Posts Tagged ‘Doctors’


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  • Tick Tock: Medicare Payment Cuts for Docs Due to Start Monday

    Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 10:02 | Comments Off

    The clock is running out before a 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors kicks in. Plans to block the reductions have gotten hung up in Congress.

    In response, the AMA is telling its members what they can do about the lower payments, including closing their doors to new Medicare patients, CNN reports. “To our physicians, we are providing information on their Medicare participation options, including how to remove themselves from the Medicare program,” AMA President James Rohack told the ..read more

  • The Obama Plan, Day 2: Pay for Delay, Biologics, CBO Score

    Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 02:37 | Comments Off

    As the dust settles on the White House announcement yesterday of its health-care overhaul, here are some further details worthy of note in the proposal:

    Pay for delay would go away. The Federal Trade Commission would get power to block deals where a generic maker delays bringing a cheaper copycat drug to market in return for something of value from the branded maker. CEOs of branded pharma companies also would be required to certify to the accuracy of any of any ..read more

  • Hey, Docs: When Do You Fire a Patient?

    Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 01:48 | Comments Off

    Doctors have a fair bit of freedom in deciding whether to take on a new patient. But once they do, ethics and state licensing rules limit the circumstances when they can drop the patient from their practice, the WSJ’s Melinda Beck explains in her column today.

    “You cannot abandon!” a former AMA official wrote to Beck, explaining that a doctor needs to give a patient a chance to find another doctor before discontinuing treatment.

    In general, docs can fire patients who consistently ..read more

  • How Much Will Medicare Spending Rise in the Coming Decade?

    Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 08:26 | Comments Off

    The CBO budget report released today says the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending during the next decade “will be somewhat slower than the average rate seen over the past 10 years.”

    Sounds too good to be true — and it almost certainly is. As is standard operating procedure for the CBO, its cost estimates build in savings that are planned under current law. In the case of Medicare, CBO’s calculation of a slowdown in Medicare growth includes a substantial 21% ..read more

  • Meteorite Crashes Into Doctors’ Office, Lands in Exam Room

    Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 02:57 | Comments Off

    A meteorite crashed through the roof of a family practice in Loudon, Va., last week and landed on the floor of an exam room. No one was hurt.

    (Insert joke here about how the sky is falling for primary-care docs.)

    Staff at the office heard a boom at around 5:30 in the afternoon last Monday. Then they saw that the floor of an empty exam room was littered with wood plaster, insulation — and three chunks of smooth stone that together ..read more

  • Hey, Docs: Walgreens Also Says Medicaid Doesn’t Pay Enough

    Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 06:04 | Comments Off

    Walgreens is threatening to stop filling Medicaid prescriptions at 64 of its 121 pharmacies in Washington state because of state cuts in payments.

    Walgreens, the biggest drug-store chain in the country, has been down this road before. It threatened to pull out of Medicaid programs last year before settlements were reached in Delaware and in an earlier dust-up in Washington state.

    This time, the chain says it is losing money on 95% of the brand-name drugs it dispenses to Medicaid patients ..read more

  • Harvard-Affiliated Hospitals Limit Top Docs’ Industry Ties

    Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 00:29 | Comments Off

    Sorry, one more New Year’s story to get out of the way: Top doctors at Mass. General and Brigham & Women’s — two of the most prestigious hospitals in the country — have to limit their financial ties to the drug and device industries under rules that kicked in on the first of the year.

    When senior physicians at the hospitals serve as directors on corporate boards, they will no longer be allowed to accept payment in the form of stock ..read more

  • Senate Bill: Reactions from Doctors, Insurers, Business, Etc.

    Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 01:24 | Comments Off

    The Senate’s vote on the health-care bill this morning set off an avalanche of responses from key interest groups. The short version: The AMA, drug industry and AARP backed the bill; health insurers and the Chamber of Commerce did not.

    Here are some highlights culled from our inbox; links to the complete statements are included for the statements we could find online.

    AHIP, the health insurance trade group:

    Health plans support legislative changes that would provide guaranteed access to all Americans, with no ..read more

  • AMA, Hospitals Back Senate Health Bill; Insurers Still Opposed

    Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 08:11 | Comments Off

    The AMA came out in favor of the Senate health-care bill today. The support comes just after the Senate hammered out a major compromise that means the bill is almost certain to pass.

    A few weeks back, the AMA sent a letter to Harry Reid, outlining the provisions it supported and opposed. At least one of the provisions the group had a problem with — the tax on elective cosmetic surgery — has been dropped in the latest iteration of the ..read more

  • Medicare Payments to Docs: Here Comes the Two-Month Patch

    Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 10:38 | Comments Off

    All year, Congress has been trying to figure out what to do about the 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors that’s set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2010. The latest legislative maneuver would block the cut — but only for two months.

    That short-term patch is tucked inside a big defense spending bill the House passed today.

    Astute readers of the Health Blog will recall that the House already passed a bill that would get rid of the Medicare payment ..read more