Medicare access to care

Medicaid Expansion Didn’t Hurt Access After All

The expansion of Medicaid in nearly two-thirds of the states has not affected access to care for Medicare participants in those states. According to a new analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Medicare patients had no more trouble getting timely doctors’ appointments, suffered no increase in costs, and experienced no increase in waiting times after their state expanded its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act. Learn more about these findings in this Healthcare Dive report or go here for access to the National Bureau of Economic Research report “The Impact of Insurance Expansions on the Already Insured: [...]

Proposal Would Equalize Medicare Physician Payments

All physicians would be paid equally for Medicare-covered office visits under a new proposal published recently by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Under the proposed regulation, Medicare would collapse four levels of patient evaluation and management office visits, eliminate the extensive documentation required to justify the payments physicians seek, and pay one simple rate for office visits. CMS estimates that reducing the documentation requirements would save every doctor 51 hours a year. Some critics are concerned that specialists and those caring for especially ill or especially complex patients would be shortchanged by the proposed policy while others fear [...]