GAO challenges CMS on cost of removing Medicare SSNs
Which number is larger, 800 million or 13 billion? The answer is obvious. So are why these numbers meaningful for healthcare? According to the Department of Justice, the financial costs associated with identify theft totaled an estimated $13.3 billion. Between 2009 and 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported more than 400 incidents of health data breaches affecting the protected health information of 500 or more patients, information that often includes a prime target of identify thieves — that, Social Security numbers (SSNs). According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the cost to remove SSNs from Medicare cards in one of three ways numbers close to $800 million.
Source: ehrintelligence.com
Video: Medicare Fraud Costs American’s $90 Billon a Year 2/17/2011
Veronique de Rugy: The Facts about the Government's Medicare Cost Projections
This chart compares Congressional Budget Office long-term projections of the debt held by the public from 2010 with long-term projections calculated in 2007. In 2007, the CBO projected that the debt held by the public would surpass 60 percent in 2023. Note that this long-term projection incorporated policy changes that were deemed likely at the time. Using the same methodology last year, the CBO projected that the debt will exceed 60 percent of GDP by the end of 2010. In the three years between projections, the debt milestone has accelerated by 13 years. This unforeseen acceleration is worth careful consideration; as the government consumes more credit, less will be available to the private sector.
Source: reason.com
Social Security goes up, but so do Medicare premiums
To P. D’Antonio, NOT EVERY PENSION PLAN IS THE SAME. MINE WAS FREE WITH THE AIRLINE THROUGH THE UNION. I also suffer with many Esophagus problems and I truly believe all the chemicals I worked with and ulcer in Esophagus from stress from the “Good Old Boys in the Union”. My husband gets a great PENSION as he made very little which co-incided with the city plan as all figured out to a tee as he paid in big monies for his Pension pretty much $200.00 to $400.00 in later years as made more but when he worked overtime and slept all wknd there and removed snow they took $600.00 of his overtime including the reg. month payments for his Pension. You young people know nothing or some older. Every pension plan is different!!! My friend hates it too but her company gives BONUS checks each year which she got a lump sum of $15,000 and others at that same company up to $34,000 per year. I worked for not much for 46 yrs. my hubby got NO Bonuses for Viet Nam. He will not get any Social Security for 30 yrs with City as part of the Pension Plan as he did not pay in unless worked other jobs. He has worked other jobs now for 16 yrs plus his 30 for city. Plus his 4 yrs Marine service plus 6 yrs reserves. He is 65 and still working for Health Ins. Him and I never saw Bonuses!!!!! I don’t get low free flying as quit early because of ulcer and many other throat problems working with so very many chemicals. Get your facts straight about Pensions!!!! I never heard of a 401K plan til 1991 in my whole life and neither did my husband. If they were around earlier must have been for the rich or high up people at jobs! Republicans wanted all the Soc. Sec. to INVEST, remember then we had the stockmarket fall with the Godlman Sacs and Wallstreet. My husband’s Pension almost went broke and had to be transferred to another pension which were still not sure of! If Republicans would of had their way all the Social Security would have been gone then. LOL Stockbroker’s would have taken a big share of soc. sec. How soon we forget Republicans went on and on about people invest their own and let stock people take over Soc. Sec. to invest and they would have lost all of it a long time ago!!! Every company has their perks and some are more generous than others!!!!! LOL
Source: nbcnews.com
2013 Medicare Drug Plan Premiums Will Be Similar To This Year — On Average
“Some folks won’t have access to plans at this price,” said Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a consumer advocacy group. “The bigger issue is that seniors have too much choice, or too much non-meaningful choice.” Seniors, he said, “tend to go for lower premiums, which look more affordable, but they can be surprised when their drug isn’t in the formulary.”
Source: kaiserhealthnews.org
Mitt Romney on Health Care
Deep Reads: The Daily Beast: The Answer Is Unleashing Markets, Not Government Our divide is fundamental: Republicans believe healthcare can be best guided by consumers, physicians and markets; Democrats believe government would do better. Some Democrats would have government buy healthcare for us; set the rates for doctors, hospitals and medicines; and decide what medical treatment we would be entitled to receive for each illness. If you liked the HMOs of the ’80s, you’d love government-run healthcare … But government can’t match consumers and markets when it comes to lowering cost, improving quality, and boosting productivity … The right answer for healthcare is to apply more market force, not less (Mitt Romney, 05/01/09). Boston Globe: Preston’s Blueprint Long before Mitt Romney unveiled his ambitious plan to provide health insurance to everyone in Massachusetts, he hired Ron Preston — “the best health and human services secretary in the nation,” as the governor once called him – to work on a plan to do in the Commonwealth what no other state has been able to do. Romney took the wraps off his vision in November 2004, and Preston, apparently no longer the best health and human services secretary in the nation, was nudged out by the next May. Preston and a tight group from inside and outside the administration spent 6 months answering Romney’s basic question: Could it be done? Their answer: Yes, Massachusetts could insure all its residents. But how the Preston working group planned to do it differed, in critical aspects, from what Romney eventually proposed (Bailey, 1/11/06). FactCheck.org: ‘Romneycare’ Facts and Falsehoods As the 2012 presidential campaign gets under way in just a few months (believe it or not), we expect to see an increasing number of attacks on so-called “RomneyCare.” So as part primer and part preemptive fact-checking, this article is our attempt to set the record straight (Robertson, 5/25/11). Boston Globe: Romney And Healthcare: In the Thick of History The former governor has faced a fusillade from the right for the plan they call RomneyCare. But a look back at the birth of the Massachusetts law shows why he can’t, and won’t, back away. It was an amazing political feat, and no one’s role was bigger than his (Mooney, 5/30/11). Boston Globe: ‘RomneyCare’ — A Revolution that Basically Worked The former governor’s health plan is a policy piñata among his rivals. But a detailed Globe review finds the overhaul has achieved its main goals without devastating state finances. The remaining worry is future costs (Mooney, 6/26/11). New York Times: Ted Kennedy Helped Shape Mitt Romney’s Career, and Still Haunts It When Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation in April 2006 requiring most Massachusetts residents to have health coverage, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy stood by his side, beaming like a proud father. They were onstage at historic Faneuil Hall in Boston, a setting that had a special resonance for the two (Stolberg, 3/24/12). The Real Romney (book): Pride in RomneyCare Shows in Official Portrait In 2008, for Romney’s official portrait, he had been clear about the image he wanted to convey for posterity. He would be sitting on his desk in front of an American flag, next to symbols of two things he held dear. The first was a photo of his wife, the center of his personal universe. The second was the Massachusetts healthcare law, represented by an official-looking document with a caduceus — often used as a symbol of the medical profession — embossed in gold on the cover. Romney was deeply proud of the law and felt strongly that it should figure prominently in the portrait, which would hang alongside others dating back to the Colonial era. He wanted to be remembered for that (Kranish and Helman, p. 261-262, 1/17/12). NPR: Romney On the Health Insurance Mandate In 2006, as Massachusetts’ governor, he talked about the state’s mandate in decidedly non-ideological terms: “We’re going to say, folks, if you can afford healthcare, then gosh, you’d better go get it; otherwise, you’re just passing on your expenses to someone else. That’s not Republican; that’s not Democratic; that’s not libertarian; that’s just wrong” (Liasson, 5/25/12). New York Times: Jonathan Gruber, Healthcare’s Mr. Mandate After Massachusetts, California came calling. So did Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming. They all wanted Jonathan Gruber, a numbers wizard at M.I.T., to help them figure out how to fix their healthcare systems, just as he had helped Mitt Romney overhaul health insurance when he was the Massachusetts governor. Then came the call in 2008 from President-elect Obama’s transition team, the one that officially turned this stay-at-home economics professor into Mr. Mandate (Rampell, 3/28/12). Los Angeles Times: Romney’s Healthcare Plan May Be More Revolutionary than Obama’s As he pushes to “repeal and replace” President Obama’s healthcare law, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has turned to proposals that could alter the way hundreds of millions of Americans get their medical insurance. In public, Romney has only sketched the outlines of a plan, and aides have declined to answer questions about the details. But his public statements and interviews with advisers make clear that Romney has embraced a strategy that in crucial ways is more revolutionary — and potentially more disruptive — than the law Obama signed 2 years ago (Levey, 4/23/12). Boston Globe: Mitt Romney’s Plan May Undercut Mass. Law A proposal by Mitt Romney to curtail Medicaid spending would dramatically undercut the way the Massachusetts healthcare overhaul law has achieved near universal coverage. Although the specifics of Romney’s plan are not public, his overall intent — to rein in how much Medicaid money Washington sends to the states — would probably cripple the Massachusetts healthcare law, which was made possible by an expansion of Medicaid funding. If Romney succeeds, the result could have an ironic twist: the governor who ushered in the country’s first universal health plan would, as president, put in place policies that could undermine one of his signature achievements (Jan, 5/4/12). ### This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Source: physiciansnews.com
DownWithTyranny!: Paul Ryan’s Quest To Destroy Medicare And Social Security Is Coming To A Head
Buzz is heating up again that Romney’s hail Mary pass in his failing presidential campaign may be to pick Ayn Rand fanatic Paul Ryan as his running mate. Right wing propagandist Byron York reminds GOP zombies that “The heart of Ryan’s plan– controlling the terrifying growth of federal spending by transforming Medicare– isn’t at the heart of Romney’s agenda.” Romney doesn’t emphasize overhauling Medicare in his stump speech, either. Creating jobs, getting the economy moving again– those are the points he hits over and over and over. Yes, Romney talks about bringing federal spending under control. But Ryan-like plans to curb entitlement spending? That’s just not something Romney emphasizes. That would likely change if Romney picks Ryan. Should that happen, the Ryan plan would immediately become a far bigger part of the Romney campaign that it is now– it would, in fact, move to the top of the Romney agenda. That’s something that unnerves a number of Republicans. They respect Ryan and the work he has done, but they worry that putting him on the presidential ticket would brand the Republican party as the party of austerity at a time when more voters are more concerned about job creation than budget cutting. Of course, Democrats are going to bash Romney on spending cuts and Medicare reform regardless of what he does. Since that is inevitable, say Ryan supporters, why not put the plan’s most articulate defender, Paul Ryan himself, on the ticket? One reason would be that Mitt Romney has shown no inclination to make the Ryan plan the centerpiece of his campaign. Perhaps that’s what he’s planning– perhaps he planned all along to run on jobs until mid-August, only to pivot to entitlement reform for the rest of the campaign. But that’s not likely. Probably not but… all those Republican “jobs” plans do virtually nothing about creating jobs. That’s not just my opinion; that’s what most economists say. For almost a year, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have plugged their jobs package at every opportunity. They regularly bring it up at press events, during floor speeches and in statements in response to just about anything related to the economy. Boehner even carries around in his jacket pocket a 4-by-8-inch card that lists off their jobs bills, and he encourages his members to flash their cards at campaign events. …The GOP jobs package, which currently includes 32 bills, represents Republicans’ hallmark legislative accomplishment over the past two years. In the months ahead of the election, they will lean on it as proof of two things: that they are not the do-nothing obstructionists that Democrats paint them as, and that they are working hard to address the 8.2 percent unemployment rate. But there’s a problem with their jobs bills: They don’t create jobs. At least, they won’t any time soon. In interviews conducted by The Huffington Post with five economists, most said the GOP jobs package would have no meaningful impact on job creation in the near term. Some said it was not likely to do much in the long term, either. “A lot of these things are laughable in terms of a jobs plan that would produce noticeable improvements across the country in the availability of employment in the next four or five years,” said Gary Burtless, a senior economist at Brookings. “Even in the long run, if they have any effect all, it would be extremely marginal, relative to the jobs deficit we currently have.” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, agreed that the bills would have almost no effect on job creation in the short term, though he was slightly more optimistic about their long-term prospects. “These kind of changes will matter over a period of three to five years,” Zandi said. “It takes that long before businesses can digest changes and respond to them.” He noted, though, that legislation as narrowly targeted as the Republican package is unlikely to do much for real job creation. “For it to show up in a meaningful way in the natural economy, you can make specific changes that could affect a specific industry or a few companies, but it’s not going to make a big difference in terms of the monthly job numbers,” Zandi said. “It takes some very significant changes across lots of different industries to really make a big difference.” Carl Riccadonna, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, said some of the bills could create jobs, but that they would amount to more of an afterthought in terms of achieving broader policy goals. “They are very narrowly targeted, and it gives the impression that maybe some of this is special interest really pursuing these, not really taking a macro view but a very, very micro focus in what the impact would be,” Riccadonna said. For most of the bills in the package, “jobs are a second- or third-order effect, not the main priority.” At the heart of the GOP jobs package is a push for rolling back regulations– and gutting environmental laws that regulate clean air and water– to spur job growth. The House Republican Conference website makes the argument that deregulation will “remove onerous federal regulations that are redundant, harmful to small businesses, and impede private sector investment and job creation.” But economists told the Huffington Post that regulation has had a minimal impact on the unemployment rate. Their claim is backed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that just under 16,000 jobs, or 0.4 percent, were lost because of “government regulations/intervention.” …Ultimately, each economist was clear on one point: The GOP package is far more political than practical. “It’s game playing to try to pretend like they’re doing something,” said Jesse Rothstein, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s silly season, and so they know they have to put up something that has the label ‘job creation’ on it, whether or not it would work.” Over the weekend I listened to the National Venture Capital Association trying to disassociate themselves from Romney and to point out that the kind of predatory vulture capitalism that he practiced– private equity– was never about creating jobs. “We’re the white hats,” explained their spokesperson, leaving to the imagination what color Romney’s hat was, but making it clear that venture capitalists create jobs by supporting fledgling startups whereas Romney’s business model was about destroying businesses (and jobs) in order to create profits for investors. His model defines sociopath and was, clearly, a cancer on society. Polling shows that only about a third of the public approves the Ryan budget (i.e., Republicans), In fact, polling shows that Obama’s lead over Romney doubles when voters learn of the Ryan budget. Educating voters about the budget will have a big impact in swing states around the country. By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney would be playing right into the Democrats’ ideal scenario. As Rob Zerban, the Democrat running for the House seat Ryan currently holds, told his supporters last week, “The more voters learn about Ryan’s plans to kill Medicare, slash funding for Pell Grants and Stafford Loans and gut veterans’ benefits, the more they realize that Paul Ryan and the GOP are only representing their wealthy donors, not the average American… Paul Ryan’s budget is an albatross for the GOP, and educating voters on the budget is a winning strategy for us.” Meanwhile, the DCCC still hasn’t put Rob Zerban in their Red-to-Blue program, although he’s raised more money– without their help (to put it in as kindly a way as possible)– than most of the candidates they are backing. And, as we’ve discussed before, Rob in running in a district Obama won in 2010. So why won’t “ex”-Blue Dog Steve Israel allow the DCCC to get behind Zerban? Israel hates progressives and is more interested in packing the House Democratic caucus with corrupt transactional hacks and conservatives like himself than in regaining the majority for his party, a virtual impossibility under his hideously flawed strategy of trying to resuscitate the Blue Dogs and New Dem conservative coalition that were nearly wiped out– by the Democratic grassroots voters– in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010. Zerban is a Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt populist Democrats who stands up for working families, not for Wall Street and not for the kinds of corporate special interests that have helped Israel and his careerist cronies gain and maintain power, The DCCC isn’t interested in helping candidates like that, no matter how badly the alternative impacts policy. Ryan, for example, is the biggest threat to Social Security since the program first passed during the Great Depression. That House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) supports the privatization of Social Security is well known. Ryan proposed $1.2 trillion in cuts and the partial privatization of Social Security upon taking control of the Budget Committee in 2011, and he has constantly warned about the supposed doom facing the program if major reforms aren’t enacted immediately. But Ryan’s attempts to gut the most popular entitlement program in America go back quite a few years, as Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker profile of the conservative hero makes clear. Ryan’s fight against Social Security has been ongoing since he pushed President George W. Bush to privatize the program in 2005: Under Ryan’s initial version, American workers would be able to invest about half of their payroll taxes, which fund Social Security, in private accounts. As a plan to reduce government debt, it made no sense. It simply took money from one part of the budget and spent it on private accounts, at a cost of two trillion dollars in transition expenses. But, as an ideological statement about the proper relationship between individuals and the federal government, Ryan’s plan was clear. [...] Two weeks after Bush’s Inauguration, Ryan gave a speech at Cato asserting that Social Security was no longer the third rail of American politics. He toured his district with a PowerPoint presentation and invited news crews to document how Republicans could challenge Democrats on a sacrosanct policy issue and live to tell about it. Bush ultimately went with a slightly less radical proposal that still failed in the Senate and caused Republicans massive losses in the 2006 mid-term elections. But Ryan, undeterred, told Lizza that the failure of privatization was simply due to marketing, not that the plan was unpopular: What some might interpret as the failure of an unpopular idea Ryan insisted was mostly a communications problem. “The Administration did a bad job of selling it,” he told me. Bush had campaigned on national-security issues, only to pitch Social Security reform after reelection. “And… thud,” Ryan said. “You’ve got to prepare the country for these things. You can’t just spring it on them after you win.” The lesson: “Don’t let the engineers run the marketing department.” Aided by the mainstream media’s spreading of the lie that Social Security is “going bankrupt,” Ryan has been able to thrust Social Security “reform” back onto the table, and it was embraced during the primary by virtually every Republican candidate. What Ryan and his Republican colleagues continue to ignore, however, is how easy fixing Social Security would be if they weren’t so insistent on protecting the wealthiest Americans from a single tax increase. By lifting the payroll tax cap that currently limits Social Security contributions to the first $110,100 in income, Congress could ensure the program’s solvency for the next 75 years– longer than the program has been in existence to this point. That wouldn’t fit Ryan’s belief that the government doesn’t have a role in helping protect the financial security of the American people. But it would prevent millions of Americans from losing the much of their retirement savings, as they would have during the 2008 financial crisis had Ryan’s plan to privatize Social Security become law. That’s why Blue America has a special Stop Paul Ryan Page– and why we’ve had it for years. Steve Israel– another one not wearing a white hat– will never help unseat Paul Ryan. But, please, don’t let that stop YOU.
Source: blogspot.com
The panel reviewed studies of how rTMS compared to other treatments for depression. It also considered an analysis that estimated that 24 insurers in six New England states currently spend $1.7 billion a year on patients with treatment-resistant depression. Using a complex formula, the report estimated that adding rTMS to a treatment protocol would add between 21 cents and 59 cents per month for every health plan enrollee in private insurance and Medicaid, or $19 million to $53 million a year.
In what scenarios do these excess payments occur you might ask? Errors in medical billing and medical coding due to inadequate training in Medicare procedures has been found to be the most common reason for these overpayments in the first place. This could range from a medical coder documenting services in an outpatient setting as a non-facility service, to someone not fully understanding the intricacies of same-day readmissions. Or the source could be much before the medical billing and coding processes start, like in situations when the front-office fails to properly verify the eligibility of a patient to receive certain treatments like end-stage renal disease care etc. It could also be someone from the medical equipment team, who instead of taking a faulty device to its OEM or original equipment manufacturer, advises his medical billing team to bill Medicare.
Medicare health insurance gain programs just like a PPO as well as The hmo are methods to obtain advantages of Medicare health insurance whereas Medigap guidelines only product the benefits of Medicare health insurance coverage. Even though, sold plus advertised by way of confidential corporations, Medigap guidelines have to stick to legal guidelines made by Federal and state federal government.
Your Medicare Supplement resource. Medicare, Dental & Medicare Part D options. Please use this website to search and review information. Compare rates, apply, find a doctor, hospital or dentist, you can do it all right here. Or better yet simply call me anytime, I’ll be happy to answer all of your questions. Thanks … John