Medicare/Medicaid

In a speech with a strong focus on unity among Americans and with a heavy emphasis on social progress, President Barack Obama briefly mentioned healthcare in his second inaugural address in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21.

In the wake of the so-called “fiscal cliff deal” that averted the effects of federal budget sequestration for two months when it was passed by Congress on Jan. 1 and signed by President Obama on Jan. 2, Blair Childs, senior vice president for public affairs at the Charlotte-based Premier health alliance, spoke with HCI Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland about the current policy and political situation on Capitol Hill. To paraphrase Bette Davis, healthcare providers need to expect a bumpy ride throughout 2013.

According to a request for information (RFI) document released recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is reaching out to providers, EHR vendors, and other interested parties on electronically reporting patient-level data under the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program starting in 2014.

At approximately 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 1, the U.S. House of Representatives concluded voting, by a margin of 257 to 167, to approve a bill that the U.S. Senate had approved at about 1:57 a.m. Tuesday, to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” triggered on Tuesday by prior legislation passed in 2011. The legislation forestalled for several weeks the triggering of federal budget sequestration, which would have unleashed $110 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts, including across-the-board 2-percent Medicare reimbursement cuts to healthcare providers.

Even as Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reached an agreement Monday afternoon, Dec. 31, on a tentative deal to stave off large tax increases beginning Tuesday, Jan. 1, they remained at an impasse on whether and how to prevent $110 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts—among them Medicare reimbursement cuts, according to media reports Monday. As a result, the country will “go over the fiscal cliff,” to use a phrase initially coined by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to describe succinctly a federal budget sequestration process involving hundreds of billions of dollars in increases in federal tax rates combined with hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending cuts, all of which begin Jan. 1.