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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Standard & Poor’s reports cost of Medicare increasing at its slowest rate in over half a decade
According to data recently released by Standard & Poor’s, over the last year, the revenue increase for hospitals resulting from Medicare patients was about one third over what had been seen from patients who are covered by some form of private health insurance. The S&P Healthcare Economic Index showed that the revenue from Medicare increased by 2.5 percent per hospital patient before June 2011, which is the slowest increase since January 2005, when S&P’s first started to monitor this income. That said, the revenue generated from patients who were covered…
Read MoreMedicare regulations may be causing shortage of cancer drugs
A month’s long shortage of cancer drugs may be the result of Medicare regulations. For several years, Medicare has provided coverage for cancer patients, allowing them to obtain treatments that they would otherwise have no access to. While Medicare offers this coverage, however, the number of cancer fighting drugs has been falling steadily. The phenomenon may be the result of a regulation within the Medicare system that dictates that doctors must purchase cancer drugs, not patients. Traditionally, patients have been responsible for purchasing their own medications as prescribed to them…
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