Policy and Legislation

We have a unique opportunity in this country to reduce healthcare costs and improve care at the same time.

The original intent of the Sustainable Growth Rate was noble, says a newly released white paper by MedeAnalytics, but the SGR problem has become infected and needs a cure.

The nation's uninsured population grew to 49.9 million people in 2010 according to US Census figures, an increase of more than 900,000 from 2009.

States overwhelmingly rely on managed care plans for their Medicaid beneficiaries but may not be prepared to scale up for the expected increase in enrollees under health reform.

The wild attacks on Social Security by Republican presidential candidates including Rick Perry’s famous characterization of the program as “a Ponzi scheme” are amusing, but are a serious distraction from the real fiscal issues facing the country.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with several key initial partners launched Million Hearts, an initiative announced Tuesday that aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years.

Increasingly, questions are being raised about the overtesting of older patients, part of a growing skepticism about the widespread practice of routine screening for cancer and other ailments of people in their 70s, 80s and even 90s.

Kaiser Health News has an interesting piece in which it quotes the answers of six health care system “experts” to what happens if the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is found unconstitutional.

At the beginning of August, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued its final rule updating Medicare inpatient payment policies and rates for hospitals in fiscal year 2012, and some observers were surprised by the results.

All healthcare spending in the United States is projected to grow at an annual average rate of 5.8 percent for the period 2010 through 2020, according to a report released in late July by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.