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Cardiac surgeons and medical societies are asking the CMS to reconsider proposed payment rates for implanting Abbott's MitraClip, a device that treats a debilitating heart condition. Because the device itself costs more than $30,000, the proposed reimbursement rate would make it “prohibitive for hospitals to be able to offer this significant care so badly needed for a large majority of our patients,” Dr. Gregory Helmer, a cardiologist at the University of Minnesota, said in comments submitted to the CMS.

The Obama administration on Friday backed down on restrictions of private insurance coverage for hospice drugs under Medicare, saying the regulations were preventing some terminally ill patients from having access to medicine. Under Medicare's Part A hospital program, hospices receive daily payments for each patient but are responsible for all drugs related to a patient's terminal illness. Medicare Part D covers only prescriptions and medications for curative conditions that are unrelated to a terminal illness.

Under the rules that took effect in May, hospice patients or their families could not fill prescriptions through their Part D drug plans until first confirming that the prescriptions were not covered by hospice providers. Drugs related to palliative and comfort care are supposed to be covered under the fixed rate payments to the hospice. Medicare announced Friday that the rules would be revised so that the additional authorization would be required for only four types of medications: pain relievers, anti-nauseants, laxatives, and anti-anxiety drugs that are “nearly always” considered hospice-related.

Looking for a place where Obamacare doesn't exist? Try moving to the U.S. Territories, where the Obama administration just provided a pretty big waiver from the law's major coverage provisions. The Affordable Care Act's design dealt a pretty big problem to the territories. It required insurers there to comply with the law's major market reforms — guaranteed coverage, mandated benefits, limits on profits, etc. — without requiring residents to get coverage or providing subsidies to help them afford coverage. The territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands — have been warning...

When Ezra Klein and friends launched Vox as an "explanatory journalism" site this spring, conservative catcalls and ridicule began promptly. The project's critics have been vindicated time and again. Though the site sometimes produces solid content, it's run by hard-left ideologues who lack the capacity to present "just the facts, ma'am"-style reporting. Over the last 24 hours or so, Vox has beclowned itself on four separate occasions. First, see Mollie Hemingway's brutal take-down of co-founder Matt Yglesias' stupefyingly ignorant attack on conservatives and religious liberty. His asshattery was so acute that even a junior Vox colleague publicly rejected Yglesias', er,...

Blue Cross Blue Shield in New York is dropping out of the state’s Medicaid program due to serious financial losses, dropping 53,000 New Yorkers from coverage. Medicaid managed care patients in Erie, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Orleans, Wyoming and Allegany counties of New York will have until Oct. 31 to find new coverage. Blue Cross Blue Shield is one of the top Medicaid insurers in New York. Stephen T. Swift, the insurer’s chief financial officer, denied that the decision it driven by Obamacare and said that while the company has been trying to fix the failing Medicaid business for years, it’s just...

Halbig is one of four cases challenging subsidies the Obama administration is issuing through health-insurance Exchanges established by the federal government under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The PPACA says those subsidies are authorized only through Exchanges “established by the State.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could issue a ruling in Halbig at any time. First, a few words on statutory interpretation. Contrary to what Jost claims, neither I nor anyone else “presumes that ‘an Exchange established by the State under section 1311’ cannot include a fallback Exchange established on the state’s behalf by...

A new report from the Commonwealth Fund claims 20 million Americans “gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act as of May 1.” But a closer look at that number reveals it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. First, the authors, Dr. David Blumenthal, president of Commonwealth, and Vice President Sara Collins, get to the 20 million by adding together 1 million young adults who gained coverage under a parent’s policy, 8 million consumers who selected a marketplace plan, 5 million who purchased directly from an insurer, and 6 million who enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program....

Want to know what’s happening with Obamacare? Good luck finding out. The White House recently adopted a new approach for updating Americans on the country’s most consequential law. I call it the “needle in a haystack” method: Bury the announcement in hundreds of pages of regulations and hope no one finds it. The White House tried a test run several weeks ago. Hidden in the midst of a 436 page regulatory update, and written in pure bureaucratese, the Department of Health and Human Services asked that insurance companies limit the looming premium increases for 2015 health plans. But don’t worry,...

FEATURE: This is what happens when a reporter tries to make an OBGYN appointment with Eric Holder’s wifeI was told the OBGYN practice where the wives of two prominent Democrats are partners reserves its morning appointments for “important people.” It was an intriguing claim, especially given the fact that Foxhall OB/GYN Associates does not accept Medicaid even as the office is being used as a prop in a Democrat’s congressional campaign.I decided to investigate. Could I get a morning appointment? Was I one of the “important people”? After an awkward 15-minute conversation with the office manager, it turned out I...

Buy now, pay later. That will be the epitaph on the tombstone of the Obama administration. The Congressional Budget Office, a research outfit that justifies government spending, is warning that while deficit may appear tame now-- comparatively speaking-- the budget path we are on is unsustainable. “The extended baseline projections show a substantial imbalance in the federal budget over the long term,” says the new CBO report, “with revenues falling well short of spending. As a result, budget deficits are projected to rise steadily and, by 2039, to push federal debt held by the public up to a percentage of...

Obamacare’s emphasis on cost-benefit has apparently granted permission for the medical technocrats to conjure all kinds of healthcare rationing schemes.And the Medical Establishment is apparently playing along. From, “The Cancer Death-Panel App,” by Robert Goldberg in the NY Post: The latest innovation in cancer care isn’t a medical breakthrough but an app to ration new drugs. It’ll measure care in terms of what it costs health plans, instead of what it means for patients’ lives.That it’s being developed under the auspices of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, the world’s leading oncology association, is a grim warning about...

In a recent Politico Magazine article titled, “Let’s Talk About Death Panels,” Harold Pollack urges reviving one of the most notorious proposals that did not make it into the Obama Health Car Law – “advance planning consultations.”During the debate over Obamacare’s enactment, there was considerable controversy over a provision in an early version under which health care providers would have been paid by Medicare to discuss with their patients whether they would want life-saving medical treatment.After former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin dubbed the planning sessions “death panels,” the provision was dropped from the law ultimately enacted.As Pollack...

Back in the 1980s, when I was a good ol' liberal Democrat (sort of in the Kennedy mold), I kept hearing those Bible Thumpers in the Moral Majority bandy about a word: Secularist. What the heck was that? Nobody I knew (and everyone I knew was a person of the sort-of Left) called him or herself a "secularist."What in the world did those zealots mean by labeling me that way and pretending that I'm doing something damaging to them? I understood what was really going on: Very religious people were abnormal, and then there were the rest of us who...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Politicians here have not even figured out how yet to implement their new law requiring us to pay for everybody else’s health care, and already people are clamoring to legalize drugs that are, at the very least, hazardous to their health. The good people of Colorado and Washington state can now buy and smoke pot without violating state laws. The movement to do so is spreading among other states like a hot tropical virus through a detention facility on the Mexican border. I, for one, have never really cared one way or the other if people choose to smoke pot....

What if Obamacare subsidies disappear? This week a critical decision is expected on Halbig vs. Burwell, formerly titled Halbig vs. Sebelius. The case challenges the IRS for providing millions of dollars in Obamacare subsidies to people in 36 states through the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov. Waiting in the wings is Pruitt vs. Burwell, a case filed by the Oklahoma Attorney General that also challenges the subsidies. One or both cases could end up in the Supreme Court. Halbig plaintiffs say the law allows subsidies only through a state exchange. And because the mandate and its penalties are hinged on the existence...

CNN’s Van Jones went head to head Tuesday with Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann over the border crisis, saying the congresswoman crossed the line in scapegoating the surge of unaccompanied migrant children for crimes committed by other undocumented immigrants. “Are you scapegoating every one of these kids?” Jones asked Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, on CNN’s “Crossfire.” “Well, hold on a second. There are lines that can’t be crossed here. I’m sorry congresswoman, I’m sorry congresswoman. There are lines that can’t be crossed here.” Bachmann, who acknowledged that 57,000 children have crossed America’s southern border into the country in recent months, also...

.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 113th Congress - 2nd Session as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate Vote Summary Question: On Cloture on the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to S.2578 ) Vote Number: 228 Vote Date: July 16, 2014, 02:09 PM Required For Majority: 3/5 Vote Result: Cloture on the Motion to Proceed Rejected Measure Number: S. 2578 (Protect Women's Health From Corporate Interference Act of 2014 ) Measure Title: A bill to ensure that employers cannot interfere in their...

How would you feel if someone promised to give you a car, and then reneged on that pledge? That’s how all Americans should feel when it comes to ObamaCare -- because Barack Obama’s failed and discredited campaign promise to lower health insurance premiums has cost the average American family an amount equal to the price of many new cars. During his 2008 campaign, one of then-Senator Obama’s most audacious promises was that his health plan would reduce premiums by $2,500 for the average family. His repeatedly made his pledge on videotape; you can view those promises here. But health insurance...

<p>Chicago’s public health system is facing a massive $67 million shortfall after an early adoption of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion cost much more than expected, Crain’s Chicago Business reports.</p> <p>Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, made a deal with the Obama administration to get an early start on the health care law’s Medicaid expansion in 2012.</p>