Policy and Legislation
The number of veterans receiving VA healthcare and benefits now stands at a record 8.4 million and is projected to hit 8.6 million by 2012, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
Medicare and Medicaid: Two venerable government assistance programs designed to help individuals that would otherwise have trouble paying their medical bills. This, however, is where the similarities between the two end.
With the federal government’s Recovery Audit Contractor program in full swing, and the changes wrought by healthcare reform promising more audits on the horizon, hospital executives are all but certain that compliance budgets will need to rise in coming years.
Just about everyone agrees that the way we pay for primary care needs fixing. Under the current insurance model, doctors get paid for procedures and tests rather than for time spent with patients, which makes doctors and patients alike unhappy and increases costs.
Supporters of poison control centers say a proposed $27 million reduction in funding, part of a package of cuts announced in February by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), would close some centers and lead to higher healthcare costs.
President Barack Obama's address on the future of the nation's fiscal budget had a strong healthcare focus. This session tweet recaps the speech and Obama's plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years.
The House is set to vote Wednesday on a bill that would deny more than $15 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to administer the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which was created in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act last year.
Massachusetts’ 5 year old health reform law is the subject of fierce contention on the national stage, since it formed the foundation for the much-debated Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new program, developed under the Affordable Care Act, that's aimed at eliminating medical errors and reducing healthcare costs on a national scale.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) recently introduced a bill that they say would curtail fraud, but opponents say its value is dubious.