Former CMS administrator Mark McClellan discussed how to spend Medicare dollars in a smarter way during an Alliance for Health Reform feature. McClellan called for a comprehensive strategy in order to achieve better health care for beneficiaries at a lower overall cost. Watch the video.
Although there has been no official pronouncement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, we think we know what next year’s spousal impoverishment thresholds will be for Medicaid long-term care applicants. The annual adjustments to the figures are based on the consumer price index for urban consumers for the September prior to the year in question, in this case September 2012, a figure that was just released. Pennsylvania attorney the results in his blog. Marshall cautions that his projections may differ slightly from CMS’s ultimate figures if the agency rounds differently, but we feel certain that the figures are…
Protecting Medicare BenefitsUnder the new health reform law, your existing Medicare-covered benefits can’t be reduced or taken away. As always, you will be able to choose your own doctors. Fighting FraudThe health care law helps stop fraud with tougher screening procedures, stronger penalties, and new technology. Thanks in part to these efforts, we recovered $4.1 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2011, the second year recoveries hit this record-breaking level. Total recoveries over the lastthree years were $10.7 billion. Prosecutions are way up, too: the number of individuals charged with fraud increased from 821 in fiscal year 2008 to 1,430 in…
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently announced they are preliminarily raising the reimbursement rate for Medicare Advantage plans by 1.6 percent in 2012. This could make the popular plans more profitable for the companies offering them, and perhaps help hold the line on premium increases. Medicare Advantage plans are privately run versions of Medicare. Subsidized by the government, the plans offer basic Medicare coverage, but with extras like vision or dental coverage – and usually at premiums lower than standard Medicare rates. According to Forbes, the 1.6% increase is about what investors and provider companies had expected. The…
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