Medicare

See the following -

Officials Spent Just Two Weeks Testing HealthCare.gov Prior To Launching It

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | October 24, 2013

Contractors that helped develop the Obama Administration’s troubled online health insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov told lawmakers on Thursday they wish they’d had more time to test the site before launch but denied any ongoing problems with their portions of the site. Read More »

"Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act" Provides Renewal For The Movement

Don McCanne | Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) | February 15, 2013

Congressman John Conyers has reintroduced his bill for a single payer national health program: H.R. 676, "Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act." Some perspective is warranted. Read More »

$18 For A Baby Aspirin? Hospitals Hike Costs For Everyday Drugs For Some Patients

Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | April 30, 2012

Sudden chest pains landed Diane Zachor in a Duluth, Minn., hospital overnight, but weeks later she had another shock – a $442 bill for the same everyday drugs she also takes at home, including more than a half dozen common medicines to control diabetes, heart problems and high cholesterol. Read More »

$375 Billion Wasted On Billing And Health Insurance-Related Paperwork Annually: Study

Press Release | Physicians for a National Health Program | January 12, 2015

Medical billing paperwork and insurance-related red tape cost the U.S. economy approximately $471 billion in 2012, 80 percent of which is waste due to the inefficiency of the nation’s complex, multi-payer way of financing care, a group of researchers say. The researchers – physicians and health policy researchers with ties to the University of California, San Francisco, the City University of New York School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School – note that a simplified, single-payer system of financing health care similar to Canada’s or the U.S. Medicare program could result in savings of approximately $375 billion annually, or more than $1 trillion over three years.

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'Blue Button' Technology May Give You More Control Of Your Health Information

Bill Toland | Siox City Journal | June 28, 2013

Get a group of tech-savvy physicians and electronic medical records experts in a room, ask them about the way forward, and the subject of the Blue Button is sure to come up. Read More »

'Get the Insurance Companies the Hell Out' of Healthcare System

Jon Queally | Common Dreams | October 25, 2016

Right-wingers like Charles Krauthammer don't "think anybody should buy it"—and too many Democrats actually don't want to talk about it—but that doesn't mean advocates for a single-payer or 'Medicare for All' healthcare system aren't responding to news about rising insurance premiums for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with renewed demands. Just weeks away from national elections, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made financial and political news late Monday by announcing the average premiums for plans under the ACA (aka Obamacare) will rise significantly for many consumers in 2017...

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1 In 10 Doctor Practices Flee Medicare To Concierge Medicine

Bruce Japsen | Forbes | January 30, 2013

As Medicare whacks away at what doctors are paid and health insurers move away from paying fees for service to bundled payments, more physicians who own their own practices will start direct pay or concierge medicine in the next one to three years. Read More »

11 Things About Health Care I'm Dying to Redesign

The folks at Ideo recently published 19 Things We're Dying to Redesign, covering a wide range of products, services, and systems, both big and small.  It's very thought-provoking, but only one of them addressed a health care topic (oddly enough, incontinence). If there is an area of our lives that badly needs redesign, it would be health care. And not redesigning it sometimes literally results in us dying. Let's start with a clean slate. I'm not as ambitious as Ideo, in terms of the breadth or number of topics, but here are 11 things about heath care that I'm dying to redesign...

15 Blockchain Whitepapers Awarded Winners of US Department of Health and Human Services Challenge

Luke Parker | Brave New Coin | August 30, 2016

A challenge held by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)  to encourage Blockchain use in the Health Information Technology field resulted in 15 winning whitepapers. The Department’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) first announced the “Use of Blockchain in Health IT and Health-Related Research” challenge in July...

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18 Hospitals That Closed In 2013

Bob Herman | Becker's Hospital Review | January 2, 2014

Throughout 2013, 18 acute-care hospitals closed their doors, and there are many others — such as Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., Vidant Pungo Hospital in Belhaven, N.C., Lake Shore Health Care Center in Irving, N.Y., and Williamson (W.Va.) Memorial Hospital, to name a few — that could follow suit this year. Read More »

2 Winners Named For ONC's Blue Button App Challenges

Mary Mosquera | mHIMSS | October 11, 2012

A California-based developer of mobile technology tools and a Virginia-based provider of communications solutions for care providers have been named the winners of two Blue Button app competitions sponsored by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Read More »

2013: The Tipping Point In Health Care

Paul H. Keckley | Deloitte | January 3, 2012

In the health care industry, 2013 will be a huge year: the perfect storm of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the fiscal cliff and long-term deficit reduction, consumer dissatisfaction, and higher costs mean it’s a year when results matter.

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2014 MU Incentive Program Off To A Relatively Slow Start

Diana Manos | Government HealthIT | April 9, 2014

As of the end of February, there were 458,137 total participants – up from 448,750 in January – from all versions of the EHR incentive program, according to Elizabeth Myers, head of policy and outreach at the Office of eHealth Standards and Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the Tuesday HIT Policy Committee meeting. 

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2015: End Of The Road For Meaningful Use?

Frank Irving | Medical Practice Insider | January 5, 2015

You can lead doctors to EHR systems — but you can't make them attest.  A poll of nearly 2,000 physicians, in fact, reveals that 55 percent do not plan to attest for meaningful use Stage 2 in 2015...

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27,000 providers expected for CMS electronic documentation pilot by year’s end

Marla Durben Hirsch | Fierce EMR | August 31, 2011

Providers who opt to send their medical documentation electronically to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services contractors will need to do some shopping. Read More »