Rationing

CCHF Connects with Lawmakers on Patient Privacy, Opioid Crisis

Charlie Gard Has Shown Us Our Future Under the Affordable Care Act

Medicare Experimenting on Senior Citizens? No Bones About It

ST. PAUL, Minn.—A new rule in the Affordable Care Act will allow Medicare to “experiment” on the nation’s senior citizens by forcing bundled care payments for some hospitals and doctors. The rule will “test whether bundled payments to acute care hospitals for episodes of care will reduce Medicare expenditures while preserving or enhancing the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries.”

Scary Business

On Friday, the Obama administration published a final rule on physician payment for 2016. The 1,358-page Medicare rule, with the names of 28 bureaucrats you can contact with questions, makes changes to physician payment and Medicare Part B. A similar rule will be issued next year for 2017 and likely every year after.  Who has time to read these??

Stacking the Deck Against Patients

There’s trouble ahead for doctors and patients. Last Friday, the eleven members of the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee were announced. It includes seven physicians to advise HHS on how to pay doctors differently. Republicans established the committee in the “Doc Fix” bill (MACRA, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015), which President Obama happily signed because it expanded Obamacare controls.

Refusals: Tale of 3 Gov’t Health Care Programs

Training New Doctors for the System

Your Doctor, the Robot

Will robots dictate medical treatment? In “Could Artificial Intelligence End the Electronic Medical Record Nightmare?” physician Kevin R. Stone says doctors, nurses and patients used to talk with each other to share information and solve problems, but now, “The electronic medical record has killed the oral science.” 

‘Recommendations Become Requirements’

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom’s Twila Brase Says New Bill Will Give Feds Even More Control over Health Care

ST. PAUL, Minn.—A new bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that will give the government even more control over Americans’ private data and medical decisions.

That’s Exactly What Obama Wants

Obamacare limits access to doctors. From the Los Angeles Times: “A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.”