Policy and Legislation
Congress has approved the repeal of a provision in the Affordable Care Act that would have required small businesses, including physicians, to file an IRS 1099 form starting in 2012 for each vendor purchase of $600 or more.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued its proposed update for Medicare payment policies and rates for hospitals in fiscal year 2012, and as always, its not great news for providers.
Adverse events cost the healthcare industry billions of dollars. According to a 2010 report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, hospital-acquired sepsis and pneumonia in the United States caused more than 48,000 deaths and cost more than $8 billion to treat in a single year.
In an April 13 televised speech, President Barack Obama outlined his plan for reducing the federal deficit and cutting Medicare costs. Unlike the GOP plan, he said, his plan would "use a scalpel, not the machete."
As the administrative burdens associated with Medicare pile up, some doctors are growing frustrated and walking away from the program or limiting the number of Medicare patients they see.
The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee is looking at ways to move beyond the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, the current method of paying Medicare physicians.
The GOP has unveiled separate bills to repeal 'maintenance of effort' requirements for Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Programs - an action they say is necessary to help states balance their budgets in the face of ballooning healthcare costs.
More than 76 percent of hospitals participating in the National Hospital Preparedness Program met 90 percent or more of all program measures for all-hazards preparedness in 2009, according to a report released today by the Department of Health and Human Services' Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.
California's Department of Managed Health Care has deemed a May 1 increase for 120,000 members of Anthem Blue Cross "unreasonable," but doesn't have the power to block it.
EMD Serono, an affiliate of German drug maker Merck, has agreed to pay $44.3 million to settle a lawsuit alleging false claims submissions to Medicare and Medicaid for the multiple sclerosis drug Rebif.