Points of Interest
April 11, 2014
What was the real Medicare waste? Not sharing data sooner
Federal
officials said they hope Wednesday's "unprecedented" disclosure of data about $77 billion in Medicare
reimbursements to 880,000 physicians and other providers in 2012
will lead to reporters and researchers uncovering fraud, waste and unwarranted
variations in treatment that could lead to significant cost savings in the
future.
Those officials
also said it was "impossible" to quantify how much taxpayer money
could have been saved in the past if such Medicare data hadn't been kept secret
for 35 years, and instead had been available for independent analysis.
"I'm sure
that there are savings that would have been achievable," said Chris Holt,
director of health-care policy for the American Action Forum. "I'm sure
that there were savings that weren't realized, but I'm not sure how much that
has been."
But Cristina
Boccuti, who analyzes Medicare policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, said
that having data about how much the government was paying individual doctors in
past decades could have led to big cost savings, particularly if such data were
publicly available in the 2000s, and if Medicare authorities had adjusted their
policies in response.
Obamacare's most controversial feature—the
requirement that nearly all Americans have health coverage this year or pay a
fine—may not have been a big motivator for the more than 7 million people who
signed up for new insurance plans, several analysts said a week after the close
of open enrollment.
Obama nominates
OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to lead HHS
President Barack Obama today officially nominated Sylvia Mathews
Burwell, currently director of the Office of Management and Budget, as his next
HHS secretary, saying in a Rose Garden announcement that he “could choose no
manager as expert, as competent.”
High drug prices skewing payouts to some physicians
A close inspection of Medicare's physician payment data reveals that many of the highest-paying codes for eye doctors relate to the use of a drug for macular degeneration that costs $2,000 a dose.
Despite the delayed ICD-10 compliance deadline, health care
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