Word: medicaid
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Medicare and Medicaid expenditures together totaled $73 billion, accounting for 29% of all health spending. The two programs last year paid for more than one-third of all the nation's hospital bills. Since Medicare serves the elderly, and much of Medicaid is spent on long-term care of the elderly poor, these programs will continue to increase rapidly as the U.S. population ages...
Some states have decided they cannot afford to wait for federal action. California, for example, has just passed a bill that will require state officials to choose the lowest-cost health care for Medi-Cal (Medicaid) recipients. The law will permit private health insurers to do the same for their subscribers. As a result, next year California Medi-Cal patients may be restricted in choosing their doctors and hospitals. William A. Guy, who administers the Medi-Cal watchdog program, sums up his task bluntly. Says he: "Hospitals are a major part of the cost. The issue is how to hold...
...runaway cost of health care has played havoc with the federal budget, which has seen outlays for federally financed medical coverage under the Medicare and Medicaid programs rise from $26 billion in 1976 to $56 billion in 1981. In a desperate effort to slash expenditures and trim a projected overall budget deficit of at least $103.9 billion for the fiscal year that begins in October, Congress agreed to slice $15.2 billion off projected spending of $270 billion for the programs over the next three years...
...cause the industry has little if any incentive to hold them down. Though the U.S. remains one of the few industrial nations without a comprehensive national health program, upwards of 85% of all Americans are covered by medical insurance of some sort, either through the federal Medicare and Medicaid plans, which provide coverage for the elderly and the poor, through nonprofit organizations like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, or through company-sponsored plans for employees...
...most promising cost-containment ideas now under way is New York State's six-year-old "prospective reimbursement" program. In it, state officials examine the prior year's operating budget for any hospital that participates in the state-administered Medicaid programs and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The examiners then add a special cost-of-living index, and decide how much the hospital will be reimbursed in the coming twelve months. Result: annual hospital costs in the state have risen between 8% and 10% since 1976, while the U.S. figures have jumped...