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Showing posts with label Years. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Years. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Evaluating the health care law two years later
GOP lawmakers see fewer choices, higher taxes, more government and less innovationSorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Health-care reform: Main issue after 2 years is, will it survive?
Two years to the day after President Obama signed it into law, the Affordable Care Act remains very much a work in progress.
Skip to next paragraphThe White House says its health-care reforms have improved the lives of millions, though the legislation’s most important provisions have yet to take effect. Detractors – a category that includes every GOP presidential hopeful – scorn Mr. Obama’s health reforms as Treasury-busting infringements on American freedoms.
Yet the most important question dealing with the ACA may be not how it’s doing, but whether it will survive. Next week the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of the law’s lynchpin requirement that individuals carry health insurance.
“What’s at stake basically is whether or not the signature domestic achievement of the Obama administration is sustained,” says Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, in an online interview on the Affordable Care Act’s future.
Obama himself did not make a big live appearance promoting the ACA’s birthday. That could be in deference to the upcoming Supreme Court arguments, or it could be a reflection of the fact that polls show US voters remain split on whether the law’s passage was a good thing.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday it is “absurd” to think that Obama is distancing himself from the health law. Carney noted that Obama’s campaign has produced a video featuring Americans who have benefited from the ACA.
And the White House itself on Friday issued a report highlighting what it called the progress produced by the legislation.
Among its assertions: 2.5 million more young adults have health insurance, thanks to an ACA requirement that they continue to be covered on parental policies; 5.1 million Medicare recipients have saved $3.1 billion on prescription drugs because of increased ACA coverage limits; and insurance firms can no longer drop policy-holders who get sick if they made a mistake on their applications.
“And thanks to health reform, all Americans will have the security to know that you don’t have to worry about losing coverage if you’re laid off or change jobs, and insurance companies are required to cover your preventive care like mammograms and other cancer screenings,” concludes the White House report.
Meanwhile, Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney blasted the Affordable Care Act on Friday.
CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley - Health care law's impact - 2 years later
President Obama signed his health insurance reform plan into law two years ago. Some of the provisions of the law have already gone into effect. Chip Reid reports on how the law is working so far.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Health panel: Pap tests needed only every 3 years
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women only need to get a Pap test once every three years to check for cervical cancer, and don't need to be screened until age 21 - even if they're sexually active earlier, according to new guidelines from a government-backed panel.
The statement from the United States Preventive Services Task Force, released on Wednesday, aligns closely with guidelines from three U.S. cancer groups that were also announced on Wednesday.
Once they hit 30, women also have the option of getting screened once every five years if they choose to do Pap tests together with human papillomavirus (HPV) testing every time, the committees agreed.
"The bottom line is, we strongly recommend screening," said Dr. Virginia Moyer, chair of the USPSTF and a pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Dallas.
The recommendation to test every three or five years is based on evidence that cervical cancer is relatively slow-growing, she said, so it's very unlikely a woman would develop advanced cancer in the few years after a negative screening.
"The women who get and die of cervical cancer are the women who aren't getting screened," Moyer told Reuters Health. "It's not the woman who hasn't had a screen in a couple years that's the problem."
Moyer's group attracted controversy late last year when it recommended against annual prostate cancer screening in men, after concluding that the possibility the tests could invite unnecessary and potentially harmful follow-up procedures outweighed their benefits.
The USPSTF's latest recommendations are based on a review of evidence on screening's success at detecting pre-cancerous lesions, as well as both physical and psychological side effects of Pap and HPV tests. Its guidelines were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The task force found a benefit for Pap tests every three years in women age 21 to 65, or every five years when Pap tests and HPV tests are done together, starting at 30.
Screen more frequently, and the possibility of women getting complications from any related procedures - such as an exam and biopsy, called a colposcopy, following an abnormal Pap - outweighs any benefit to the extra tests.
Women under 30 shouldn't be tested for HPV because the sexually transmitted infection is common in young people and often goes away on its own, without increasing the cancer risk.
Women who are older than 65 and were screened regularly in the past are also probably in the clear, unless they're at particularly high risk due to a history of precancerous lesions.
Until there's more long-term data on women who've been vaccinated against HPV, they should continue getting normal screening, according to the report.
CANCER GROUPS AGREE
The guidelines broadly agree with others released by the American Cancer Society, the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology and the American Society for Clinical Pathology. Those groups favor screening with both Pap and HPV tests every five years once women hit 30, but say every three years with Pap tests alone is also acceptable. Again, they recommend screening from age 21 to 65 in most cases.
In their report, released in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and other partner journals, the group's report estimates that without screening, 31 to 33 out of every 1,000 U.S. women would be expected to get cervical cancer in their lives. With Pap tests done every three years, that falls to five to eight per 1,000.
The relative benefit is slimmer when the tests are done more frequently, but the chance of having side effects from testing is just as high each time.
"Screening too much and too sensitively finds primarily benign infections that really would be better left unfound," said Philip Castle, head of the American Society for Clinical Pathology Institute, who worked on those guidelines.
"Doing more than what's evidence-based actually has potential harms for patients, and that shouldn't be minimized."
That includes the psychological harms of being told you have an abnormal test, he said. After that, some cervical procedures done as follow-up have been shown to increase women's chances of having a premature baby later in life.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 12,000 U.S. women get cervical cancer every year - most caused by cancerous strains of HPV.
Castle said the focus needs to be on making sure that everyone gets the basic level of screening, especially poor women who live in isolated areas.
Moyer agreed that targeting those groups is going to make the biggest difference in cutting rates of new cervical cancer cases and deaths.
"We need to get the women who have not had a Pap smear in the past five years in," she said. "The women who aren't getting screened at all, that's the tragedy." SOURCES: http://bit.ly/an7XRm and http://bit.ly/yVwIPk Annals of Internal Medicine and CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, online March 14, 2012.
(Editing by Michele Gershberg; Desking by Eric Walsh)
Thursday, March 1, 2012
$375M health care scheme went unnoticed for years
DALLAS (AP) -- The Texas doctor accused of "selling his signature" to process almost $375 million in false Medicare and Medicaid claims went unnoticed for half a decade by a fraud detection system that some critics say is broken.
Authorities say Jacques Roy and six others indicted for health care fraud certified 11,000 Medicare beneficiaries through more than 500 home health providers over five years. Those numbers would have made Roy's Medicare practice the busiest in the country. But an investigation into Roy and his business practices didn't begin until about a year ago, officials said.
The federal agency that administers Medicare has two sets of contractors: one to pay claims and another evaluating those claims for fraud. U.S. Health and Human Services investigators have found that health officials often have a hard time tracking the work of contractors that are supposed to detect Medicare fraud — estimated by some to reach $60 billion annually.
Federal officials who announced the indictment against Roy and six others in Dallas acknowledged the problems with the system. They contend they have improved data analysis and are working to move away from having to "pay and chase" offenders.
Others say Medicare is still very vulnerable to fraud.
"It's a trust-based system that is ripe for the picking by criminals," said Kirk Ogrosky, a Washington, D.C., attorney at the law firm Arnold & Porter and a former top health care prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Roy, 41, a doctor who owned Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto, Texas, faces up to 100 years in prison if he's convicted of several counts of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Six others, including the owners of three home health service agencies, are also charged.
Roy's attorney, Patrick McLain, said he had yet to review much of the evidence but Roy maintained his innocence. A detention hearing for Roy in federal court was delayed until Monday.
More than 75 of the agencies that used Roy's signature to certify claims also have had their Medicare payments suspended.
Some of those indicted alongside Roy are accused of fraudulently signing up patients or offering them cash, free groceries or food stamps to give their names and a number used to bill Medicare. Medicare patients qualify for home health care if they are confined to their homes and need care there, according to the indictment. U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana said some people supposedly eligible for home care were found working on their cars outside.
Roy is accused of signing off on paperwork for home health services and pocketing much of the fraudulent billings.
Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson described Roy's billing on Tuesday as "off the charts." But it was missed for years by Palmetto GBA, the contractor that paid the home health agencies using Roy's signature, and Health Integrity LLC, the agency tasked with catching any irregularities.
A spokesman for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, which owns Palmetto, referred questions about its fraud procedures to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Officials at Health Integrity did not return a phone message.
CMS health insurance specialist Carmen Irwin said a screening process is intended to investigate complaints, but it can be difficult to immediately pinpoint a single doctor's signature being used so often.
"We're paying a home health agency," Irwin said. "We're not necessarily looking at how many claims are for one physician because we're not necessarily paying a physician on a home health claim."
A report by the HHS inspector general's office issued in November highlights problems with the contractors charged with weeding out fraud. The contractors reported their findings in different ways and sometimes provided incomplete data, the report found. Some of the information turned out to be inaccurate. Inspectors said "the inconsistencies and lack of uniformity we identified" could prevent effective oversight.
Patrick Burns, spokesman for the advocacy group Taxpayers Against Fraud, credited HHS for hiring Peter Budetti, CMS' deputy administrator for program integrity, to upgrade its systems. But Burns said the department still had no excuse for missing obvious problems.
"You can't have 11,000 bills from a single doctor if you're the number one home health provider in the nation," Burns said. "You can't see that many patients. It's not physically possible."
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Health Net of Arizona Named #1 HMO in the State Eight Consecutive Years
Tue, Feb 28, 2012, 2:58 PM EST - U.S. Markets close in 1 hr 2 mins
Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Monday, February 6, 2012
Marathon & New Year's resolutions
Just talking about running a marathon and new year's resolutions. It's long and probably boring. Sorry.
yes, I'm aware my one tooth is stupid..damn wisdom teeth.
I say "umm" too much and can't sit still.
http://www.lauramustloseweight.com/
twitter: @lauralostweight
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/LAURAmustLOSEWEIGHT/113166492106472
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four
More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wgq0l
Hans Rosling's famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport's commentator's style to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before - using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Hans Rosling's famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport's commentator's style to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before - using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Health Spending Growth Up in Early 2011 But Trending Toward Record Lows at Year’s End
ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The January Health Sector Economic Indicators briefs released today by Altarum Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending indicate that over the first 11 months of 2011, health spending has grown at an annual rate of 4.5 percent, compared to the 3.9 percent increase for 2010, which has just been officially released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This growth was driven by high spending early in 2011 followed by a gradual, steady decline. Spending grew by only 3.6 percent in November 2011 relative to November 2010. Thus, while spending for 2011 as a whole is up, the nation will likely enter 2012 with health spending growth near the record-low levels experienced in 2009 and 2010.
Health care price inflation was 2.0 percent in November, a rate that has been steady throughout 2011, indicating the early 2011 jump in health spending can be traced to a bounce back in per capita health care utilization, which exhibited almost no growth in 2010. Health employment in December rose by 23,000 jobs, just under the 2-year average of 24,000. The health spending share of GDP was 17.8 percent in October 2011, up from 16.4 percent at the start of the recession (December 2007) but down from the all-time high of 18.2 percent in June 2011.
The complete set of briefs, providing monthly data on health care spending, prices, and employment, can be viewed at www.altarum.org/healthindicators.
“Our data build upon and extend the results issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services earlier this week and reflect the latest revisions in data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis,” said Center Director Dr. Charles Roehrig. “Hospital spending has much to do with the slowing growth trend through 2011. And while both spending and utilization jumped early in the year, they declined throughout the year to bring us to near record low growth at year’s end.”
Altarum’s Health Sector Economic Indicators briefs offer timely analysis of health sector employment, spending, and prices. To receive an email notification regarding the monthly release of Health Sector Economic Indicators, please visit http://www.altarum.org/publications-resources-health-systems-research/sign-up.
Altarum Institute (www.altarum.org) integrates objective research and client-centered consulting skills to deliver comprehensive, systems-based solutions that improve health and health care. Altarum employs more than 400 individuals and is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., with additional offices in the Washington, D.C., area; Sacramento, Calif.; Atlanta, Ga.; Portland, Maine; and San Antonio, Texas.
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four
More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wgq0l
Hans Rosling's famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport's commentator's style to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before - using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Hans Rosling's famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport's commentator's style to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before - using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Marathon & New Year's resolutions
Just talking about running a marathon and new year's resolutions. It's long and probably boring. Sorry.
yes, I'm aware my one tooth is stupid..damn wisdom teeth.
I say "umm" too much and can't sit still.
http://www.lauramustloseweight.com/
twitter: @lauralostweight
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/LAURAmustLOSEWEIGHT/113166492106472
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