Medical Practice Guidelines
The health care reform debate is littered with false statements. Truth is hard to come by. However, several recent news stories counter a whole series of mistruths and half-truths. Here are just three falsehoods -- there are many more, including one countered in our news release below -- and the new facts and findings that counter the false claims:
Press Releases
•
December 03, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health met last Wednesday to hear testimony on ways to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the Medicare system. While few deny the need to reform Medicare and cut payments based on fraudulent claims by common thieves, the lack of definitions around “fraud,” “waste,” and “abuse” are troubling, according to the Citizens' Council for Health Freedom (CCHF). A sample of the various definitions...
Press Releases
•
September 17, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced earlier this month it will not regulate the nationwide health information network, or NHIN, through formal rule-making, instead offering “a framework of principles and good practice models” to help guide deployment without hindering the implementation. The NHIN is designed to share patient health data among insurers and all types of health providers that an individual may seek treatment from. The nationwide network will interact with all state and individual provider networks, to....
Press Releases
•
April 10, 2012
St. Paul, Minn.—Which is more important? Standardizing care or ensuring a positive patient experience?
To patient advocate Twila Brase, president and co-founder of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, a patient-centered national health policy organization based in St. Paul, Minn., there shouldn’t be a trade-off. But new research shows that hospitals that adopt strategies to meet government requirements see a decline in the quality of individual patient experiences.
Public Comments
•
April 09, 2009
No patient, no government official, no policymaker should be able to require a practitioner to do what is viewed as unethical, morally objectionable or a violation of the religious beliefs of that practitioner.
After our delivery in May 2004, citizen petitions continued to arrive at our office. We include these because we believe they were not part of the petitions you received last year. And like those delivered last year, we have placed them in a red binder.
Public Comments
•
November 26, 2002
Importantly, in the drive to limits federal payments for pharmaceuticals, the guidance may lead to limited access to medication for all citizens, not just those patients in federal programs.
The key to cost-containment is consumer control over health care dollars. Personal financial incentives, such as medical savings accounts and federal health care tax deductions, will drive health care costs down by encouraging individual cost-consciousness. Although HMOs want their enrollees to believe treatment guidelines will provide safer and better medical care, patients should be cautious about embracing an initiative that may use words on a page to limit health care services.
Certainly the reason to go to Arizona is not to make more money. My income will drop--maybe 30-40%. On the same hand the income factors in Minnesota are so driven by non-patient oriented mechanisms that my idealistic mind doesn't allow me to continue to practice that way.