In a recent report by New Orleans Times-Picayune, HHS secretary Mike Leavitt met up with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and other policy makers last week. The meeting was held to discuss possible changes to the state’s Medicaid program and other issues. It’s been eighteen months since the state rejected Leavitt’s plan to reorganize safety net funding.
The meeting dealt with three key issues:
a) Settling the claims that the federal government had actually overpaid Louisiana $600 million for Medicaid.
b) To change the Medicaid program into an HMO-style system where beneficiaries would be free to opt for a managed care plan as well as use the local clinics.
c) To reach a decision on the amount to be demanded as federal reimbursement to the state for the damage done to the Charity Hospital as a consequence of Hurricane Katrina.
In the campaigns leading up to the final election day, both Barack Obama and John McCain are giving due importance to “healthcare reforms”. With fast rising health care costs, this has become an issue not just for them but for those running the healthcare system as well. With the elections inching closer, ABL (Adaptive Business Leaders Organization) carried out a survey amongst its California-based Healthcare members, most of whom are health industry leaders. The survey questioned them about some of the glaring issues of the day being faced by the presidential nominees, federal and state legislators and the voters.
The survey covered a wide span of top-level executives who run insurance companies, hospitals, medical groups, healthcare information and medical technology, government agencies, biotech, home health and professional healthcare service firms. Mimi Grant, the ABL President said that with the projected spending on healthcare for 2009 deemed at $2.5 trillion which is 16% of the GDP, the task before the candidates is to effectively ‘fix’ this problem. Their decisions shall influence voters in their roles as patients, tax-payers as well as employees. Read more…
In an opinion piece published in the New York Times, Tyler Cowen a professor of economics at the George Mason University has debated on length about the ‘financial crisis’ US is currently facing. He said that much of it is due to the spending on entitlement programs and the situation is set to become worse as health care costs rise and the aged population increases.
Cowen suggests implementation of means testing where full benefits are given only to the really needy while payment cuts are made to everybody else as a possible solution. He says that it is a better way of allocating benefits and thereby reducing needless spending on entitlement programs. Cowen also recommends the expansion of Medicaid while making it an absolute federal program rather than one which is partly funded by the states. He also calls in for limiting the growth of Medicare as limited resources would be more efficient in allocating health care subsidies to the low income groups, young or old. Read more…
H.R. 6506, Improving Children’s Doctor Access Act of 2008 was introduced by U.S. Representative Charles W. Boustany, Jr., (MD, and R-Southwest Louisiana) in a bid to promote states to report and measure the problems low-income group children in S-CHIP face while trying to access medical care from doctors. This move is also meant to ensure that these underprivileged children are given top-priority in the states’ enrollment efforts.
Boustany said that he felt proud to support S-CHIP and Louisiana’s LaCHIP. He said that by ensuring easy access to doctors for children, we could reduce health care costs and also shorten the waiting lines in emergency rooms in hospitals all across Southwest Louisiana. He added that the success of the program is the surest way to ensure that the taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly. At least 68000 children from the low-income group Louisiana remained eligible but were not listed in LaCHIP. Read more…
In a recent development, George Bush’s veto of the bill to put a stop to the cuts in doctor’s payments from Medicare (insurance scheme for the disabled and seniors funded by the government), was thwarted by the US Congress. The Senate voted 70 to 26 and the House of Representatives voted 383 to 41, clearly overriding the White House veto which requires a two-third majority in both houses.
The reduction in doctor’s payments was planned in order to balance the spending targets that were not attained. This move which would have come into effect at the beginning of this month was thought unwise by the Democrats as well as many Republicans. The Congress instead voted for a reduction in the refund made to insurance companies that give services via Medicare. Read more…
The Republican Presidential nominee, Senator John McCain promised on Monday that he vouches to balance the federal budget by 2013 if he becomes the next US President. He aims to bringing about this reform through changes in the entitlement programs.
The McCain campaign released a policy paper on Monday saying that the balancing of the budget can only be brought about through a successful reform of the expenditure on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. However, the policy paper did not give an in-depth analysis of how it plans to accomplish this feat. Also mentioned in the paper was a demand for a one-year freeze in domestic spending. This would be subject to annual appropriations and facilitate a comprehensive review of the situation. The paper proposed that this measure would freeze overall spending growth at 2.4% annually. This remains a matter of deep speculation as the federal spending growth rate has been recorded to be growing at an average of more than 6% per year since the last five years. Read more…
The National Association for the Support of Long Term Care (NASL) and the American Health Care Association (AHCA) were all praise for Senator Marc Baucus (D-MT). His urge to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to keep the exception process to Medicare Part B therapy caps earned him much appreciation from the Long Term Care Leaders.
Bruce Yarwood, President and CEO of AHCA thanked the Senator for his role in the fight to protect access to important rehabilitative services for seniors. He added that on the behalf of all Medicare beneficiaries who are looked after by AHCA members, he would like to repeat the Senator’s call for CMS to holdup implementation of the burdensome therapy caps. Peter Clendenin, Executive Vice President of NASL stated that over 700,000 Medicare beneficiaries will exceed their Part B OP therapy limit this year and it is of utmost importance that the exception process be extended otherwise these people will be deprived of essential care that they deserve and need. Read more…
In a recent development, the Washington Post reports that CMS has issued an additional rule that requires hospice providers who are Medicare participants to put into effect a quality assessment and improvement system. This rule shall be implemented beginning December and involves patient participation in hospices to help settle upon treatment plans and the required improvement in areas of the hospice that seem deficient. Eventually the data shall be made public but for the beginning it shall be provided to Medicare and hospice organizers only. It will be akin to the way the federal government shares information on hospitals, home health agencies and nursing homes.
The number of Americans utilizing hospice services has increased by over two times since 1996 to an approximate count of 1.3 million in 2006.From $3 billion spent by Medicare on hospice care in 2000, the amount has increased to $10 billion in 2007.But experts say that hospice services are still not being utilized to the maximum. Malene Davis, the president and CEO of Capital Hospice attributed this underutilization to the popular misconception that hospices are for cancer patients only.
The Centre for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed new rules under which Medical beneficiaries in rural areas will be able to access health care through Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) that have been designed to meet their specific needs.
Speaking on the issue, acting CMS administrator, Kerry Weems said that the changes that have been proposed to the rural health clinic program are meant to ensure good quality health services to Medicare beneficiaries in rural and previously underserved areas. Along with regular physicians, certain non physicians too shall aid in the program. The aim is to provide best value services from RHCs.