american medical association

Both the House and Senate health reform proposals would force insurance plans to follow the recommendations as part of a minimum swath of services.

Aiming to prevent a 21-percent reduction in Medicare doctor payments next year, the House today passed legislation scrapping the flawed formula that has dictated similar cuts for most of the decade.
The count was 243 to 183, with 11 Democrats voting against the measure, and just one Republican — Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas physician — [...]

The House is expected tomorrow to take up a $210 billion proposal to scrap the flawed formula that dictates Medicare doctor payments, thereby averting a 21-percent pay cut slated for next year.
If the proposal sounds familiar, it’s because the Senate considered a nearly identical bill just a month ago. That legislation was shot down, not because [...]

In a letter today to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors lobby, announced its support for House Democrats’ proposed health reforms. But there’s a catch. Namely, AMA isn’t offering its outright support for the $894 billion proposal — the one that’s getting all the media attention. Rather, the group [...]

The Washington Post weighs in today on the Democrats’ $245 billion plan to overhaul the way Medicare pays doctors — a bill Senate leaders are trying to divorce from broader health care reform legislation so they won’t have to find the offsets to pay for it. The Post editorialists are no fans of the strategy.
The [...]

Democrats are in the uncomfortable position of claiming that an overhaul of the way doctors are paid under Medicare is somehow not part of health care reform.

Yesterday, Senate Democratic leaders began moving on a proposal to scrap the current formula dictating doctors’ Medicare rates and replacing it with a system more accurately reflecting the costs to treat those patients. Notably, party leaders appear poised to pass the bill separately from broader health reform legislation in order not to upend President Obama’s [...]

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have been patting themselves on the back for passing out a health reform proposal that both saves money over the next decade and costs hundreds of billions of dollars less than similar legislation moving through the House. What often goes unmentioned is the inconvenient fact that the Finance bill [...]

The American Association for Justice — formerly known as the American Trial Lawyers Association — is gearing up to defend against proposals for tort reform as the answer to the high cost of health care.
“Limiting the legal rights of patients will do nothing to  lower the costs of health care,” said Anthony Tarricone, the association’s [...]

Little evidence backs claims that medical malpractice suits are driving up health care costs.