Healthcare Roundup: Slow Medicare Advantage Season, Feds Probe AtriCure, Drug-Insurance Costs Up, and More

Medicare Advantage selling season has slow start — Medicare’s efforts to clamp down on high broker commissions that may have encouraged some agents to churn seniors into new Medicare Advantage plans has slowed the pace of the 2009 selling season. Many providers of the privatized healthcare plans report confusion over how to comply with Medicare’s latest directive on commissions. [Source: Medicare Advantage News]

AtriCure probed over marketing practices — A amaker of heart-surgery equipment, AtriCure, said the Justice Department is looking into its marketing practices. The investigation is looking into charges that AtriCure promoted its devices for unapproved uses and encouraged hospitals to use incorrect billing codes for its surgical-ablation procedures. [Source: WSJ]

Medicare drug-benefit premiums, co-pays to rise — Premiums at the 10 largest Medicare prescription-drug plans are expected to rise 31 percent next year, with some increases exceeding 60 percent. Co-payments, especially for brand-name drugs, are also likely to rise steeply — as high as $40 in some large plans. [Source: WSJ]

Hospitals get OK to share performance bonuses with doctors — The Department of Health and Human Services ruled that hospitals participating in private insurers’ pay-for-performance plans can share their bonuses with their staff doctors. Under the opinion, hospitals can share up to 50 percent of their bonus payments with physicians who help the facilities achieve quality goals. [Source: American Medical News]

Hospitals fail to subsidize IT for doctors — Federal rules allow hospitals to pick up 85 percent of electronic medical-record costs for affiliated doctors, but many hospitals remain reluctant to take on new IT projects while physicians themselves seem largely uninterested. One exception to the trend is Tufts Medical Center, which just announced that it will pick up an undisclosed portion of the costs of electronic-records and practice-management software for doctors in its network. [Source: American Medical News, Health Data Management]

Medicare drug spending falls $6B – Greater use of generic drugs played a big role in trimming costs by $6 billion at the Medicare prescription-drug program in the year ended Sept. 30. Other savings resulted from fewer enrollees than initially expected and seniors rationing their drug use to avoid the “doughnut hole” in coverage, which forces them to pick up the full tab for annual drug costs between $2,510 and $4,050. [Source: USAT via kaisernetwork.org]

Life Insurance- Senior Care of Texas wants you to have a complete understand of how Life insurance works with out all the bells and whistles that some sales people give you when buying life insurance.

SLMB, QDWI, QMB, QI1- Senior Care of Texas wants to assist you with applying for state and government programs that you may not be aware of.

Senior Care of Texas is a one of a kind company. The company was founded on Christian Beliefs and has one but simple motto....

Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do for your clients.

Senior Care of Texas will only contract representatives that

live with this belief.

We compare rates from hundreds of insurance companies to find our clients the best rates in the business.