House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa demanded all documents and communications between the IRS and President Barack Obama's White House after the healthcare overhaul law was signed into law in March 2010, in a letter released on Wednesday. Issa has challenged the Obama administration's authority to administer the healthcare law in states that are refusing to cooperate. The IRS is charged with distributing health insurance tax credits through the state exchanges. Issa argues that federally-created exchanges, set up in the resisting states, cannot deliver the tax credits.
Medicare Advantage is the private alternative to the traditional insurance program for seniors. It covers 11.7 million Americans. Some argue that it's less expensive than the public programs. Others say it's more expensive. It would be very hard for both of these things to be true. James Capretta and Yuval Levin made the case this week that Medicare Advantage plans are less expensive, citing an Aug. 1 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That research looks at what would happen if we implemented the Ryan-Wyden Medicare reforms (which are pretty similar to Romney's proposals) right away.
Research published in the journal Health Services Research found a small but measurable increase of quality in treatment of inpatients with acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia at hospitals transitioning to EHRs in line with Stage 1 Meaningful Use requirements. But facilities saw a decrease of 0.9 to 1 percentage point for those conditions when moving beyond the 2011 requirements for Stage 1. The changes are more noticeable at hospitals with baseline quality scores in the lowest quartile.
Based on data collected from hospitals in three states, black men who had their prostates removed were more likely to need blood transfusions, stay in the hospital longer and die while hospitalized compared to white men. They also had lower quality of care, the research suggested. Compared to whites, black men were 27 percent less likely to have their surgery at a hospital that routinely removes prostates and 33 percent less likely to be seen by a surgeon experienced in the procedure. Dr. Daniel Barocas is the study's lead author and an assistant professor of urologic surgery at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
New York's get-tough approach with WellCare is part of a package of measures—some sticks, some carrots—that are helping the state get improved results from its private Medicaid plans. In 2009, the latest year for which figures are available, New York’s Medicaid plans scored higher than those of California, Florida, and Illinois on a range of healthcare indicators, including access to primary and ambulatory care, breast cancer screening, and cholesterol control among diabetics.
U.S. Attorney Bill Killian announced Thursday that his office has reached a settlement with Memorial Health Care System, Inc. and Memorial Hixson Hospital (formerly known as Memorial North Park Hospital) in which Memorial agrees to pay $1,278,579 to settle alleged violations of the federal False Claims Act and other federal laws and regulations. The settlement agreement alleges that, beginning as early as January 2003, Memorial entered into a series of financial arrangements with certain physicians and physician groups through which it provided financial benefits intended to induce physicians to refer patients to Memorial facilities.