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Next year, doctors and hospitals will no longer get paid according to the fee for services model. They will get a fixed salary according to how well patients do. We will see the equivalent of patient report cards. Personalized care is out, government one-size fits all healthcare is in. The more tests, scans, surgeries that hospitals and doctors do, the less they will make. What could possibly go wrong? It will have a devastating effect on patients’ access to care. Patients who come back for the same problem will be included in the one-time bulk rate. Beginning next year, Medicare,...

House Republicans are considering a bill this week that delays the enforcement of ObamaCare's individual mandate penalties for five years, and uses the savings to prevent a cut in Medicare doctor payments for 10 years. The two ideas are likely to be combined into a single bill: the Sustainable Growth Rate Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act, H.R. 4015. That bill repeals cuts to physician payments, and allows for small increases over 10 years.

Words matter. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period,” President Obama said during a speech to the American Medical Association in June 2009. Honoring your commitments is the cornerstone of trust in our leaders. The American people won’t accept illusions or misdirection’s. That’s why its troubling that because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, Medicare will be cut by $1.05 trillion, 6.3 million Americans have lost their healthcare coverage since its implementation and millions more stand...

Starting Jan. 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will begin slashing 14 percent of their Home Health Care Prospective Payment Program budget, driving small home health-care providers out of business and potentially affecting millions of poor, elderly citizens in need of physical rehabilitation. The cuts — which are being made to fund Obamacare — will slash the homecare budget 3.5 percent every year for the next four. “By CMS’s own calculation, 40 percent or nearly 5,000 home health companies — mainly small businesses — will experience a “net loss” in revenue due to the cuts and go...

Remember those Medicare cuts that the Democrats and the White House used to make Obamacare appear budget-neutral on paper? The ones that Republicans somewhat hypocritically railed against during the 2010 election cycle? Well, that didn’t make the cuts any less real. So add 14 million more people that Obama lied to — er, “misspoke” to — with his famous “you can keep it” promise...

Nearly four in 10 seniors worry ObamaCare will cause them to lose doctors they like, despite President Obama's repeated promise to the contrary, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll. That translates into nearly 16 million people age 65 and over. Their concerns appear to be justified. Many seniors are, in fact, already losing access to their doc tors, and more than half a million are losing access to plans they liked this year, as $200 billion in ObamaCare-mandated cuts to the popular Medicare Advantage program start to take effect. Earlier this month, seniors learned that UnitedHealth (UNH) is dropping thousands...

Retired chemist Edward Schokowitz was incredulous when he received a letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey early last month saying his Medicare Advantage Plan, which had no premium, would be eliminated next year.“They took all the senior citizens and threw us out of the plan. They now want to give us the same plan for $153 [per month],” he told the Daily Caller. “The President said you can’t be kicked out of your plan. He lies.”Schokowitz is one of many Medicare beneficiaries now learning that — like Americans who buy insurance on the individual market —...

Full Title: Special Deal: The shadowy cartel of doctors that controls Medicare On the last week of April earlier this year, a small committee of doctors met quietly in a midsized ballroom at the Renaissance Hotel in Chicago. There was an anesthesiologist, an ophthalmologist, a radiologist, and so on—thirty-one in all, each representing their own medical specialty society, each a heavy hitter in his or her own field. The meeting was convened, as always, by the American Medical Association. Since 1992, the AMA has summoned this same committee three times a year. It’s called the Specialty Society Relative Value Scale...

If allowed to go into effect, a March 1 notice from HHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) will eliminate Medicare payments for tests and referrals ordered by physicians not enrolled in the Medicare program, as of May 1. "Because of Medicare's increasingly costly and restrictive rules placed on doctors, many Medicare-eligible patients are receiving medical care from physicians not enrolled in the program," states Jane M. Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). "This looming change by HHS will deprive the patients of benefits for blood tests, x-rays, and specialist consultations—benefits for...

More doctors are telling their older patients they'll no longer accept Medicare. Likewise, poorer patients on Medicaid are receiving similar news. East Texas News visited with one Nacogdoches doctor putting the brakes on Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements and the hardship the decision is causing for patients. Dr. Kelly Moon is a primary care physician. She has a lower percentage of older patients, so she can afford to place this sign announcing she will no longer accept government insurance. "It's very bad, and I feel horrible for my patients, and it's a very unfortunate situation," Moon said. The situation is that doctors are...

There are 600,000 physicians in America who care for the 48 million seniors on Medicare. Of the $716 billion that the Affordable Care Act cuts from the program over the next ten years, the largest chunk—$415 billion—comes from slashing Medicare’s reimbursement rates to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes. This significant reduction in fees is driving many doctors to stop accepting new Medicare patients, making it harder for seniors to gain access to needed care. Here are a few of their stories. Paul Wertsch is a primary physician in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1977, he and his two partners invested $500,000 of...