Talk of HHS' controversial mandate requiring employers to include contraceptive services in their employee health plans has quieted down, but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius indicated Tuesday that the administration is continuing the conversation.
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If anything is clear about the contraception issue that erupted in the past month, it's that the matter is far from over—even though the preventive services rule from HHS is final.
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HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius weighed in for the first time publicly this week on an ongoing battle between hospitals in Massachusetts' and those in at least 19 other states.
Sebelius told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required her to change Medicare's reimbursement of employee wages at all hospitals in Massachusetts to match the rate it pays for those at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. The wage match to a 19-bed hospital located in one of the wealthiest localities in the nation had the effect of increasing Medicare wage reimbursements for all state hospitals by $275 million annually.
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It's Valentine's Day, and no doubt retiring Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona was feeling the love at the American Medical Association's advocacy conference in Washington.
Kyl, the conference's early morning speaker Tuesday, talked much about the Medicare doc-fix as lawmakers still work to find a solution—which he said could come as early as today.
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An analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the implications of proposals to raise Medicare beneficiary contributions by increasing premiums.
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A House GOP lawmaker on Wednesday sounded open to the idea of using unspent war funds as a way to pay for a long-term fix to Medicare's contentious sustainable growth rate formula.
Earlier Wednesday, the House-Senate negotiating committee responsible for devising long-term solutions to a middle-class payroll tax holiday, unemployment insurance, the SGR, and extensions for certain Medicare programs met for the second time. Some committee members during and after the meeting highlighted an earlier-proposed idea of using potential spending reductions from Overseas Contingency Operations funds to pay for a long-term SGR fix. Those funds support national security operations such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in which U.S. involvement is ending.
There was no estimate of how much money might be available from the OCO funds. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a 10-year fix of the physician-payment formula would cost $300 billion.
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Annual Congressional Budget Office projections issued Tuesday received widespread attention for the conclusion that federal healthcare spending will more than double in the coming decade. But less-discussed was another projection that insolvency will arrive in 2022 for Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which pays hospitals and providers of post-acute-care services under Medicare Part A.
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February got off to a strong start for healthcare policy in Washington Wednesday, as lawmakers planned to discuss the contentious physician payment formula issue, welcome the Food and Drug Administration chief for a prescription drug hearing, and vote to repeal another provision of the health reform law.
Members of the House-Senate conference committee responsible for finding long-term answers to a middle-class payroll tax holiday, unemployment insurance for some 5 million Americans, and the complicated way Medicare reimburses the nation's doctors, were scheduled to meet for four hours to negotiate on Wednesday. In the end, they met for three hours instead of four and plan to resume deliberations at 10 a.m. Thursday.
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