Federal prosecutors brought a record number of cases of health care fraud in fiscal 2011, a new report said, with Florida and its huge Medicare-dependent population remaining the epicenter of fraudulent claims.
Gooz News
People in high-deductible plans short-change prevention
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Paul Ryan yesterday unveiled an updated proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Their plan, unlike Ryan’s original plan, would be optional and wouldn’t cap federal contributions at inflationary growth (which, in Ryan’s original non-voluntary plan, would have left seniors picking up two-thirds of the tab). It would cap the growth in federal spending at GDP+1%, according to published reports.
The Latest advisory committee stumbles at FDA
(Addendum: The advisory committee discussed in this post narrowly approved keeping drospirenone-containing oral contraceptives on the market).
Is the Food and Drug Administration stacking the deck against a negative decision at tomorrow’s safety hearing for oral contraceptives that contain drospirenone, include Bayer’s Yasmin? Or is it laying the groundwork to combat lawsuits by Bayer should the agency decide to pull the drug, which the FDA has already warned increases the risk of blood clots?
Financial crimes against science
The U.S. attorney in Minneapolis settled a kickback case with device maker Medtronic yesterday, with the company agreeing to pay $23.5 million without admitting it paid doctors $1,000 to $2,000 for choosing its brand of defibrillator.
Sebelius (Obama) to FDA (Hamburg): Shut up on Plan B
The Food and Drug Administration said the science backs Teva’s application to make the "morning after" pill available to all women, no matter what age, as an over-the-counter medication without a prescription.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, in a letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg today, said no dice.
Wyden covers Ryan’s retreat on Medicare vouchers
Last spring, the House passed on a straight party-line vote Rep. Paul Ryan’s mandatory Medicare privatization plan, which the Congressional Budget Office said would force future seniors to pick up two-thirds of their health care costs with no guarantee that those costs would come down.
Anti-RUC suit challenges process for setting doc pay scales
Whither CMS? That’s the issue raised by Brian Klepper and David Kibbe in their post on the Health Affairs website this morning.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services faces a November deadline for answering a complaint by six Georgia physicians that claims the American Medical Association’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Conflict-free panels are possible & necessary
Post holiday blues: Who will pay for the doc pay fix?
The following appeared first in The Fiscal Times:
Holiday cheer and bipartisan bonhomie are still possible on Capitol Hill.
Is the era of off-label promotion over?
The question arises in the wake of yesterday’s news that the government and GlaxoSmithKline settled a string of lawsuits charging the company with illegal promotion of prescription drugs for unapproved uses. The $3 billion settlement represented just a small fraction of the sales to patients for whom the off-label prescriptions either caused harm or did little or no good.
Price transparency is nice, but all-payer is better
For all the talk about consumer driven medicine (it’s the basis for Republican plans to turn Medicare into a voucher program), why doesn’t anyone talk about pricing transparency in health care? Did you ever walk into a doctor’s office where the prices of various services were posted? A hospital? At the drug store’s pharmacy counter?