Tag Archives: Medicaid
The ESRD Program and Single Payer Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st July 2019In 1972 the nephrology community convinced congress to pay for the treatment of patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD). Thus, the federal government assumed fiscal responsibility for chronic dialysis and kidney transplantation. We sold the program by telling congress that it would save lives (true) and that it would not be very expensive (decidedly…
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CMS – Proposed New Physician Fee Schedule
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th July 2018If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free PJ O’Rourke CMS (the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid) is proposing a new physician fee schedule. The three page article that summarizes the proposed changes is hard for my ossified brain to decode, so I…
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Evidence Based Reimbursement
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th June 2009It didn’t take long. The day after I wrote that Evidenced Based Medicine would be used to ration medical care the June 8 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine appeared on my desk. Under the heading of Health Care Reform is “A 300-Year-Old Solution to the Health Care Crisis”. In it Diamond, et al…
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More on Medicare's Administrative Costs
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd June 2009I’ve previously written on how Medicare drastically underestimates its administrative costs. Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,has analyzed these costs a different way and concluded that administrative costs under a single payer scheme would be twice those of today’s health insurance. He doesn’t really count the hidden costs that I was carrying…
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