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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (779834)	4/14/2014 1:19:35 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572704

"fee–for–service payments to doctors because it drives up the nation’s $2.7 trillion health–care bill by rewarding overuse." It's so obvious that would be the result of fee-for-service payment schemes. Like this guy: ======================================================================== Medicare Paid Doctor $21M in Single Year HE'S ONE OF 344 WHO RECEIVED AT LEAST $3M IN 2012 By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff newser.com Posted Apr 9, 2014 3:15 AM CDT (NEWSER) – Medicare's books have been opened up after an extended legal battle, and perhaps the most startling detail is that a single doctor was reimbursed nearly $21 million in 2012 alone. Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen was one of 344 physicians who raked in more than $3 million from Medicare that year, accounting for nearly $1.5 billion of the $64 billion paid to individual doctors in 2012, an AP analysis of the data finds. (Lab and ambulance services bump the total Medicare paid out to $77 billion.) The highest paid 2% of doctors accounted for nearly a quarter of total Medicare payments, and in the $3 million-plus club, the category leader was ophthalmologists; 151 of them accounted for nearly $658 million in Medicare payments. The physician data released by the Obama administration had been off-limits to the public for decades and will be pored over in the weeks to come by researchers, fraud investigators, insurers, and consumers, reports the New York Times. Groups who pushed for the release of the database argue that it will speed up payment delivery reform and help guide patients to doctors who deliver quality care, but the American Medical Association, which opposed the release, warns that "releasing the data without context will likely lead to inaccuracies, misinterpretations, false conclusions, and other unintended consequences." The Washington Post sounds a few notes of caution, pointing out that some high-billing doctors' totals could be explained by their efficiency or heavy number of Medicare patients; further, some specialized procedures incur significant overhead, meaning a chunk of the money could end up in the hands of drug or medical device companies.

To: puborectalis who wrote (779834)	4/14/2014 1:20:43 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1572704

>> Health economists are nearly unanimous that the U.S. should move away from fee–for–service payments to doctors because it drives up the nation’s $2.7 trillion health–care bill by rewarding overuse. Nothing, NOTHING is more responsible for "rewarding overuse" than the Electronic Health Record in physicians offices. It is THE key selling point for EHR systems: "Yes, it is a hassle, but you will be able to upcode every office visit, legally, because you'll be documenting it." The 99201/11/02/12 is almost unused now by practitioners using EHR. Simple visits become complex, complex become extended. Because the EHR says, "Hey, doc, if you just do this, this, and that, you make this 99211 be a 99213." Doc: "Okay, click, click, click, done." So, annual physicals that, two years ago were $200, are now $450. At the same time, the government reports costs are going down because they're not charging more for a 99214. They're just doing more of them. Who gets fucked? Taxpayers and patients. Taxpayers, who paid $30 Billion for the EHR systems that are responsible for their own demise. Patients, who don't want their data on EHR to begin with. Docs don't like it because it is inefficient, even though it increases revenue.

To: puborectalis who wrote (779834)	4/14/2014 1:21:51 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1572704

Health economists nearly unanimous - U.S. should soak its kids in Ritalin--because it makes billions for drug manufacturers.

To: puborectalis who wrote (779834)	4/14/2014 1:30:32 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Respond to of 1572704

AP Goes to Occupy Movement-Supporting Enviro Group For Comment on Bundy Ranch Standoff Newsbusters.org ^ \| April 13, 2014 \| Tom Blumer Guess who's all of a sudden standing up for law and order? Why, it's radical environmentalists, who despite their general disdain for lawful behavior have felt compelled to speak out in support of the Bureau of Land Management's attempts to round up Cliven Bundy's cattle and ultimately force the Nevada rancher to abandon his family's century-old business. Martin Griffith at the Associated Press relayed the comments of one such group in a Sunday report in the aftermath of the BLM's abandonment of its roundup efforts, in Griffith's words, "after hundreds of states' rights protesters, some of them armed militia members, showed up at corrals outside Mesquite to demand the animals' release" (There's much to it than that; go this archived Drudge Report page for more; bolds are mine throughout this post): BLM TO PURSUE EFFORT TO END DISPUTE WITH RANCHER A day after blinking in a showdown on the range, federal land managers pledged to pursue efforts to resolve a conflict with a southern Nevada rancher who has refused to pay grazing fees for 20 years. Bureau of Land Management spokesman Craig Leff said the agency would continue to try to resolve the matter involving rancher Cliven Bundy "administratively and judicially." Bundy owes more than $1 million in grazing fees, according to the bureau. ... On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy back to him only hours after announcing a premature halt to the roundup due to safety concerns. The operation, expected to take up to a month, ended after only a week. The cattle were freed after hundreds of states' rights protesters, some of them armed militia members, showed up at corrals outside Mesquite to demand the animals' release. ... Environmentalists accused the bureau of capitulating to threats of violence from armed Bundy supporters and urged them to pursue action against the rancher. "The BLM has a sacred duty to manage our public lands in the public interest, to treat all users equally and fairly," said Rob Mrowka, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Instead it is allowing a freeloading rancher and armed thugs to seize hundreds of thousands of acres of the people's land as their own fiefdom." "The BLM is setting a dangerous precedent in announcing that it will pick and choose who has to follow federal laws and who it will reward for violating them," he added. The Center for Biological Diversity's sudden interest in following federal law is a hypocritical hoot, given that it was — perhaps I should say "is," since the group's forums are still active — among the "allied organizations" supporting Occupy Las Vegas. Occupy sympathizers want Western society to collapse into anarchy and to abolish capitalism. An item which originally appeared in Forbes but which I could not find there tonight (hmm) had more choice words about the Center (links are in original): ... Simply put, it occurs to me that any federal policy that ends up with armored snipers pointing rifles at an unarmed rancher, his wife, and his workers might just be a policy that needs to be reconsidered. The dispute in question goes back to 1993, when the BLM cut the grazing rights of the rancher in question, Mr. Cliven Bundy, from a herd of thousands of head of cattle to one of no more than 150 head in order to “protect” a species of desert tortoise that inhabits the same area of the state. Most mainstream news media reports on this story naturally did not inform their readers of this fact, or of the fact that this tiny herd allotment would be spread over the 158,000 acres of land to which Bundy held the grazing rights. When one understands these key facts, one realizes that such a tiny herd of cattle on such an enormous space would have no impact at all on the desert tortoise or any other plant or animal that lives there, and that no rancher could possibly make any sort of a living running such a tiny herd. Thus, the obvious conclusion is that BLM rendered its absurd decision with the clear expectation of running the Bundys off the land entirely. And that is a very reasonable conclusion to reach. After all, Mr. Bundy is in fact the “last man standing” here – the BLM strategy has worked so well that every other rancher with grazing rights in the region has given up and abandoned what had been their family’s way of life, in many cases, for generations. ... the dirty secret of the ESA (Endangered Species Act) is that its efforts to “protect” plants and animals have over the years resulted in a not-too-admirable success rate of a little over 1 percent. That’s not a typo. Naturally, the radical organizations who have so abused the ESA over the years cheered the action in Nevada by the BLM. “It’s high time for the BLM to do its job and give the [endangered desert] tortoises and the Gold Butte area the protection they need and are legally entitled to,” senior Center for Biological Diversity scientist Rob Mrowka told the Mesquite Local News. “As the tortoises emerge from their winter sleep, they are finding their much-needed food consumed by cattle.” Reportedly, the Bundy herd at last count stood at a little over 1,000 head of cattle. That number of cattle spread out over such a vast amount of land is not crowding turtles or any other animal out of their own food source. In fact, it’s much more likely that the fertilizing effect that cattle provide to the land as they graze actually increases the flora available to wildlife in the area. But groups like the Center for Biological Diversity don’t really deal in facts. As the group’s own executive director, Kieran Suckling, admitted in an interview a few years ago, they’re running a political campaign, and not really all that interested in pesky things like sound resource management, which is ostensibly the real job of the BLM ... So the Center isn't interested in anything but enlisting the government through court action to engage in tyranny ("arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority") for tyranny's sake, to cheer it on when it does so, and to whine and moan when there's pushback. Griffith committed the journalistic oversights the Forbes item decried, and failed to describe the true beliefs of the group he went to for "balance." How unfortunately typical.