Medicare Prepares Rule To Penalize Hospitals With High Readmission Rates
The federal health care program also wants to pay less to hospitals with higher-than-average costs for patient care.
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Within a few weeks of a shutdown of Medicare and Medicaid money, health care providers could be in financial trouble. No one knows how to plan for it.
Earlier in July, Jonathan Cohn followed the House Budget Committee’s hearings on the heatlh law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board. The experience inspired him to offer this reminder of what it is;, how it will work; and why it is essential to controlling Medicare costs.
KHN’s “Insuring Your Health” columnist Michelle Andrews talks with Jackie Judd about convenient ways consumers are getting health care: House calls, workplace clinics and free-standing emergency rooms. And, most of the time, insurers will cover the visit.
Internet long-term care placement services are the cyberspace era’s quick fix solution for many Americans seeking non-nursing home institutional care for their aging parents or relatives. But their expertise in navigating this bewildering world of assisted living is, at best, a hit-or-miss proposition.
When a company reports that its health costs have increased by an average of less than 2 percent per year over the past decade, it makes for an interesting case study.
New estimates from Medicare’s actuaries find the nation’s health spending will grow by 5.8 percent a year through 2020, compared to 5.7 percent without the overhaul.
Only 20 percent of people believe consumer protections will get better under the law.
Neither the Boehner nor the Reid plans include cuts to Medicare or Medicaid. KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey talks with Jackie Judd about why that happened and what could bring these entitlements back into the deficit-reduction conversation.
Some Democrats are backing a “tax” on prescription drugs that would increase Medicare drug plan premiums by as much as 40 percent. Those lawmaker wouldn’t describe their plan that way, of course, but that would be the effect of their plat to require drug companies to pay Medicaid-style rebates to Medicare.