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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Donald Berwick have unveiled the long-awaited federal rule on accountable care organizations. Here are several documents HHS has released to help make sense of the proposed regulation.
KHN’s Jordan Rau explains how the Obama administration envisions accountable care organizations, which are designed to help hospitals and doctors form new networks to coordinate patients’ care. Officials estimate that the ACOs could save Medicare up to $960 million over three years. ACOs are a feature of the new health law.
Health law advocates tend to get gloomy about the threats haunting every step along the measure’s path to implementation. As an antidote, here are ten reasons to be optimistic about the Affordable Care Act’s progress and prospects.
Having spent so much political capital on the health law’s passage, one might expect it to feature prominently in the president’s planned reelection campaign. But it will likely turn out to be the law’s opponents who are more likely to talk about it.
Virginia’s attorney general says it is hard to prejudge a constitutional case, but he says at least two cases suggest the Supreme Court could side with him.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was the lone witness at the Senate Appropriations Health subcommittee hearing today. Committee chairman Tom Harkin was adamant that the health law would not lose funding while ranking Republican Sen. Richard Shelby called the law too expensive.
Interest groups, businesses and other policy proponents are pushing to capitalize on states’ dire Medicaid shortfalls.
A recent Rand study found that in families with high-deductible plans, kids were less likely to get immunizations and adults were less likely to get cancer screenings. Not only did this seem to jeopardize the beneficiares’ health, it also called into question the cost savings.
Seriously ill patients, even when not facing death, can benefit from better pain and symptom management, care coordination and help setting goals from specially trained teams, which typically include a doctor, a nurse, a social worker and a spiritual counselor.
If eligibility went up to age 67, the federal government would save $7.6 billion but total costs would rise more than that for seniors, employers and states.
KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey and Politico Pro’s David Nather report on lawmakers’ return to Washington to wrangle over health law funding.
KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey talks with Politico Pro’s David Nather about developments on the Hill. This week: As Congress returns to Washington, funding for implementation of the health law is expected to pay a major role in the debate over funding the federal government beyond April 8 when the current continuing resolution expires. Separately, House and Senate lawmakers remain at odds over how to finance the repeal of a paperwork provision in the health law known as the “1099” that has drawn criticism from small business groups.
Today, much of the dialogue related to Medicare payment refers to the need to infuse value into the system. Confusion persists, however, regarding how values are assigned to physician services under the current Medicare payment system, as well as the impact that this process actually has on payment levels for physicians of different specialties.
Pediatric palliative care is for children who are living with very serious and complex illness. They do not have to have a life expectancy of only a few months.
Palliative care takes an interdisciplinary approach similar to hospice
The health overhaul law is spurring a major expansion of programs that will benefit ex-offenders and other indigent people in California beginning this summer.
Dr. Joanne Wolfe, of Children’s Hospital Boston, talks about her approach to helping children live with serious or life-limiting illness and how many need an interdisciplinary approach to care to make sense of the maze of medical treatment.
About 1.3 million children live with serious or life-limiting illness and many need an interdisciplinary approach to care to help their families make sense of the maze of medical treatment.
As property tax revenues have fallen, many cities and counties have been forced to cut health services.
Officials say they will revise the requirements to deal with objections raised by insurers.
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