THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2011
Why ACOs Won’t Work
First, I think Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are a great idea. Just like I thought HMOs were a good idea in 1988 and I thought IPAs were a good idea in 1994.
The whole notion of making providers accountable for balancing cost, medical necessity, appropriateness of care, and quality just has to be the answer.
But here’s the problem with ACOs: They are a tool in a big tool box of care and cost management tools but, like all of the other tools over the years like HMOs and IPAs, they won’t be used as they were intended because everybody—providers and insurers—can make more money in the existing so far limitless fee-for-service system.
The whole notion of making providers accountable for balancing cost, medical necessity, appropriateness of care, and quality just has to be the answer.
But here’s the problem with ACOs: They are a tool in a big tool box of care and cost management tools but, like all of the other tools over the years like HMOs and IPAs, they won’t be used as they were intended because everybody—providers and insurers—can make more money in the existing so far limitless fee-for-service system.
Republicans pushing to revamp Medicare could find themselves out of office
Obama administration cracking down on health care fraud
Strike forces rounding up hundreds in targeted cities
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has been aggressively cracking down on health care fraud, bringing criminal cases against doctors, nurses, hospitals, equipment suppliers and others in a major effort to curb abuses in huge federal programs that have long been vulnerable to a host of schemes.
Read more: http://newsok.com/obama-administration-cracking-down-on-health-care-fraud/article/3550491#ixzz1J1r8TEjb
http://newsok.com/obama-administration-cracking-down-on-health-care-fraud/article/3550491
Abortion Opponents Use Health Law to Put Restrictions in Private Insurance
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
WASHINGTON — As more states begin setting up health care exchanges for individuals to buy insurance under the new health care law, abortion opponents are using the opportunity to try to restrict abortion coverage in private insurance plans.
Most Americans with employer-based health insurance currently have coverage for abortion, according to theGuttmacher Institute, an organization that researches reproductive health and rights — a fact that few people seemed to know until the health care debate last year.
The Women’s Health Initiative and the Body Politic
By TARA PARKER-POPE
In 1898, German doctors fed fresh cow ovaries to a young woman suffering from severe hot flashes after having her ovaries removed. It was a milestone of sorts in women’s medicine, leading to crude hormone treatments and eventually commercially prepared drugs to relieve the symptoms of menopause.
It was also the beginning of a seemingly endless controversy about the safety and necessity of drug treatments for women at the end of their reproductive years.
By the 1960s, pharmaceutical companies and doctors were promoting hormones as a way for women to stay “feminine forever,” even as scientists and women’s health activists argued that more study was needed to assess the risks of the drugs, including cancer. They also warned that menopause should not be “medicalized” or treated like a disease.
Republican Medicare Plan Could Shape 2012 Races
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON — Just four months into their new majority, House Republicans face a potentially defining Medicare vote this week that is sure to become a centerpiece of Democratic efforts to recapture the House in 2012 and spill into the presidential and Senate campaigns as well.
Republicans acknowledge that the vote is risky, and party strategists have warned House leaders about the dangers, aides said. But Republicans are calculating that the political ground has shifted, making the public, concerned about the mounting national debt, receptive to proposals to rein in costs by reshaping the program.
Screening Prostates at Any Age
By GINA KOLATA
When, if ever, are people just too old to benefit from cancer screening?
The question keeps arising and has never been satisfactorily answered. Now it has come up again, in the context of a provocative new study on the popular P.S.A. test for prostate cancer. The paper, published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, finds that men in their 70s are being screened at nearly twice the rate of men in their 50s — and men ages 80 to 85 are being screened as often as those 30 years younger.
“That is mind-boggling,” said the lead author, Dr. Scott E. Eggener, a University of Chicago urologist. “What we were hoping was that young, healthy men who were most likely to benefit would be screened at higher rates and that screening would tail off in older men.”
Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare privatization plan increases costs, budget office says
The Republican congressman's proposal to privatize Medicare would mean a dramatic hike in U.S. healthcare costs for the elderly, an independent analysis finds. Seniors would pay almost double — more than $12,510 a year.
By Noam N. Levey, Washington Bureau
6:03 PM PDT, April 7, 2011
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