It's not just Democrats who may view opposition to proposed Medicare cuts in a budget deal as a potentially winning issue. Hospitals will soon jump into the deficit fray with an ad (PDF) to run in a couple inside-the-beltway publications over the next three weeks. The ad calls for Congress to look elsewhere for savings as it considers ways to reduce historic and growing budget deficits.
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Offering a high-level view of the federal government's healthcare quality initiatives to the nation's emergency physicians, Dr. Carolyn Clancy emphasized patient-centered care as the major theme of last year's health reform law.
Clancy—who ranked third in Modern Healthcare's 2011 list of 50 Post Powerful Physician Executives—is the director of HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. On Tuesday in Washington, she told attendees at the American College of Emergency Physicians legislative and advocacy conference that while policymakers understand healthcare needs to be improved, they “don't precisely have the right answer” on how to achieve that improvement.
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After reading a White House blog about waivers from the Affordable Care Act's annual-limit provisions, I still can't decide if Richard Sorian helped to clarify HHS' process to grant these temporary reprieves—or if he just made the agency look defensive.
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Online privacy and security are important issues to the general public, and that makes them a big deal to Washington pols and federal officials. So it was a little curious to see the lack of any response by the Obama administration's health IT leadership team to damning inspector general reports on security failings.
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It wasn't a surprise when Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), issued a statement Tuesday reproving House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for comments Boehner made in support of Medicare means-testing to the Economic Club of New York. What is surprising is that more Democrats—especially those in leadership positions—haven't released similar or harsher criticisms of the Ohio congressman's remarks.
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Republicans were scrambling this week to defend their proposed revamp of Medicare as part of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) deficit-reduction plan included in the House-passed budget. Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have recently sought to leverage perceived public hostility to the Republican plan, which would create insurance “premium support” or “vouchers” for future Medicare beneficiaries, to go on the offensive.
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Negative provider reactions to proposed rules for accountable care organizations released March 31 have left CMS officials defensive and promising that the final version “will be better.”
In a recent interview with Modern Healthcare, CMS Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick described those regulations as a series of “dials and levers” that officials will continue to adjust to make ACOs “plausible for all sorts of different potential sponsors throughout the country.”
“This is a proposed rule,” Berwick emphasized. “We took our best shot at trying to figure out where to set those dials and levers.”
Berwick said the public comment period on the proposed rules, which runs through June 6, will help CMS understand how the proposed ACO design will impact various healthcare providers.
“And I'm sure the final rule will be better than the proposed rule because we'll benefit from all of that input,” he said.
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