Chiropractic Breakthrough

Medicare will soon track spending on millions of individual beneficiaries, reward hospitals that hold down costs and penalize those whose patients prove most expensive. Hospitals could be held accountable not only for the cost of the care they provide, but also for the cost of services performed by doctors and other health care providers in the 90 days after a Medicare patient leaves the hospital.

Researchers reported in JAMA this week that no improvement in health outcomes was measured in Medicare beneficiaries residing in areas with the highest level of adult primary care physicians per population.

Medicaid recipients and health care providers cannot sue state officials to challenge cuts in Medicaid payments, even if such cuts compromise access to health care for poor people, the Obama administration has told the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the court brief filed Thursday.

Less than 24 hours after their surprising victory in the race for a vacant House seat, Democrats forced Senate Republicans on Wednesday to vote yes or no on a bill that would reshape Medicare, signaling their intent to use the issue as a blunt instrument against Republicans through the 2012 election.

Democratic leaders are terming this week’s Senate vote on the House-passed Ryan budget, including its proposal to revamp Medicare, a “defining issue.” Meanwhile, some Republican senators have announced that they won’t back the plan.

Most Americans say they don’t believe Medicare has to be cut to balance the federal budget, and ditto for Social Security, a new poll shows. The Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that arguments for overhauling the massive benefit programs to pare government debt have failed to sway the public

Despite all of the bashing by conservative commentators and politicians — and the predictions of doom for national health care reform — the program Mitt Romney signed into law as governor has been a success. The real lesson from Massachusetts is that health care reform can work, and the national law should work as well or even better.

Despite opposition from insurers, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule stipulating that health insurance premium increases greater than 10 percent will trigger extra regulatory scrutiny.

Seizing on a political opportunity, the Senate’s top Democrat, Harry Reid, told USA TODAY on Wednesday that he will schedule a vote next week in an effort to tie Senate Republicans to a House GOP plan to dramatically revamp the popular Medicare health care program.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the number of emergency departments has been declining for the past two decades. Hospital ERs, particularly those serving the urban poor, are closing at an alarming rate even as emergency visits are rising,