News tagged with 'Medicare'

Rick Scott whose Columbia/HCA was charged with Medicare and Medicaid fraud and fined $1.7 billion, is leading the race to become governor of Florida, according to the latest poll.

About 20% of the nation's 16,000 nursing homes are providing low quality care, finds a survey. Consistently, the worst care was provided by for-profit nursing home corporations and chains.

A six-member Florida jury will decide if it was unwarranted and unreasonable to deport a brain-injured Guatemalan man who was hit by a drunk driver while working in the U.S. The hospital spent more than $1 million on his care then chartered a private plane to return him, where he lives in a remote one-room home with his elderly mother. 

The only agreement in recent years has been that health care costs are not sustainable and cannot continue to rise.  Look to efficiency to be the buzzword as the Obama administration meets with a wide range of players on how to trim $2 trillion from the U.S. health care system over the next 10 years. 

Under the nursing home rating system, which is to go into effect today, the nation’s 16,000 nursing homes would receive stars based on state inspections, staffing levels, quality assessment such as the number of residents with pressure sores and even the cracks in the walls.

Medicaid has paid more than $200 million since 2004 for unapproved drugs. These drugs pose a public health concern and many have been linked to several of deaths. 2008 data is not yet available, but unapproved drugs are still being sold.

More than half of Americans undergoing angioplasty to open their arteries are not having a recommended cardiac stress test in advance. That means the procedures are being performed without first determining who will benefit and who will not. 

Medicaid will no longer reimburse hospitals for the extra cost of treating patients who are injured due to their own mistakes. For decades hospitals have been reimbursed for their own mistakes and the cost to correct them. But now, the federal government is tired of doctors and hospitals profiting from their mistakes.

Starting October 1, 2008 Medicare will no longer pay hospitals for additional care associated with 11 types of hospital-related conditions. Medicare's no-pay list has been updated from eight to eleven types of medical errors and infections.

A Medicare bill opposed by the White House won final congressional approval on Wednesday, with the help of Sen. Edward Kennedy who returned to the Senate for the first time since having brain surgery.