Competition among Medicare health plans not a cure-all
...apidly during the 1990s, when favorable government payments allowed them to charge low premiums-in many cases,...ecast to grow quickly as a result. By slowing down payments to existing Medicare+Choice plans, however, the federal government caused them to withdraw from many...Judging performance impact of IT: Don't overlook actual usage, says O.R. study
... comparing costs of expected services and expected payments from insurers, then identifying areas of cost cutting and operations improvements necessary for financial viability....Trends in private Medicare+Choice plans provide warnings for Medicare debate
...re HMOs has been unstable. Because Medicare+Choice payments to participating plans are related to overall grow... Among the reasons are Medicare's need to increase payments to attract private plans in rural areas, as well as the higher administrative costs for Medicare+Cho...A global strategy for reducing catastrophic health-care payments
...onesia. The protection of people from catastrophic payments is widely accepted as a desirable objective of hea.... The proportion of households facing catastrophic payments from out-of-pocket health expenses varied widely between countries, from less than 0.01% in Czech Re...Consumer-driven health care research findings released
...umer-driven plans, the researchers found. Employee payments are cheaper than health maintenance organizations and about the same or slightly less expensive than preferred provider organizations. Patient expenses, including pharmaceutical costs, are similar for each population. However, consumer-driven plans s...Debate on payments to potential kidney donors: Yes or no?
...bate on the medical and ethical issues surrounding payments for kidney donations. Some argue that paid donations would expand the donor pool and benefit both donor and recipient, while others emphasize ethical concerns involved in payment to donors, including donor motivation and the potential health risks to...Jan/Feb 2004 Annals of Family Medicine tip sheet
...t and Medicare + Choice graduate medical education payments were 90 percent less than baseline projections. Taken together, these findings suggest that while the financial health of teaching hospitals was undoubtedly affected by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, other forces contributed as much or more. Th...A common cleanser is cheaper and faster way to separate DNA for genetic analysis
...boric acid solution. They are entitled to royalty payments from and own equity in FasterBetterMedia, LLC, the company that is commercializing this product....National Academies news: Clinical research involving children
...on, IRBs should adopt explicit written policies on payments for research participation. It is appropriate to ...ation. But it is never acceptable to offer higher payments for enrolling children in more risky research. To broaden access to research participation among al...Extra Medicare payments for private health plans to total $2.75 billion in 2004
...new report from The Commonwealth Fund. These extra payments to Medicare Advantage plans--formerly called Medic...A) is to save Medicare money in the long term, the payments will add to Medicare's costs in 2004. The total extra payments are calculated based on enrollment at...News briefs from the journal Chest, June 2004
...estimates. In the first study to analyze employer payments for hospitalized and nonhospitalized non-Medicare patients with CAP, researchers from Washington DC, Boston, MA, and Bridgewater, NJ, analyzed data from a 1996-1998 employer administrative claims database for employees and their descendants under the...Countries need greater support and less stringent conditions if global fund goals are to be met
...ns set by the Global Fund around performance-based payments will be difficult for fund recipients and sub-recipients to meet, and that the Fund's goals may be threatened as a result. They also indicate that delays in getting funds to those who will use them have frustrated hopes of a quick scaling-up of disea...Federal policy has failed to prepare nation for possibility of bioterrorism
...ectively when doctors were given large enough cash payments to risk their own health to care for patients in pest houses and quarantined ships. Today, cash incentives are less important to doctors than protection from skyrocketing malpractice insurance costs. The Swine Flu vaccination program in the 1970s wa...One in 6 chronically ill adults skip Rx drugs due to cost
...he least likely to be able to afford out-of-pocket payments for drugs: Respondents who had incomes under $20,000 a year were more than twice as likely to be without drug coverage than those making more than $60,000 a year. In general, there were no notable differences in cost-related medication under-use acr...U-M professor to test flu shot and nasal spray flu vaccine side by side
...technology to MedImmune Inc., and receives royalty payments in addition to holding a small equity stake in the company. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is monitoring conduct of the study, which is supported by a $3.6 million, three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health. The...Some hospitals face financial upheaval under new NHS payment system
... commissioned through block contracts. Previously, payments have been based on finished consultant episodes of...ould provide a more accurate method of calculating payments than using finished consultant episodes and will get around the problem of episode inflation, they w...Report finds new model of care can improve quality, lower costs and increase physician efficiency
...rent fee-for-service reimbursement system, such as payments for e-mail consultations, chronic disease management and the introduction of quality-based physician incentive bonus payments, could lead to further improvements in compensation for family physicians practicing the New Model of care. The authors furt...Direct payments to households in poor countries could improve maternal & child health
...is week's issue of THE LANCET show how direct cash payments from government to poor families improves the take...e demand for health interventions by making direct payments to poor households contingent on them keeping up-to-date with preventive health services; however th...Stanford study questions accuracy of ads for body scans
...edlessly exposing themselves to more radiation and payments that can exceed $1,000, but there's also scarce evidence as to whether the images will actually improve their chances of a longer life. lles' team analyzed ads from nine companies that ran from November 2001 to February 2003, as well as brochu......ated federal law by conspiring to reduce and delay payments to these health professionals. CIGNA is one of a number of defendants. The APA Practice Organization, although not a party to the lawsuit, became a signatory to the settlement after engaging in the settlement talks to ensure that behavioral health is...