The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced this week it would provide $6.4 million to develop a system that aims to link health provider compensation to the quality and efficiency of care. The money will go to the Prometheus Payment model, developed by the not-for-profit organization Prometheus Payment, Inc. Read more »
Just over two years into their overhaul of the state's health system, the architects of Massachusetts' historic law to bring nearly universal health coverage to the state have racked up an impressive list of accomplishments, navigating a minefield of potential threats to the law to increase the number of insured state residents by 340,000. So far, the political coalition that produced the law has held together, but legal, cost, and regulatory challenges loom, those architects acknowledged at a Washington, D.C., forum. Read more »
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Bush administration can't immediately reinstate a rule cutting Medicaid payments to "safety net" hospitals and clinics after the current one-year moratorium on the regulation expires. Read more »
The Senate Finance Committee, looking ahead to one of the most pressing issues that will face the next president and Congress, announced plans for a bipartisan, bicameral health policy "summit" next month. Read more »
A discussion of the kind of role the government should play in the health care system marked the sharpest policy divides among a gathering of presidential health care advisors. Read more »
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, unable to nail down a bipartisan bill to block a scheduled reduction in Medicare payments to physicians, has decided to proceed without GOP support. Read more »