicaid as one of his first orders of business.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam this week proposed a "private option" Medicaid expansion policy for the state, the latest Republican state executive to back a managed care or market-based approach to bring in federal dollars.
Whether to cancel a company health insurance plan and let workers buy insurance on the online exchanges is an issue that arises for every small-group employer. But businesses shifting workers into the individual exchanges tend to be the very smallest.