As health care costs rise across the country, members of Congress are struggling with whether the government should force the health care industry to test the outcomes of different therapies for the same condition against each other to see what method really does work best for patients. Read more »
The increasingly frequent ritual of trying to prevent a scheduled cut to Medicare physician payments is starting again, with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., working to put together a package that would prevent a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare physician payments scheduled for July 1. Read more »
Educators, public health officials, and hospital administrators told lawmakers that new Medicaid regulations prepared by the Bush administration would reduce health care for poor schoolchildren, nursing home residents, and pregnant women, among others. Read more »
The Medicare program has launched a new era in which the public can readily compare local hospitals on how patients rate them in terms of the courtesy of nurses, how quickly they got help when they pressed the call button, how quiet their room was at night, and more than a dozen other aspects of their care. Read more »
If Democrats want to block new Medicaid regulations that states complain would cost them too much, they might need to come up with a lot of money. Read more »
Physicians, insurers, and others have agreed this week on a set of national standards for evaluating and reporting physicians' performance. Read more »