Health Care Bill's Plan to Cut Medicare Payments to Hospitals that Readmit Ill S

[Chris_]

Health Care Bill's Plan to Cut Medicare Payments to Hospitals that Readmit Ill Seniors Could Have ‘Serious Consequences,’ Says Hospital Association

CNSNews.com) – Slashing Medicare payments to hospitals that readmit ailing senior citizens--a component of the health care reform bill under consideration in Congress--could have serious consequences for the hospitals, including raising costs on hospitals an estimated $19 billion over 10 years, according to the American Hospital Association.

*snip*

The bill creates quality and efficiency incentives that will improve care and cut down on waste, such as unnecessary hospital readmissions,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a press release accompanying the introduction of the Senate Finance Committee’s version of health reform.
 
Baucus’ version of the readmissions policy would penalize hospitals 20 percent of their Medicare reimbursement rates if patients are readmitted for the same condition within seven days and by 10 percent if readmitted within 15 days.

*snip*

As the summary states, “Three years after implementation of the readmissions policy, the [HHS] Secretary would have the authority to expand the policy to other conditions. Additional conditions would be selected based on: (1) high spending on readmissions or high rates of readmissions; and (2) other criteria as determined by the Secretary.”

Hospitals will have a choice of keeping patients much longer than necessary (wasting money and bed space to do so) to avoid the possiblity of a readmission of a patient or will refuse to readmit them within 15 days of discharge.  Either way we lose.  Hospitals already lose money on medicare patients.  Now the dims want to penalize them even more.  Guess who gets the bill?

 

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The gubmint needs to get completely out of the healthcare and insurance businesses.

[thundley4]

A hospital that refuses readmission, and then the person dies, and the hospital is sued.  Yep, that sounds like a way to lower healthcare costs. Unless , of course, they are going to allow an exemption for the hospitals against liability, and I don't see the trial lawyers allowing their lap dog DemonRats to do that.