this just in: medicare to fuck even more people

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1187...googlenews_wsj

Medicare to Stop Paying
For Some Hospital Errors
By JANE ZHANG
August 20, 2007; Page B2

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, in another step toward linking pay to performance in Medicare, will stop compensating hospitals for treating certain "reasonably preventable" conditions acquired there.

The eight conditions ******* injuries from patient falls, pressure ulcers, urinary-tract infections, vascular-catheter-associated infections and mediastinitis, an infection following heart surgery. Also *******d are so-called never events, meaning they never should happen: objects left in the body during surgery, air embolisms and blood incompatibility.

The rule change, mandated by a 2005 law and proposed in April, takes effect in October 2008. Medicare said it will add three additional conditions next year.

The effort "underscores the continued, steady CMS drive to become an active purchaser, not passive payer, of health care," said Jeff Nelligan, spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that manages Medicare, which covers health care for elderly and disabled Americans.

The change comes as the government is increasingly concerned about the rising cost of Medicare, which totaled $408 billion in 2006, amid an aging population. As a result, the government is trying to hold health-care providers more accountable for quality. Since October 2006, hospitals have been required to report certain quality data or face a penalty. Beginning in October, Medicare will increase the number of quality measurements to 27.

Write to Jane Zhang at Jane.Zhang@wsj.com

I mean correct me if I'm wrong, but basically how I understand this is that if the hospital screws up and is paying to fix it out of its own pockets, the cost is going to wind up getting passed onto the patients.

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i mean on the other hand the gov't should pay for shit like that. its no-win situation

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fuck even more people

or

fuck people even more.