Will there be a Medicare physician payment fix?

Lindsay Law; Mary Ann Porucznik

Baucus proposal would delay cuts for 18 months On April 3, 2008, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., announced his intention to send a fix for the flawed Medicare physician payment formula directly to the Senate floor, bypassing committee markup. The proposed legislation applies an 18-month patch to the impending 10.6 percent cut, scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2008.

Giuliani urges accountability, tort reform

Carolyn Rogers

“America’s mayor” calls mandated health care “a disaster” “This is an enormously important election,” declared Rudolph W. Giuliani, 2008 Annual Meeting Presidential Guest Speaker and former mayor of New York City, during his address. “We’re facing significant choices about the direction this country will take that will affect everyone for the next two or three decades.” Rudolph W.

Issues facing America: Medical liability reform

James Genuario, MD, MS; Samir Mehta, MD; the Washington Health Policy Fellows

The U.S. healthcare system is broken, say both political pundits and healthcare insiders. Although the United States spends more on health care than any other nation, millions of people are uninsured, Medicare reimbursements threaten to spiral down, and access to care for millions is threatened. The “access to care” issue, in part, is a direct reaction to the increased liability threat that patients and their attorneys pose.

AAOS Board approves position statement on government healthcare programs

In this election year, healthcare issues are being widely debated. Each of the presidential candidates has developed proposals for reform—some more detailed than others. In anticipation of an increasingly significant national debate on healthcare reform, the AAOS Board of Directors approved a position statement on existing government healthcare programs during its meeting on March 3.