2018/04 - The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) finally urged Congress to end Medicare's Merit-based Incentive Payment System because it could hamper physicians' transition to advanced alternative payment models and the program's design flaws will likely not improve quality of care, according to the panel's March report to Congress. The question now - what will Medicare try next as it tries to control cost. Read more. 2018/03 - Why did we need Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in addition to insurance companies (Part 1)? What were ACO proponents thinking would happen? We know they thought ACOs would perform much better than they have. But how much better? For the full story, read more in Part 2 of this article. 2018/02 - The Health-Care Conspiracy of Silence - If the combined resources of Bezos (Amzon), Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)and Dimon (J.P. Morgan) want to reduce costs, they will need to focus on the tax exclusion. Wall Street Journal,2,8,2018. Note, this article may have access limited by a pay wall. 2018/02 - MedPAC’s Repeal And Replace MIPs Campaign Will Not End Well - The pay-for- performance (P4P) scheme imposed on the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program by an act of Congress is known as MACRA. After thirteen years, the commissioners finally agreed that P4P cannot work for multiple reasons, the most important being that the pools of patients treated by individual doctors are too small to permit accurate measurement of cost and quality. 2018/02 - Bigger is Not Always Better: How Consolidation in Health Care Hurts Patients - Patients should worry about consolidation in the health care industry. Consolidation often limits competition, and when that happens in market-based systems the result is often higher health care cost. 2018/01 - Think you know the flu? Ok, let's test your flu IQ. Click here to view the quiz. More news and ideas coming soon Skip to News for 2017 or 2019 |
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