Before 1970, 40-60% of patients who died in hospitals received an autopsy. In 1970, The Joint Commission, the organization responsible for hospital accreditation, eliminated the requirement of a 20% autopsy rate for in-hospital deaths for hospitals to receive accreditation. In the years since this decision, we have seen drastic declines of autopsy rates. In recent years, less than 5% of hospital deaths are followed up with an autopsy.
In a move that has further contributed to our declining autopsy rates, in 2019 the Trump administration pushed through the Omnibus Burden Reduction (Conditions of Participation) Final Rule. This rule attempted to “cut through red tape” by eliminating redundant, or excessively burdensome regulations that affect hospitals and healthcare providers. A part of this rule eliminated the requirement for hospitals to “attempt to secure autopsies in cases of unusual death and of medical-legal and educational interest”. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Trump administration argued that the autopsy requirement was redundant because states have their own autopsy regulations in place. However, the American Society for Clinical Pathology highlighted that only six states have laws requiring autopsies in the case of all unusual deaths.
Tag: CMS
Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public
Many of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone. We speak with former healthcare insurance executive Wendell Potter, now president of the Center for Health and Democracy, who says Medicare Advantage will be recognized in years to come as the “biggest transfer of wealth” from taxpayers to corporate shareholders, and blames the lack of regulation over the program on the “revolving door between private industry and government.”
Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public
Related:
‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions (archived)
Medicare Part B premiums to decrease for the first time in over a decade
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced that Medicare Part B premiums will decrease in 2023, marking the first time this cost has been lowered in more than a decade.
Medicare Part B premiums to decrease for the first time in over a decade
Next year it will go back up because Biogen will probably raise the price of Aduhelm. I guess $5 is another can, or two, of cat food. 🤷🏼♀️
Prescription Drug Price Reforms Won’t Happen for Years
Prescription Drug Price Reforms Won’t Happen for Years
Read More »The two biggest benefits for seniors in the IRA are the Medicare negotiation of certain high-cost prescription drugs, and the $2,000 out-of-pocket cap. But while price negotiations technically start next year, no consumer will see the benefit until the new prices begin in 2026, and even then on only 10 drugs (another 15 are added in 2027 and 2028, rising to 20 by 2029 and subsequent years).
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The $2,000 out-of-pocket cap, which is across the board for all seniors, not just on certain drugs, is even worse. That cap doesn’t go into effect until 2025, although out-of-pocket costs get capped at $4,000 in 2024. If there is kind of an explanation for delays in setting up Medicare drug price negotiation, for the out-of-pocket cap there is not. You literally tally up patient out-of-pocket costs, which are fully transparent, until they hit $2,000, and then stop them. Why does this take more than two years to pull off? Medicare itself, the entire program, took only a year to implement.
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Other parts of the bill do come online more quickly. The insulin price cap of $35 a month for Medicare recipients starts in 2023, as does free vaccine coverage in Medicare and the rebates on Medicare drugs with price increases above inflation. But the inflation rebate is benchmarked to 2021 prices, locking in those high costs, and just would mute price growth. The real benefits here are Medicare negotiations that lower drug prices, and the cap on all prescription drug costs for seniors. Those are delayed.
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It is absolutely insane for a political party to boast that it lowered prices for seniors when the price reductions are years and years down the road. That kind of de facto bait and switch leads to distrust and anger. You’d have thought Democrats would have learned this lesson in the Affordable Care Act, whose major benefits didn’t kick in for four years after passage, a time lag that helped lead to two midterm wipeouts. But here we are again, as Democratic officials tout a drug price reform that isn’t visible to anyone.
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That’s not necessarily Democrats’ fault (although they could have ignored the parliamentarian, of course). What is their fault is the failure to immediately make evident the benefits of the policy. Democrats have had a tendency to break faith with their base, to make promises and fail to deliver. Here’s a policy they’ve been promising for nearly two decades, they pass the policy, and they’re going to spend years explaining how the implementation is just around the corner. It comes off as double-talk and toxifies a political brand. And in this case, it was unnecessary.
Biden Hikes Medicare Prices And Funnels Profits to Private Insurers
The largest-ever Medicare premium increase will pad the pockets of insurance executives who donated millions to the president’s election campaign.
Biden Hikes Medicare Prices And Funnels Profits to Private Insurers
Related:
Medicare limits coverage of controversial Alzheimer’s drug to those in clinical trials
Judge orders FDA to hasten release of Pfizer vaccine docs + Supreme Court conservatives question Biden vaccine policy for businesses
Congress ‘Asleep at the Switch’ as Biden Continues Trump-Era Ploy to Privatize Medicare
Medicare officials say costly Alzheimer’s drug to blame for large monthly jump in premium
Medicare officials say costly Alzheimer’s drug to blame for large monthly jump in premium
The increase guarantees that health care will gobble up a big chunk of the recently announced Social Security cost-of-living allowance, a boost that had worked out to $92 a month for the average retired worker, intended to help cover rising prices for gas and food that are pinching seniors.
Related:
Biogen probes death of Aduhelm user after brain swelling
Cost and controversy are limiting use of new Alzheimer’s drug
Biden moves forward with Trump Medicare privatization plan
Covid Public Health Policies Are Killing the Elderly, Deliberately Pt. I
The pandemic has exposed underlying, inhumane, Eugenics-driven public health policies. The shocking evidence is that those public health policies were implemented in the most developed, economically wealthy countries. Those with the highest standard of living denied medical treatment for elderly nursing home residents, essentially condemning them to death.
Covid Public Health Policies Are Killing the Elderly, Deliberately Pt. I
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 