- Center on Health Equity and Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Obama's Hospital Funding Cuts Seen Worsening Primary Care Doctor Shortage
A plan to reduce federal funding for teaching hospitals in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal will curb training for primary care doctors, undermining a top priority of the 2010 health-care law he fought to enact, a Bloomberg Government study shows.
The law would expand medical coverage to as many as 32 million uninsured people, flooding the system with new patients and driving up demand for family physicians. To narrow the deficit, the president plans to save $9.7 billion over nine years by reducing what Medicare (USBOMDCR) pays to train new doctors.
The proposed cuts, if enacted, will cause hospitals to adjust the mix of residency slots to focus on specialty positions that are the most profitable, according to the study by Bloomberg Government health-care analyst Brian Rye. That will steer medical students to specialties that can pay twice as much as primary care, according to medical school executives.
“You can tell people primary care is great all you want, but unless you show you value it through the payment system, people are always going to go for the economic incentives,” said Atul Grover, chief public policy officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges, in a telephone interview.
Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/7e2tcfj
Source: Bloomberg
Prices for care at hospital trauma centers vary across hospitals; drug shortages reached a record high during the first quarter of 2024; although 3 of the biggest makers of asthma inhalers pledged to cap out-of-pocket costs for some US patients at $35, these do not apply to daily inhalers used by the youngest kids with asthma.
Read More
Navigating Health Policy in an Election Year: Insights From Dr Dennis Scanlon
April 2nd 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with Dennis Scanlon, PhD, the editor in chief of The American Journal of Accountable Care®, about prior authorization, price transparency, the impact of health policy on the upcoming election, and more.
Listen
The Biden administration recently launched the Global Health Security Strategy, a new effort to combat the spread of infectious diseases; lawmakers zeroed in on the risks of massive consolidation in health care during the first congressional hearing on the Change Healthcare hack; the FDA recently announced the recall of a pair of heart devices linked to numerous deaths and injuries.
Read More
Exploring Medicare Advantage Prior Authorization Variations
March 26th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the March 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on variations in prior authorization use across Medicare Advantage plans.
Listen
