Government Affairs Featured Content news and information

Federal and state agencies are working to make it easier for veterans to move into nursing careers as the U.S. winds down its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Legislators on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of Capitol Hill are touting their early start on overhauling the Medicare physician payment system. However, those claims of progress will soon run into hard realities: No one has yet come up with a concrete plan to address the biggest...
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Last week's public unveiling of CMS' charges and reimbursements data for about 3,000 hospitals across the country painted an unflattering portrait of the dramatic and sometimes mystifying variation between hospitals treating similar patients in similar markets.
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With the Senate's gun-control legislation stalled—and mental health provisions along with it—behavioral healthcare advocates wonder whether tying the issues together is the right approach.
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Accountable care organizations in Medicare's Pioneer ACO program failed to win a one-year reprieve from having financial incentives tied to their performance on quality benchmarks.
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It was supposed to be smooth sailing now for Marilyn Tavenner to be confirmed as CMS administrator. She enjoyed a generally warm reception during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. The committee voted without dissent to move her along to the full Senate, which was expected to approve...
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Comparative effectiveness research—learning what works best in medicine—is a great idea whose time has come.
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For the first time, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS revoked certifications for electronic health-record systems, raising troubling questions about how physicians and hospitals should react if the government nixes a system they are already...
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Hospital chains, health insurers and retail pharmacy groups are likely to wind up big winners in any shakeup of the corporate tax code, while pharmaceutical companies and medical-device makers may find themselves fighting tooth and nail to keep the status quo.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week in the Myriad Genetics gene patenting case, whose outcome could have major financial consequences for healthcare providers and patients and help determine the future affordability of gene-based medical technologies and personalized medicine.
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