Yesterday, the Senate passed a spending plan package to prevent the scheduled federal government shutdown scheduled for March 27, 2013. The spending package will keep the government financed to run through September 1, 2013 and now goes to the House…

The White House has just released the annual Economic Report of the President; which featured an interesting graph detailing the projected amount that Medicare spending will account for in the total GDP between 2013 and 2085. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/15/want-to-debate-medicare-costs-you-need-to-see-this-chart-first/ Based on the…

As mandated by prior federal legislation, mandatory cuts in federal spending were enacted through sequestration on March 1, 2013. The sequestration cuts will impact the Medicare fee for service fee schedule, effective for claims with dates of service of April…

As we move closer to the rollout of the health insurance exchanges, health insurance carriers are beginning to prepare their product offerings to offer either within the health insurance exchange or as a competitive product to the health insurance exchange…

Dueling legislative approaches to overhaul the Medicare physician payment  formula emerged this week. The new movement on the stubborn problem comes  as the Congressional Budget Office revised the 10-year cost of fixing it down by  more than 40%, to $138…

A component of the healthcare reform legislation mandated that primary care physicians would receive an increase in reimbursement for Medicaid primary care services rendered in 2013 and 2014. For primary care physicians, these services will increase to the Medicare rates…

Health information technology promoter, heal thyself, the American Hospital Association is telling the CMS concerning a claims processing flaw that the AHA says is preventing some physicians working with critical-access hospitals from receiving electronic health-record incentive payments under the American…