http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. The rising cost of Medicare can be cut through strategies such as increasing premiums and raising the eligibility age, but those moves could drive many elderly Americans from the program, leaving them with limited access to health services, according to a new study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-curbing-medicare-seniors.html Health Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:02 EST news287059493 (Medical Xpress)—The Obama administration's controversial proposal to "means-test" Medicare recipients is ostensibly aimed at generating more cash for the government from those who can afford it – or squeezing more money out of upper-income seniors, depending upon one's point of view. But according to a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits, the Medicare program is already means-tested. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-expert-medicare-means-tested.html Health Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:31:11 EST news286479036 Raising the age of eligibility and reforming some Medicare practices can go a long way to making it sustainable, according to three Arizona State University healthcare policy experts. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-asu-experts-age-eligibility-reforms.html Health Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:47:44 EST news286105656 (HealthDay)—Adding computer-aided detection to mammograms finds more early, noninvasive cancers and helps detect invasive cancers at earlier stages, according to a large new study. But the jury's still out as to how worthwhile the extra technology is overall. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-pricey-computer-aided-mammograms-worth.html Cancer Tue, 16 Apr 2013 05:12:12 EST news285307858 Substantial regional variation in Medicare spending for patients with advanced cancer is not linked to differences in survival, according to a study published March 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-medicare-advanced-cancer-linked-survival.html Cancer Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:00:01 EST news282318980 The traditional Medicare program allocates only 1 percent of total spending to overhead compared with 6 percent when the privatized portion of Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage, is included, according to a study in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-straight-medicare-overhead.html Health Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:11:27 EST news280584679 (AP)—Two new reports show that the taxpayer-funded Medicare program paid more than $120 million from 2009 to 2011 in violation of federal law for medical services for inmates and illegal immigrants. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-medicare-paid-120m-illegal.html Health Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:08:40 EST news278255310 Medicare Advantage (MA), with more than 10 million enrollees, is the largest alternative to traditional Medicare. MA's managed care approach was designed to provide coordinated, integrated care for patients and savings for taxpayers, but since the program launched as Medicare Part C in 1985, critics have said that the system limited enrollee freedom of choice without significant benefit or savings to the Medicare program. They also pointed to the tendency of some private payers to design benefit plans and marketing campaigns that attracted healthier patients, leaving sicker, moreexpensive patients in traditional Medicare— a process known as favorable selection. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-competition-efficiencies-medicare-advantage.html Health Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:39:24 EST news273775156 (Medical Xpress)—Researchers at Rice University report that referring cancer patients to hospitals with better track records for surgery could save lives and not raise the cost to patients. The study was reported online today in the journal Forum for Health Economics and Policy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-cancer-patients-experienced-successful-hospitals.html Cancer Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:14:59 EST news269766880 Medicare payment reforms mandated in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for postacute care have great potential to lower costs without harming patients, a new study reports. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-medicare.html Health Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:39:48 EST news265995583 The protection of the savings of the elderly—one of the primary goals of Medicare—is under threat from a combination of spiraling healthcare costs and increased longevity. As the government attempts to reduce Medicare costs, one suggestion is that the elderly could pay a larger proportion of the costs of their healthcare. But exactly how much would this be and what impact would it have on their finances? A new study by Amy Kelley at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and her colleagues, funded by the National Institute on Aging, aims to identify the portion of wealth Medicare beneficiaries spend on healthcare costs in the last five years of life. Their work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-health-care-elderly-hard-diminish-financial.html Health Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:32:53 EST news265995030 Changing the way that Medicare payments are adjusted to account for regional variations in the cost of providing care as recommended by a previous report from the Institute of Medicine would result in payment increases for some hospitals and practitioners and decreases for others, concludes the Phase II report from the IOM study. Geographic adjustments should be used to ensure the accuracy of payments, said the committee that wrote the report, but they are not optimal tools to tackle larger national policy goals such as improving access to care in medically underserved areas. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-geographic-adjustments-accuracy-medicare-payments.html Health Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:12:21 EST news261749521 The Republican-led House of Representatives voted Thursday to repeal a key measure of US President Barack Obama's health care reform, a symbolic move on the historic law's second anniversary. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-house-votes-repeal-obama-health.html Health Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:46:44 EST news251660787 Even though a large clinical study demonstrated that radiation has limited benefit in treating breast cancer in some older women, there was little change in the use of radiation among older women in the Medicare program, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the March Journal of Clinical Oncology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-evidence-benefit-older-breast-cancer.html Cancer Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:00:03 EST news250167131 The cost of medications through Medicare's subsidized prescription drug program varies from region to region across the United States largely due to the use of more expensive brand-name drugs and not because of the amount of drugs prescribed, according to a study led by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH). The authors said that more efficient prescribing practices could have saved the Medicare program and its beneficiaries $4.5 billion. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-drug-volume-regional-differences-medicare.html Health Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:40:02 EST news247944401 GE Healthcare, a branch of General Electric, has paid the government a settlement of $30 million plus interest for improper billing by a company it bought in 2004, officials said Thursday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-ge-healthcare-million-overpaying-case.html Health Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:40:07 EST news244438796 (AP) -- Government inspectors will tell lawmakers Wednesday that the Medicare health plan needs to do more to stop doctors from prescribing powerful psychiatric drugs to nursing home patients with dementia, an unapproved practice that has flourished despite repeated government warnings. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-inspector-highlights-psych-drug-elderly.html Health Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:27:49 EST news241885658 Advance directives do have an impact on health care at the end of life, especially in regions of the country with high spending on end-of-life care, according to a University of Michigan study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-advance-palliative-medicare-end-of-life.html Health Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:50:58 EST news236965845 US authorities have charged 91 people over some $295 million in alleged fraud schemes related to Medicare, the government-run health program for seniors, the Justice Department said. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-health-fraud-cases.html Other Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:49:39 EST news234676164 Geographic adjustments to Medicare payments are intended to accurately and equitably cover regional variations in wages, rents, and other costs incurred by hospitals and individual health care practitioners, but almost 40 percent of hospitals have been granted exceptions to how their adjustments are calculated, finds a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The rate of exceptions strongly suggests that the mechanisms underlying the adjustments are inadequate, noted the committee that wrote the report. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-medicare-sources-methods-accuracy-geographic.html Health Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:54:34 EST news226155232