Word: carefully
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...House and Senate bills would set up institutes to compare the efficacy of various procedures. Proponents say the studies are essential to ending medical treatments that juice up fees without adding much benefit. But it is far from clear whether Congress would allow such studies to affect health care costs. Opponents say they are a precursor to medical rationing. Indeed, both the House and Senate bills explicitly prevent this research from being used to decide which services Medicare would pay for and how much it would reimburse...
...patients coming into the system. While families' health bills may go down, they say, costs for the government - and ultimately taxpayers - are sure to rise. "I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health care spending rather than restrain it," Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey S. Flier wrote in a scathing Nov. 17 Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal. (Read "Understanding the Health-Care Debate: Your Indispensable Guide...
...recommendation by a government-appointed expert panel that most women delay routine mammograms until age 50. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius furiously tried to distance the Administration from the recommendation, a chorus of critics declared it a harbinger of exactly the type of bureaucratic health care apportioning they fear most. Any similarly controversial recommendation based on comparative-effectiveness research would almost certainly be neutered by Congress...
...Medicare Commission When Obama began his push for reform, he asked Congress to create an independent commission to regulate Medicare costs. Medicare, which spends more than $450 billion a year, is such a huge health care player that any changes it makes can lead the way for reforms in the private market. As originally envisioned, the new agency would essentially take over Congress's current authority to set Medicare payment rates for hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and other health care providers. It would use a process like the military-base-closing commission, whose recommendations automatically go into effect unless Congress...
...beyond its reach entirely. Who is left? Maybe no one. "The exception for hospitals and other providers is fundamentally counter to the goals of the original bill, and I will work to see that it is removed," says Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Finance Committee's health care subcommittee and an original proponent of the idea. "A watered-down approach to fixing Medicare simply will not work...