Republican plan to change Medicare sparks controversy and gains support

Republican Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina have introduced a new plan that aims to overhaul the federal Medicare program. The Senators’ plan is quite ambitious and would have a major impact on all people receiving health insurance coverage through the federal program. As such, the overhaul plan has generated a fair amount of controversy. Both Senators claim that this is an opportunity to open up “grown-up” conversations between legislators and consumers and find resolutions for the problems that face Medicare. The overhaul plan seeks…

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Paul Ryan feels tax credits are the road to universal health coverage

Paul Ryan (R., WI), the House Budget Committee Chairman, gave a significant speech at the Hoover Institution about health reform. At this Stanford University think tank, Ryan spoke about his own Medicare and Medicaid reform plan called “Path to Prosperity”. That said, he also took a moment to speak about the third health-care entitlement in the United States, which is a tax subsidy of $300 billion per year, which helps to cover employer-sponsored health insurance. This reform offers the chance for universal coverage to run in a market-oriented way. Ryan…

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Rates for Medicare Advantage to fall as enrollment soars

Rebuking the notion that health insurance premiums will reach new highs as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration spoke with reporters on Thursday and insisted that premiums for Medicare Advantage policies will fall in 2012. Medicare Advantage is one of the more popular federal health care plans and boasts of lower deductibles than other insurance programs. The program accounts for only a quarter of the 48 million policies currently in effect through Medicare. Officials also noted that they expect to see enrollment rates for the program…

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Prosecutions for healthcare fraud increase by 85 percent since 2010

Recently released federal statistics have shown that national healthcare fraud prosecutions have increased by 85 percent since the end of 2010, partially as a result to stepped-up efforts to enforce fraud laws under the Obama administration. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan group, released the statistics which show that there have been 903 prosecutions in 2011 so far. That number is 24 percent higher than the total for all of 2010, when there were 731 healthcare fraud prosecutions through various federal agencies nationwide. Furthermore, TRAC statistics have shown…

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