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Joseph Antos, the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy, American Enterprise Institute, says the federal Medicare program not only has a spending problem, but a delivery system problem that the fee-for-service model has not solved.

In five markets around the country, accountable care organizations were providing care to more than half the Medicare patients in the traditional fee-for-service program, a new study found. In addition, ACOs were more likely to be found in markets with greater consolidation by hospitals and doctors.

Medicare officials announced Thursday that they will delay enforcement of controversial new rules that define when hospital patients should receive observation care, rather than being admitted, a distinction that makes beneficiaries ineligible for follow-up nursing home coverage.

The sweeping federal health care law making its major public debut next month was meant for people like Juanita Stonebraker, 63, from Oakland, Md., who retired from her job in a hospital billing office a year and a half ago.

Federal officials for more than a decade have let hospitals charge Medicare varying rates for certain emergency department overhead and staffing costs called facility fees-a controversial policy some critics believe invites overcharges.

Hospitals and healthcare systems nationwide are increasingly buying more physician practices as health reform requires care delivery to move toward a more quality-based care model instead of a fee-for-service one. The reactions are mixed.

A new poll conducted by the American College of Physician Executives has found that doctors are almost evenly divided on whether or not Medicare payment data should be made public.

The U.S. health care bureaucracy is expanding; both dramatically (e.g. the implementation of the Affordable Care Act) and gradually. A recent decision proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) exemplifies the dangers to medical innovation and patients represented by the gradual expansion of the health care bureaucracy.

Medicare may enjoy the fruits of the growing and varied work among private payers and providers to boost value in healthcare, though the benefits will come sooner to costs than quality, a study suggests.