Health News
- Most Kentucky Hospitals Will Pay Medicare Penalties Under Health Reform, One The Country's Largest; Look Them Up Here
More Kentucky hospitals are receiving penalties than bonuses in the second year of Medicare?s quality incentive programs, one of the federal health reform law?s changes designed to create financial rewards for doctors and hospitals to provide better care....
- Fiscal-cliff Deal Revives Program That Helps Rural Hospitals Dependent On Medicare; 200 In Nation, 10 In Kentucky
Even though most of the hospital industry wasn't happy with the fiscal-cliff deal that will only pay half the $30 billion needed to avoid a 27 percent Medicare fee cut for doctors, the deal gave about 200 rural hospitals, including 10 in Kentucky,...
- Lame-duck Congress Could Cut Funding For Critical Access Hospitals; More Than Two Dozen In Kentucky
Critical access hospitals, which in most states are rural facilities with fewer than 25 beds, may be under attack in the lame-duck session of Congress, former national rural-health director Wayne Myers writes for the Daily Yonder. President Obama's...
- Rural Hospital Coalition Urges Congress To Spare Medicare Programs That Shore Up Rural Health Care
A coalition of rural hospitals are lobbying Congress to keep two Medicare programs that the National Rural Health Association says are vital to keep hundreds of smaller hospitals going. The Medicare Dependent Hospital designation and the Low-Volume Hospital...
- Pat Boone Commercial About Medicare Has Many Inaccuracies
A television commerical misleads seniors into believing the federal health-care reform law will ration and deny care and contains other inaccuracies, according to FactCheck.org, a non-partisan, non-profit service based at the University of Pennsylvania....
Health News
Federal budget deal targets Medicare payments, and that means Kentucky hospitals won't be happy
Looking for a way to localize the budget deal announced by congressional negotiators last night? Call up your local hospital.
David Rogers of Politico reports that hospitals are "furious with the fact that the deal offers no relief from future cuts on Medicare providers ? and even extends these annual 2 percent reductions into 2022 and 2023." The cuts would be a continuation of those imposed by the "sequester" legislation that took effect when Congress failed to reach an anticipated deal on the federal deficit and taxes.
The $28 billion extension of the cuts, almost a third of the $85 billion total, "helps to dress up the package with tens of billions in savings, but at a time when hospital networks are already feeling the impact of health-care reform, there is a fear that Congress is not seeing the long term impact of these budget assumptions," Rogers writes.
Most rural hospitals are already facing Medicare cuts because reform law reduces the extra payments made to hospitals that have large percentages of Medicare patients. Those hospitals are disproportionately rural.
The deal also includes "a provision that aims to prevent fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled," Modern Healthcare reports. "According to a summary, the provision allows states to delay paying for suspect claims as long as the delay does not harm a beneficiary's access to care. It also would allow states to collect medical child support in cases where health insurance is available from a non-custodial parent and allows Medicaid to recoup costs from beneficiary-liability settlements."
Why cut Medicare payments? "Congressional staffers were not prepared to talk about the cuts on the record, but said it boiled down to Medicare providers being the least painful target. Democrats, they noted, have not traditionally been strong supporters of preserving the payments to providers, being much more concerned with maintaining funds for beneficiaries. Republicans saw extending for two years cuts that are already in the law for mandatory programs as a simple way to add deficit reduction to the replacement of sequestration for discretionary programs," Michael McAuliff reports on The Huffington Post.
David Rogers of Politico reports that hospitals are "furious with the fact that the deal offers no relief from future cuts on Medicare providers ? and even extends these annual 2 percent reductions into 2022 and 2023." The cuts would be a continuation of those imposed by the "sequester" legislation that took effect when Congress failed to reach an anticipated deal on the federal deficit and taxes.
The $28 billion extension of the cuts, almost a third of the $85 billion total, "helps to dress up the package with tens of billions in savings, but at a time when hospital networks are already feeling the impact of health-care reform, there is a fear that Congress is not seeing the long term impact of these budget assumptions," Rogers writes.
Most rural hospitals are already facing Medicare cuts because reform law reduces the extra payments made to hospitals that have large percentages of Medicare patients. Those hospitals are disproportionately rural.
The deal also includes "a provision that aims to prevent fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled," Modern Healthcare reports. "According to a summary, the provision allows states to delay paying for suspect claims as long as the delay does not harm a beneficiary's access to care. It also would allow states to collect medical child support in cases where health insurance is available from a non-custodial parent and allows Medicaid to recoup costs from beneficiary-liability settlements."
Why cut Medicare payments? "Congressional staffers were not prepared to talk about the cuts on the record, but said it boiled down to Medicare providers being the least painful target. Democrats, they noted, have not traditionally been strong supporters of preserving the payments to providers, being much more concerned with maintaining funds for beneficiaries. Republicans saw extending for two years cuts that are already in the law for mandatory programs as a simple way to add deficit reduction to the replacement of sequestration for discretionary programs," Michael McAuliff reports on The Huffington Post.
- Most Kentucky Hospitals Will Pay Medicare Penalties Under Health Reform, One The Country's Largest; Look Them Up Here
More Kentucky hospitals are receiving penalties than bonuses in the second year of Medicare?s quality incentive programs, one of the federal health reform law?s changes designed to create financial rewards for doctors and hospitals to provide better care....
- Fiscal-cliff Deal Revives Program That Helps Rural Hospitals Dependent On Medicare; 200 In Nation, 10 In Kentucky
Even though most of the hospital industry wasn't happy with the fiscal-cliff deal that will only pay half the $30 billion needed to avoid a 27 percent Medicare fee cut for doctors, the deal gave about 200 rural hospitals, including 10 in Kentucky,...
- Lame-duck Congress Could Cut Funding For Critical Access Hospitals; More Than Two Dozen In Kentucky
Critical access hospitals, which in most states are rural facilities with fewer than 25 beds, may be under attack in the lame-duck session of Congress, former national rural-health director Wayne Myers writes for the Daily Yonder. President Obama's...
- Rural Hospital Coalition Urges Congress To Spare Medicare Programs That Shore Up Rural Health Care
A coalition of rural hospitals are lobbying Congress to keep two Medicare programs that the National Rural Health Association says are vital to keep hundreds of smaller hospitals going. The Medicare Dependent Hospital designation and the Low-Volume Hospital...
- Pat Boone Commercial About Medicare Has Many Inaccuracies
A television commerical misleads seniors into believing the federal health-care reform law will ration and deny care and contains other inaccuracies, according to FactCheck.org, a non-partisan, non-profit service based at the University of Pennsylvania....